"Gotta get you back to you"

“Crystal core
Your mind has been divided from your soul
Now you say you are that stranger on your shore

Grief it, brings the need, the naked freeze
Caught in the frost
Numb, unbearable thoughts, your inner need
Fire not lost, no way, not lost

I’ve just come from the Reindeer King
He says: Your purity of soul, crystalline
Gotta get you back to you
Get you back to you”

Tori Amos – The Reindeer King

How often do you feel divided from your soul, grieving, frozen or numb?

How often do you feel disconnected from yourself, unsure what your body is telling you, unaware of or unable to express your own true emotions?

If this resonates, you are not alone. I frequently work with thoughtful, intelligent people, who live very much in their heads, who often seem to have become disconnected from themselves. Many people override basic biological needs, working through lunch, postponing rest, ignoring tension in their shoulders or a knot in their stomach until the body finally demands to be heard.

Often, it can be a struggle for people to know what they really want and like in life; therapy becomes a voyage of discovery exploring their dreams and desires and a journey back home to themselves.

Colin is smiling, whilst telling me about his continued struggles with his partner. A kind of fixed smile. His eyes are only half-heartedly joining in. I feel a pull in my chest and a heaviness hinting that there is more. Tears lined up behind a wall, cautiously held behind a dam, not daring to come out lest they never stop. The smile feels more comfortable. “There is a sadness?” I offer. In his eyes, recognition.

As an anthropologist and counsellor, I keep asking myself how we have become strangers to our own bodies. I can’t start to answer this question without thinking about culture.

It usually surprises my anthropology students how much in life is actually cultural.

I have come to think of us like a set of those Russian dolls:

· the smallest doll at the core is our body, our self;

· the next layer represents the relationships we are held in: our parents, family, lovers, friends and colleagues;

· the next layer represents our community: the place we live, the people there

· the biggest doll represents the world at large: the complex geopolitics, global economy that shapes all of our lives.

All these layers are connected. How we feel in our bodies is shaped by our relationships. Our relationships are shaped by the culture we live in. Our lives and relationships are shaped by the state of the world. So too, our bodies and nervous systems impact our intimate relationships. We can trace these connections from the finest nuances of interpersonal neurobiology to the broadest political, cultural and economic forces that shape our lives.

You are a reindeer, with your herd, in the forest in the snow that is melting due to global warming.

When people arrive in my therapy room, all of these layers are present. None of us arrives alone.

Culture is a thread weaving between all of these layers.

In her beautiful book The Heart of Trauma, Bonnie Badenoch writes that “culture … shapes us below the level of conscious awareness”.

My students tend to start my anthropology course expecting to find culture in traditions and customs like wedding rituals and their favourite national dishes like plov. They are more surprised to discover we find culture everywhere, in the smallest, seemingly mundane moments of daily life.

Why and how has Colin* learned to hide his tears? Were his tears welcomed and comforted when he was a child? What messages did he receive from his caregivers – and from society – about how he should express his emotions? As a young man and part of a racial minority, he learned that he should hold firm and be “strong” and manage any of these unwelcome feelings alone. All the cultural messages he has internalized about his gender, his racial identity are in the room with us. His steely smile speaks of longer histories of discrimination that reach far out across geographies and generations. The fear of judgement is real and visceral, registered in his body as a tangible threat.

Culture teaches us a great deal about which emotions are acceptable, how they may be expressed and how we should move through and succeed in life. Productivity is king and so we push ourselves to exhaustion, overriding ourselves. One more email. One more meeting. We feel we can never really relax.

Western culture has also taught us that the mind is separate from and more important than the body. This is a cultural story, not a biological reality. No wonder we seek to intellectualise our problems using our supposedly superior minds, whilst missing out on the equally valuable wisdom of the body.

This disconnect runs deep. As Tori sang, “your mind has been divided from your soul.”

Other stories of relationship are possible, including our relationship with ourselves.

What I love most about anthropology is learning about other cultures and ways of being. Other ways even of understanding what it is to be a Self.

In my class, we watch the film Onanya that tells the story of the Shipibo people who live in the Peruvian Amazon. The ‘Onanya’ are the medicine people in their community, who are deeply attuned with and hold deep wisdom about the healing properties of plants and nature. Mama Rosa is one of the Onanya passing down her wisdom to the next generation. There is great wisdom here for us all. In this culture there seems to be no separation. Watching Mama Rosa, I had a visceral reaction to her presence. Connected. Grounded. Whole. Watching her reminded me that the way I had learned to inhabit my own body was not the only possibility.

How does this help Colin? Our experience is never “just” cultural; his response has been protective, sparing him the pain of being rejected, looked down upon, seen as ‘weak’ or as failing to be the person culture wants him to be. He can slowly start to see the cultural stories in which he hides his tears and this may help him hold greater compassion for himself as unpleasant emotions arise. He may also experience something new as I, as a white, female therapist, have the honour of showing him the compassion I genuinely feel and strive to make all of him feel welcome.

Slowly, we can start to retrace paths back to parts of us that have been lost.

We start to see how we are shaped by our relationships and by the cultures we inhabit. But, we are not defined by them.

Perhaps healing is not about becoming someone new. Perhaps it is about gently finding your way back to yourself, to the wisdom of a body that has never truly forgotten who you are.

Notes

*The examples I use are fictionalised and anonymised drawing inspiration from real people I have met in the course of my life, but not based on any one specific individual.

The opening quote and subheadings are from the beautiful, poignant song The Reindeer King by Tori Amos that explores division and conflict.

If you are curious to learn more about the culture and wisdom of the Shipibo people, you can watch the film Onanya here.

Perhaps one of the questions at the heart of this article is: what helps us find ourselves again?

If you are curious to explore that question further, I would love to share my free Wild Nesting workshop with you. Together, we explore belonging, resilience and feeling at home in ourselves and in our lives, wherever we happen to be.

You can watch the workshop here.

If you would like more personalised support, I also offer one-to-one counselling for individuals and couples. It is often an honour to walk alongside people as they reconnect with themselves, navigate challenges in their relationships and discover greater calm, confidence and aliveness. Find out more and reach out here.