Coming Home to Your Body: A Somatic Approach to Healing Body Image Issues
In a world that relentlessly bombards us with messages about how our bodies should look, move, and be, finding peace with our physical selves can feel like an impossible task.
While many body image therapists approach body image issues by focusing on changing thoughts about our bodies through affirmations or cognitive restructuring, Reclaim’s body image therapists firmly believe that lasting healing requires something deeper: a return to the wisdom and experience of the body itself.
What is Embodiment?
We believe embodiment is the journey back home to ourselves.
Embodiment isn't just about being aware of your body—it's about fully inhabiting your physical experience.
Think of it as the difference between looking at a house from the outside versus living within its walls. When we're embodied, we're not just observing our bodies as objects to be evaluated or controlled; we're experiencing life from the inside out, feeling the richness of moments through our physical senses.
What Causes Body Image Issues?
Turning away from our bodies often begins subtly.
Diet culture teaches us to override our natural hunger and fullness signals, replacing bodily wisdom with external rules and measurements. Over time, this creates a profound disconnect—we stop trusting our body's messages, viewing them with suspicion rather than wisdom.
Trauma, whether from direct experiences or the accumulated impact of living in a body-shaming culture, can deepen this disconnection.
Our nervous systems learn that being present in our bodies feels unsafe, leading to various forms of checking out: dissociation, numbing, or living primarily in our thoughts. This disconnection, while originally protective, comes at a cost—we lose access to our body's natural capacity for pleasure, intuition, and self-regulation.
The Nervous System Is Our Body’s Hidden Storyteller
Understanding how our nervous system shapes our experience is crucial for healing body image. When we feel unsafe in our bodies, our nervous system responds with survival strategies.
Some of us might find ourselves in constant fight or flight, manifesting as obsessive exercise routines or restrictive eating patterns. Others might experience freeze, feeling numb or disconnected from physical sensations.
Survival States and Their Stories
When our nervous system is in survival mode, it creates specific narratives about our body that can feel absolutely true in the moment, even if they don't reflect our whole truth.
Fight/Flight Stories
In a fight/flight state, our nervous system is primed for action and danger. This heightened arousal state often generates stories of:
"My body is a problem that needs to be fixed."
"If I could just control my body enough, I would be safe."
"I need to be constantly vigilant about my eating/exercise/appearance."
These stories manifest physically as muscle tension, shallow breathing, and a constant sense of restlessness. The body feels like an enemy to be conquered, oftentimes leading to behaviors like compulsive exercise, restrictive eating, or endless body checking.
The nervous system's attempt to keep us safe ironically keeps us trapped in a cycle of body warfare.
Freeze State Narratives
When our nervous system shifts into freeze, our body stories take on a different quality:
—> "I can't feel my body."
—> "I'm trapped in this body."
—> "It's not safe to be present in my body."
These narratives come with physical sensations of numbness, heaviness, or feeling disconnected from physical experience.
The freeze response might have originally developed as protection from overwhelming body shame or trauma, but it can become a chronic state that makes embodiment feel impossible.
Regulated State: Where New Stories Become Possible
When our nervous system finds its way to regulation, we can begin to access different narratives about our bodies. Unlike the rigid stories of fight/flight ("my body is a problem") or the disconnected narratives of freeze ("It isn’t safe to feel my body"), regulation offers us the capacity for new possibilities.
In this regulated state:
Our breath naturally deepens
Our muscles soften
Our perception opens
Our body feels like a safe place to inhabit
This isn't about forcing positive thoughts or maintaining constant peace. Instead, regulation allows us to:
Experience our bodies with curiosity rather than judgment
Notice sensations without becoming overwhelmed
Feel pleasure and comfort when they're present
Navigate discomfort without shutting down
Trust our body's signals and wisdom
Think of regulation as your nervous system's home base - a state where you have access to both stability and flexibility. From this place, new stories can naturally emerge:
—> "My body has wisdom to share."
—> "I can listen to my body's signals."
—> "This body is my home."
—> "I can be present with my experience."
—>"There's room for all of my feelings."
The Interplay of Story and State
Understanding this relationship between nervous system states and body narratives helps us see why purely cognitive approaches to body image often fall short.
We can't think our way out of stories that are a result of the state of our nervous system.
Instead, healing requires:
Recognizing the State
Learning to identify what nervous system state we're in through its physical and emotional signals.
When we can recognize "Oh, this is fight/flight" or "I'm moving into freeze," we create space between the state and the story it generates.
Understanding the Survival Logic
Each nervous system state and its accompanying story has served a purpose for you. Rather than fighting against these protective responses, we can acknowledge their intelligence while gradually building capacity for new experiences.
Moving Toward Finding (and feeling) Safety First
Before we can change our body stories, we need to help our nervous system find and feel safety. This might mean:
Creating environmental conditions that signal safety to our nervous system
Learning tools to shift out of survival states
Rewriting Stories Through the Body
As our nervous system begins to feel safe, new stories naturally emerge. These stories aren't imposed from outside but arise from direct, embodied experience.
We might notice:
Moments of genuine comfort in our bodies
The pleasure of movement without agenda
The capacity to feel and respond to our body's needs
The Role of The Window of Tolerance
Our ability to work with body stories is directly related to our nervous system's window of tolerance. When we're within this window, we can:
Feel emotions without being overwhelmed
Notice body sensations with curiosity
Hold space for complexity in our body narrative
Outside this window, our stories become more rigid and absolute.
This is why embodiment work needs to be done gently, with constant attention to nervous system regulation.
Forming A New Relationship With Our Body Stories
The goal isn't to eliminate all negative body stories—that's neither possible nor necessary. Instead, we're developing the capacity to:
Recognize when our nervous system is generating protective stories
Hold these stories with compassion while not letting them define us
Allow new, more nuanced narratives to emerge as our nervous system finds safety
Experience our bodies as dynamic and alive rather than problems to be solved
Through this lens, healing body image becomes less about changing our thoughts and more about creating the conditions for our nervous system to feel safe enough to tell new stories.
As we build this safety, we often find that our harshest body narratives naturally soften, making room for a more compassionate and embodied relationship with ourselves.
Remember: Your nervous system has been protecting you through every story it's created. As you move toward healing, you're not leaving these protective responses behind, but rather expanding your capacity for new experiences and narratives about your value in the world.
The key to healing lies in helping our nervous system rediscover safety and regulation. This happens not through force or willpower, but through gentle, compassionate moves toward ease and regulation overtime. This moves us toward what polyvagal theory calls our ventral vagal, or social engagement, system—the state where healing and connection become possible.
Part 2: The Practice of Coming Home
In Part 2 of this blog post, we'll explore practical tools and techniques for working with these nervous system states and building a more embodied relationship with ourselves. We'll dive into specific practices for different stages of the journey, address common challenges, and discuss how to integrate this work into daily life.
You'll learn:
Gentle practices for beginning embodiment work
Tools for working with overwhelming emotions
Strategies for staying present in challenging moments
Ways to measure and celebrate progress
Approaches for sustainable integration
Until then, consider this invitation: Notice how you're holding your body right now. Is there tension? Ease? Numbness?
Whatever you discover, can you meet it with gentle curiosity rather than judgment? This simple practice of noticing without needing to change anything is the beginning of coming home to your body.
Part 2 will be posted next week: "Coming Home to Your Body: A Beginner’s Guide to Embodied Healing" where we'll explore concrete practices and tools for your healing journey.
🧡,
Reclaim Therapy specializes in treating body image issues and eating disorders.
As a trauma focused practice, we provide emdr for body image, emdr for eating disorders and therapy for childhood trauma. We know that body image issues often have roots in trauma, or previous overwhelming life events. Our mission is to help people reclaim their relationship from body-shame, disordered eating and the impact of trauma.