Coming Home to the Body (When You’ve Been Living Everywhere Else)

Most of us were never really taught how to live in our bodies. We were taught how to override them.

Push through discomfort.

Stay composed.

Keep going.

Think our way out of things that felt too big to feel.

Many of us learned how to live from the neck up while our bodies quietly carried everything else.

If you’ve ever said, “I know this logically, but I don’t feel it,” that’s not a failure of insight. It’s a sign that your body never got the memo that it’s safe.

Leaving the Body Is an Intelligent Adaptation

Let’s be clear about something that doesn’t get said enough:
Leaving your body was probably brilliant.

For many people, dissociation, numbing, overthinking, and staying busy weren’t weaknesses, they were survival strategies. When the body didn’t feel safe, the mind stepped in and took over.

The problem isn’t that you learned to leave.
The problem is that no one taught you how to come back.

When I sit with someone in a therapeutic space, this shows up in familiar ways. People often know exactly what they should do or why something makes sense, but their bodies tell a different story. A tight jaw while they say they’re fine. Shallow breath as they talk about something like it’s “not a big deal.” A subtle collapse in the chest when they mention a boundary they didn’t hold.

None of this means anything is wrong. It usually means the body learned how to protect itself a long time ago.

For many people, leaving the body was adaptive. It helped them survive environments where slowing down, feeling, or expressing wasn’t safe or supported. Overthinking, staying busy, people-pleasing, and numbing out were not failures; they were intelligent responses to what was needed at the time.

The challenge comes later, when those same strategies are still running the show.

Coming Home Is Often Uncomfortable at First

Here’s the part most people don’t warn you about:
Coming back into the body can feel worse before it feels better.

When you’ve been disconnected for a long time, sensation can feel overwhelming. Emotions surface. Old grief shows up without an invitation. The body remembers what the mind tucked away.

This doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
It means you’re doing it honestly.

In the therapy space, I often invite people to pause - not to analyze, but to notice. What happens when you slow the story down just a bit? Where do you feel that in your body? What shifts when you stay with the sensation instead of moving past it?

These moments matter. The body often signals what the mind hasn’t caught up to yet.

This is especially true when it comes to attachment. Many people grew up learning, implicitly or explicitly, that their emotions were inconvenient, overwhelming, or ignored. Over time, the nervous system adapts. The body becomes something to manage instead of trust. Regulation becomes a solo job.

It’s common to hear someone say, “I know I’m safe now, but my body doesn’t believe it.” That makes sense. The body organizes itself through experience and relationship, not logic alone.

When insight doesn’t create change, it’s not because someone isn’t trying hard enough. It’s often because their system hasn’t yet had a different lived experience. Ideally, one that includes safety, pacing, and presence.

This is where working experientially can be so powerful.

Instead of only talking about boundaries, we might notice what happens in the body when someone imagines saying no. Instead of analyzing a relationship, we might track how they move toward or away from connection in real time. Instead of trying to eliminate a symptom, we get curious about what it’s doing for them.

Working with horses offers a particularly clear window into this process.

Horses respond to what’s happening, not what’s being said. They’re sensitive to tension, incongruence, and emotional regulation in a way that feels immediate and honest. There’s no expectation to explain yourself or get it right. The feedback is quiet, relational, and nonjudgmental.

For many people, this is the first time they experience relationship without pressure. Boundaries without rejection. Presence without performance. The body gets to learn, in real time, what safe connection feels like.

Horses aren’t the only way people reconnect with themselves, of course. I see embodiment emerge through breathwork, movement, time in nature, and through the simple act of being with someone who knows how to slow down and stay present. The pathway matters less than the quality of attention and attunement.

One thing I often name with clients is that coming back into the body can feel uncomfortable at first. When awareness returns, sensation returns. Emotion returns. Sometimes things surface that were set aside long ago - not because anything has gone wrong, but because the system finally feels safe enough to notice.

This work isn’t about forcing feelings or pushing through discomfort. It’s about learning how to stay with what’s already there, at a pace the body can tolerate and the mind can begin to digest.

Over time, something shifts. The body doesn’t have to work as hard to protect. There’s more choice. More flexibility. More trust in what’s being felt instead of fear of it.

The body isn’t the problem. It’s the record. It holds the imprint of everything that helped you survive.

Coming home to the body isn’t a single moment or realization. It’s a practice.

One pause at a time.

One breath.

One honest experience of being here.

And from that place, real change begins to take root.