Episode 094 – Do you owe your body an apology
After many years of tears, hatred, and basically mistreating myself, I made a vow to be kind to my body, and owed it an apology. The same as I would if I behaved that way towards someone else.
There’s plenty of research around the body keeps the score, and how suppressed emotions around trauma can manifest into illnesses. So the path along the healing journey also includes befriending our bodies. For when we can like our bodies, we can start to feel safe in them to listen to them, and to feel what we are feeling.
Listen to hear my body apology, and I hope it inspires you to do one for yourself.
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Links from the episode:
Next episode: Ask more of yourself
Previous episode: How to believe in yourself, even when
Transcript of episode
Hello loves,
If we consider how obsessed our society is with how our bodies should look, it’s no wonder that dissatisfaction is rife amongst us and we’re constantly picking ourselves apart. When I was growing up we only had the tv and magazines to influence our perceptions of ourselves, and that was bad enough.
It’s the time of year when social media starts the summer ready and beach body ready campaigns, and the two sides.
The damaging side of lose weight or look awful, and the more positive side of love yourself as you are. In all honesty, there have been times when both sides have been able to trigger me.
I have gone through significant love/hate relationships with my body. The two most significant unkind ones being when I was diagnosed with my illness, and then not being able to have children. I hated my body, and myself, for letting me down.
There’s plenty of research around the body keeps the score, and how suppressed emotions around trauma can manifest into illnesses. So the path along the healing journey also includes befriending our bodies. For when we can like our bodies, we can start to feel safe in them to listen to them, and to feel what we are feeling.
After many years of tears, hatred, and basically mistreating myself, I made a vow to be kind to my body, and owed it an apology. The same as I would if I behaved that way towards someone else.
Things that I have apologised for include:
- Ignoring my hunger signals for so many years.
- Living in a calorie deficit for too long.
- Stuffing myself with excess food and alcohol and then shaming my body when it was only responding to the restrictions and self-hate I was inflicting on it.
- Comparing myself to other women and thinking I was supposed to look like them, even though I knew nothing about their journey.
- Hating every lump, and bump.
- Squishing into clothes that felt too tight and hating when things no longer fit.
- Ignoring my instincts in knowing my body was capable of more when others were telling me that we don’t do things like exercise with our illness.
- Equally, for pushing too hard, too soon in an attempt to avoid what I was feeling. Then blaming my body when I achieved my goals, but the thing I was running away from was still there.
- Filling myself with caffeine and sugar instead of listening to my natural rhythms.
- Ignoring my body and said “yes” when it clearly felt “no”, or staying silent when it nudged me to speak up because I feared disapproval or rejection.
- Spending so much time criticising my body forgetting to say thank you for what it can do.
- For believing my value as a woman was entirely dependent on it, and my uterus.
Do any of those resonate with you? Hopefully this has inspired you to write a letter of apology to your own body.