# Emotions and bodily disconnect



## butch (Nov 20, 2010)

So, I'm pretty close to my three-year anniversary in therapy. It has been incredibly useful for me, and I am very satisfied with the course it has taken. Recently, I had a profound 'a-ha!' moment, and wondered if others could relate.

So, here's the story: I saw a video of my partner that I hadn't seen before, and as soon as I saw M's face, I felt a pain in my chest and my eyes were watery. This isn't a usual response when I see pictures of M, or even when I see M for the first time after a long absence (we are a long-distance couple). I recognized that my response was one of love, and is one I've had with M before, but those moments have been in person, and have been in situations where emotional openness and intensity were to be expected.

So, this was utterly new to me, and it so happened it happend a couple of hours before I went to see my therapist. We've talked before about how I intellectualize things and live in my head, but I must have never quite got what he meant, because part of me thought that everyone else does this, too, I just do it more than others. So, he was pointing out that this is what emotions are, they are things we feel, primarily, and not things we think. We don't say "I think sad," we say, "I feel sad."

I though the thinking of the feeling was the feeling itself, and only in rare moments of intensity do we actually have a bodily response to feelings. It was like being shown a different world from the one I lived in, where people have emotional lives completely different from my own, and it has altered my understanding of a fundamental aspect of my own self.

So now, my therapist is pointing out other ways in which I live disconnected from my internal self-how I am so other directed that I don't know how to access my own needs and wants and goals independent of external cues, and how this is all related to 'living in my head.'

I mention this here because I wonder how much of this relates to my size. I've heard other fat people talk about 'living from the neck up' as a response to our fat-hating culture, a place where, at most, some of us get "You have such a pretty face...." implying (or out right saying) the only attractive part of us is above the fat body we live in. 

Am I 'living in my head' as a direct result of growing up fat in a culture that tells us to be fat is a fate worse than death? Did I become so disconnected from my body as a survival mechanism to be able to live in a body society denies as legitimate? How fundamentally estranged from my own body do I have to be to not recognize until I'm almost 40 that I don't really know what things like 'love' feel like?

It makes me think I will need to re-learn how to use a critical part of my body, as if I'd been born without one of my senses and now I'm getting it back, and trying to adjust to a whole new window on the world.

Does anyone relate? Any advice, suggestions, or thoughts? I hope I'm not the only one with such a mind/body split.


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## luva of ssbbw (Nov 20, 2010)

"Am I 'living in my head' as a direct result of growing up fat in a culture that tells us to be fat is a fate worse than death" QUOTED from butch. As much as society looks down on fat people unfairly i think your going over the top by saying being fat is a fate worse than death. You can change fatness you cant change death. Once your dead thats it. Now dont get me wrong i dont like people to change their fatness. I'm a heterosexual guy and only really fat girls turn me on and i think they are really sexy and i know that the "fat liking" isnt as strong the other way but to say fat is worse than death i think is really overdramatizing it all really. Would you rather be a quadriplegic on a ventilator unable to move from the neck down or have a really aggressive cancer or hiv? I dont think so...Time to start looking at the positives rather than the negatives or you will be in therapy for another 3 years or even more..


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## Sweet Tooth (Nov 20, 2010)

Hmm... I'm not sure if this is quite the same as what you're experiencing, because this has been a brain AND emotions disconnect from my body, but I noticed that it took me a long time to actually notice actual physical things going on in my body. I had to slow down, be allowed to pay attention, and - most importantly! - be honored for what I said to doctors and such that I was experiencing. When you're growing up fat in a fat-hating world, who trusts what you have to say about your body?

This had to be combined, for me, with growing stronger in my self-confidence through my size acceptance process. It has, I think, kept me from some serious issues like the times where I was just constantly tired but had to push the doc to look beyond the typical "you're fat so you must be dealing with X" situations... or how I tend to get really sick and have no fever to speak of but can feel things just aren't right.

Like I said, this isn't what you noticed in yourself in the same way, but it all comes down to learning that our experiences are VALID, that we don't have to rationalize things away or make ourselves less of a frustration for others [because, hey, we already have to be apologetic for taking up so much space in this world and asking for - gasp! - equal rights! ]. It's okay to be fully human, to have all those thoughts and emotions that are simply part of the human condition. It's okay to have hiccups in how our body functions without it invalidating our basic right to have our bodies respected and honored. In a world that sometimes treats us as subhuman, this can be huge.


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## CastingPearls (Nov 20, 2010)

Butch, I'm currently doing a self-help series on relationships that at the heart of it, is its basic message. We've been conditioned to think rather than feel and have become disconnected from feeling and verbalizing how we feel. Everything in the OP is what I'm listening to right now.

I bought the series in a last ditch effort to save my marriage which I realized with finality through the series, is unsalvageable. Then I thought it might work for a future relationship but I kept listening and realized that the relationship I needed most to fix in life was the one with myself. I needed to forgive and embrace myself and begin to feel and not apologize for it or stifle it. 

I think many women can experience this thinking/feeling disconnect regardless of size but yes, I have to agree that my fatness has played a big part in it. I have lived in my head from the neck up because for years I thought those were my best parts; my face, my voice and my mind. Those things were acknowledged, admired and sought after by others but the body? Not so much. So I kind of divorced it from the rest of me. It was still attached but I ignored and dismissed what I thought was unacceptable in favor of what I was proud of.

Now I'm feeling so much it's actually got my creative juices flowing again. I began writing a novel and started a blog and I'm like an open faucet. It took my heart being broken this last time to actually feel and acknowledge all of it and it's tough. The self-help series says you will feel bad and uncomfortable as you reconnect with your feelings because negative feelings exist too and it's important to acknowledge them. It's feeling numb and preferring that to the alternative that's damaging. 

When I read how you had such a strong reaction to M's video, I have to admit I teared up (okay, still crying) because I too recently saw a video of a man I loved and I burst into tears. With me it was more longing because we hadn't even met and I was already head-over-heels and the possibility of all of it was overwhelming. In the end, it didn't work out and we didn't meet as planned and I was tempted to stuff all those feelings away as if they didn't exist particularly because he actually said he never considered any of it real.

Before I started connecting with my feelings, that statement would have made me swallow and stifle but instead I've been able to grieve, lick my wounds and feel through it rather than think around it. I'm walking away from it feeling grateful for what I did learn or get out of it and am thankful I didn't think myself into suppressing valid emotion.

Hope this made some sense.


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## butch (Nov 20, 2010)

luva of ssbbw said:


> "Am I 'living in my head' as a direct result of growing up fat in a culture that tells us to be fat is a fate worse than death" QUOTED from butch. As much as society looks down on fat people unfairly i think your going over the top by saying being fat is a fate worse than death. You can change fatness you cant change death. Once your dead thats it. Now dont get me wrong i dont like people to change their fatness. I'm a heterosexual guy and only really fat girls turn me on and i think they are really sexy and i know that the "fat liking" isnt as strong the other way but to say fat is worse than death i think is really overdramatizing it all really. Would you rather be a quadriplegic on a ventilator unable to move from the neck down or have a really aggressive cancer or hiv? I dont think so...Time to start looking at the positives rather than the negatives or you will be in therapy for another 3 years or even more..



Um, thanks for missing the point. For one, I was being hyperbolic, but to address your points: go to the main board and read the thread about a doctor who get punished less in part because the women his car killed was 'too fat' for the medical infrastructure we've set in place to care for our species, and ask me if fat bodies have the same value as thin ones. Secondly, to address your use of the disabled body to make me some how feel more 'grateful' for having a fat body-go find the well-known study that asks young children to pick the pictures of children they'd most like to be friends with, and the fat child picture is always last, even behind the disabled child. Do you think that suggests we live in a culture that prefers the fat body to the disabled body?

As far as my therapy goes, I don't feel like there is anything bad about being in a fat body, and my FA partner and I both love it, so I don't think I need your suggestion about continuing my therapy just to address non exsistant fat hatred. Plus, your lack of empathy for what it is like to be a fat person in western culture is quite telling as a self-proclaimed 'lover of ssbbws.' Thanks all the same for your comments, as mis-guided as it was. From reading my post, you should know that my ability to speak back to you about your incorrect assumptions is a result of good therapy and getting in touch with my internal self, so thanks for the theraputic moment.



And sweetooth and casting pearls, yes, you both are speaking about the process that I am referring to, and thanks for providing helpful feedback. I am going to think a lot on your words. And casting pearls, big hugs to you, and I am glad to hear of the creativity resurgence, and sorry to make you cry (although, like you, I am learning to utilize the messages negative and/or unpleasant emotions are trying to tell me, and to remember they have a purpose, too).


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## MissStacie (Nov 20, 2010)

luva of ssbbw said:


> "Am I 'living in my head' as a direct result of growing up fat in a culture that tells us to be fat is a fate worse than death" QUOTED from butch. As much as society looks down on fat people unfairly i think your going over the top by saying being fat is a fate worse than death. You can change fatness you cant change death. Once your dead thats it. Now dont get me wrong i dont like people to change their fatness. I'm a heterosexual guy and only really fat girls turn me on and i think they are really sexy and i know that the "fat liking" isnt as strong the other way but to say fat is worse than death i think is really overdramatizing it all really. Would you rather be a quadriplegic on a ventilator unable to move from the neck down or have a really aggressive cancer or hiv? I dont think so...Time to start looking at the positives rather than the negatives or you will be in therapy for another 3 years or even more..



That was a very dickish thing to say to someone who has just has an emotional/psychological breakthrough.

She didn't say that SHE felt that "being fat is a fate worse than death", she said that society does. And, to espouse about how heterosexual you are and what your turn ons are was completely inappropriate to this post.

Please think before you reply.

@Butch: Kudos and hugs on your epiphany and your continued progress in your therapy. Thoughts are with you on the road to a happier you!


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## lovelocs (Nov 20, 2010)

I don't think that being fat is a cause of being "too much inside one's head," but I believe the two can be linked. As a younger person, I spent a lot of time in my head (in fantasies and daydreams) because it allowed me to put up a wall between myself and some very painful realities going on around me. When they did intrude on my existence, I was able to intellectualize them. It didn't stop anything from happening, but it did remove the unpleasant emotional reaction to it. The trauma I suffered was mostly verbal and emotional. I can't imagine what it must be like for a young woman who experienced physical abuse. Truly living in her body might be like going back to the scene of a crime. 

Of course, I ended up removing most of my emotional reactions, and quite a few related physical ones, but I was able to survive, even thrive, in a very challenging, limited, environment. When I got out of my home, and my environment changed, the intellectual tools I had allowed me to continue to do the bare minimum of existence- work, go to school, and behave more or less normally in public. I was not, however, able to make many deep or lasting friendships, nor partner up romantically. I was also chronically embarrassed by my body, not by its weight, or its appearance, but by the fact that it had needs that I was not able to satisfy or understand, and which I had been taught not to notice. I began to view it as merely a thing to tote my head around, and treat it with that much importance. I didn't notice when I began to gain weight, I just bought new clothing when it was absolutely necessary. For me, fat was a consequence of living in my head, not a cause.


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## Webmaster (Nov 22, 2010)

If I understand correctly, your breakthrough was the suspicion that perhaps you have intellectualized your existence to an extent where you did not allow your body to physically react to anything, and that perhaps that extreme control is a defense mechanism in response to, statistically speaking, being standard deviations removed from the mean in terms of size. 

Two things come to my mind here. 

First, I thought of the difference between having my body affected by what you call rare moments of intensity, and experiencing that sensation under other circumstances. 

There's the sexual physical reaction, of course; there's the physical sense of frustration when things don't go right; and in rare instances I can have a physical emotional reaction to certain triggers, which for me can be touching memories, music, heartbreaking things, etc., all matters that, at times unexpectedly, punch right through my normal emotional shields, the kind that we all have in order to function as a "normal" human being. 

However, I also I recall a few very strong physical responses to emotional situations, things, and not necessarily bad things, that made me unable to eat or settle down for weeks or months. 

So yes, I do think there is physical response to emotional matters, and I think that we've either been conditioned to, or have evolved to, a state where we generally block or filter physical response pretty much automatically. A nuance may be to what extent we filter and control that response. Perhaps a relatively small extra degree of voluntary or involuntary control may have profound effects on who and what we are. So I think it's entirely possible that the experience you had meant that an event unexpectedly made it past your strong defenses, triggered an unexpected reaction, and perhaps telling you that your defenses are indeed stronger than they need to be.

The second is that by and large and in general, I think anyone who is outside of the norm in ways that are critically perceived by society, either tends to seek to, again statistically speaking, regress to the mean, i.e. exercise as much control as possible to not stick out, not attract extra attention, and just generally fit in. OR the reaction is the opposite, one of "as long as I am perceived this way, I might as well live up to the reputation/perception." Most fat people are trying to fit in as well as they can, and I do believe that tends to build a harder shell, more defenses, a larger disconnect between body and intellect, and, as a result, quite possibly the syndrome you experienced.

What to make of it all is another matter. After all, we do live in a size-negative society, so having some defenses in place to guard against letting things get to you may entirely make sense. On the other hand, if those very defenses have a Prozac-like effect of clipping the edge off the basic enjoyment of the human experience, then the cost of defense may be too high and needs to be addressed. Perhaps that is the position you're in right now, trying to figure that out. 




butch said:


> So, I'm pretty close to my three-year anniversary in therapy. It has been incredibly useful for me, and I am very satisfied with the course it has taken. Recently, I had a profound 'a-ha!' moment, and wondered if others could relate.
> 
> So, here's the story: I saw a video of my partner that I hadn't seen before, and as soon as I saw M's face, I felt a pain in my chest and my eyes were watery. This isn't a usual response when I see pictures of M, or even when I see M for the first time after a long absence (we are a long-distance couple). I recognized that my response was one of love, and is one I've had with M before, but those moments have been in person, and have been in situations where emotional openness and intensity were to be expected.
> 
> ...


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## velia (Nov 22, 2010)

Butch--

I totally get what you mean. Its almost like having such a physical reaction to something emotional is foreign. I don't know if you've experienced this, and maybe it's part of what you're talking about, but since I've been seeking therapy, I've discovered that I feel so dissociated from my body at times that I actually have decreased sensation in certain body parts-- like my belly or thighs. The theory is that I bear so much shame associated with my body that I literally have a physical reaction associated with that. 

Other times it's just weird emotional shit that I, like you, never would have reacted to, but now do. 

I don't have much advice, but I have found that allowing myself to feel whatever the response is, try to acknowledge but not judge it, and let it pass, has been the most helpful thing for me. Good luck to you with this. It's an odd and sometimes difficult journey.


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## butch (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks for the responses, friends. I've been a bit distracted by the holiday, but each response is very useful as I process through my understanding of these issues. I'm very appreciative of the thought and detail you've all provided, as they are enriching my own personal development, and I hope it might be useful to others.


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## Tau (Feb 27, 2011)

I so, so get this. I only used to let myself live and feel in my head. For years I used reading and writing as my shield against the world. I lived in those books, lost myself in the words. I would spend days not moving, locked in my room and lost to all sensation except what I allowed myself from the words and the thoughts. I thought for a very long time that I didn't have a right to sensation because my body was a mistake and had no real right to existence. And because I had no right to exist I didn't allow myself to use my body, to acknowledge or feel it and I still catch myself doing this now and then. What was my wake up call is the extreme eczema I have suffered since 2006. I bottle everything. I take everything that happens to me and I put it away inside my head and I think on it and pour over it and agonise over it and finally my body couldn't take the emotional damage I was doing myself. As a result of ignoring many of my bodies needs - unconsciously yes and out of bad habit - my body literally turned on me. Learning to live the feeling and feel the feelings has been a huge part of my healing myself physically. I'm no longer a pressure cooker of thought and endless reflection and emotion - I actually allow myself to live the sensations and I'm better for it. Hope I'm clear - just trying to get so many thoughts across. It's just I totally get where you're coming from.


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