Getting in touch
One of the things that has been instrumental for me in figuring out what I need, and what’s me and what’s the mask, and reducing anxiety, and all sorts of other stuff in my post-autism-identification journey, was learning to get in touch with my physical sensations.
Because I was very, very numb to anything having to do with emotional awareness. And for other physical stuff, I could feel sensations that were going on, but there was no connection to meaning. At least beyond very basic medical things like ‘my knees hurt all the time’, things like that.
But when it came to the realm of emotions, or self-awareness, knowing what I wanted, what my body needed, that kind of body stuff, there wasn’t a connection to useful meaning.
Building that over time has been incredibly helpful because now I have access to information about what I want or need in a given moment. When I start feeling tense, I now know that there’s something wrong in this situation. So I asked myself, what is it that I’m stressed about? What is it that’s going on that I don’t like about this situation? My body isn’t going to give me the answer to that, but it can alert me that there’s something that I need to pay attention to, and then I can start questioning it.
It helps me make decisions, because my body will get more tense when I think about one alternative and more relaxed when I think about another alternative.
It helps me figure out which people are likely to be safe and which people are likely toxic, without having to go through a horrible relationship.
It does all sorts of things for me, and these are just a few examples.
Connecting to your senses
So when I’m working with someone (and they’ve okayed this), every once in a while, not excessively, but once in a while, when big emotions come up, I’ll ask about what sensations they’re noticing in their body right then. You can ask yourself that. What physical sensations are you noticing right now?
This starts connecting, “hey, there’s an emotional experience here”, with the physical sensations that are connected to it. When I’m working with someone, we don’t go into it in-depth, but just by starting to answer that question, every once in a while, it starts to make those connections quite naturally, and slowly, over time, at a pace that’s not overwhelming.
Depending on the extent of your own trauma history, if body stuff is triggering for you, this may be best to do at first with a trusted therapist.
Because that’s what all this really boils down to; this is all about building trust in yourself.
If body stuff isn’t particularly triggering, just complex or numb, or overwhelming, or whatever, and you’d like to work on this some more in a slow and gentle way, I’ve put together a thing called Sensory Moments, which sends out a daily email, with a very short prompt around a different body part, to notice what’s going on there at whatever moment you’re reading the email.
That’s a great way to start. And the next step is what I described earlier, of noticing physical sensations while you’re having an emotional reaction. Any emotion. Big or small. And that will start to connect emotions with physical responses in your brain, which you can later use like I’ve described, in decision making, and figuring out what you want and need, and what’s you and what’s the mask, and other ways of trusting yourself.
Because that’s what all this really boils down to; this is all about building trust in yourself.
It’s knowing that you can rely upon yourself even when you don’t have all the information that you want or need in a given situation. Because sometimes you won’t. It’s knowing that you can make a reasonable decision anyway. And knowing that you can get through it, whatever happens. That you’ll be okay with yourself, no matter what else is going on.
I wish you well with this.
