When The Body Says No | Part Two

Let’s pick up from last week. I spoke of the allergies I struggled with and how my body was having to speak louder and louder to get my attention.

After years of minimizing what was happening, I was finally aware of the deeper problems. My body had worked diligently over the years to protect me, but the toll was becoming more evident. My body was speaking louder and louder in the only way it could, through symptoms.

I don’t think I am that unique. We live in a culture that teaches us to be divorced from our bodies. Whether we are biohacking or going to extreme fitness classes, we view our bodies as an object to overcome and force into submission. We believe our physicality is something that we can control and manipulate through our will.

It’s often only when our health is falling apart or there’s a medical crisis that we stop and pay attention. And even then, there is a belief that we need to conquer the problems and return to “normal.” We grow resentful when our bodies don’t “behave” like we want them to and we only dig in further.

But what about when there is no normal to return to?

When we are given a chronic condition to manage?

What does health and life look like then?

Our healthcare is not guiding us towards a holistic view of health - body and mind and spirit. We still, like Descartes, are cut off from our bodies and objectify them. We use all the newest technologies to give us the upper hand in forcing our bodies to submit. We don’t approach our symptoms, or our emotions, like helpful messengers. Instead we resent their presence and try to push them away.

I spent my life tolerating. Tolerating misattunement. Tolerating my needs going unmet. Tolerating teasing and bullying. Tolerating being misunderstood. Tolerating aloneness. Tolerating dysfunction. Tolerating codependency. Tolerating misplaced responsibility. Tolerating emotional immaturity of adults and how it wounded me. Tolerating unhealthy institutions. Tolerating toxic shame. Tolerating religious abuse. Tolerating sexual harassment. Tolerating hustle culture. Tolerating perfectionism and unrealistic expectations. Tolerating excessive criticism and relentless standards.

I was used to tolerating the intolerable and I did not even realize it. It seemed like “life as normal,” until my tolerance ran out. When my system began responding with violent attacks. These were indicators that something was wrong.

I could no longer tolerate what I once could. The misattunement and codependency and over-responsibility created such a flare for my body when I was exposed to it. My body was revolting, screaming “Enough!”  I had to change or else, and I didn’t want to know what the “else” was.

Gabor Maté’s book “When The Body Says No” spoke accurately about my experience - and of psychoneuroimmunology and interpersonal biology (I know it’s a mouthful). In the simplest of terms, our relationships affect our health. The relational interactions we have can cause a cascade of stress hormones, and over time, this can cause a wearing down of our immune system and make us susceptible to developing an autoimmune disease.

Maté uses case studies to highlight personality styles of people commonly experiencing autoimmune disease. Not shocking, we are the helpers, the over-responsible ones, the ones with blurred boundaries, who care for others but often don’t experience people meeting our needs.

Between being a parentified child and a HSP (highly sensitive person) I was easily susceptible to emotional triggers. Many of the intolerances affecting me were beneath the surface, operating outside of my conscious awareness, but my body was speaking through signs and symptoms. I simply had to learn her language.

With the help of my therapist, I sorted through my emotional allergens, identifying what was no longer working. Then I began the work of reducing my exposure to the intolerable. Making changes in my life, my relationships, and my work so that I was not exposed to the same level of triggers, just as I had done with household products and fragrances.

I needed emotional safeguards to protect me from what I was absorbing. I made life changes, and I keep adapting today. I pulled back at work, honing in on work that energized me rather than depleted me. I changed how I showed up with family and what I could tolerate with them. I gave back responsibility to the people it really belonged to.

May we return to a gentle relationship with our health. May we learn the language of our bodies and pay attention when they speak. May we treat our bodies like trusted friends, rather than objects to overcome. May we engage with our bodies as the lifelong companions that they are. May we treat them like trusted advisors, heeding their warnings. May we create a loving partnership and tend to our health with tenderness and compassion.

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