Our relationship with the body is one of the longest relationships we will ever have. It begins before we have words, and it continues to change throughout our lives.
And yet, many of us do not really know our bodies. We know how to judge them, compare them, dress them, feed them, push them, control them, punish them, improve them, hide them. But do we know them? Do we listen to them? Do we recognise their language?
The body speaks in sensations, tension, tiredness, hunger, pain, pleasure, contraction, numbness, energy and discomfort. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes, when we have ignored it for long enough, it has to speak louder.
This relationship with the body is not fixed. It changes as we change. It changes with age, illness, motherhood, loss, stress, trauma, desire, grief, hormonal shifts, injury, exhaustion and recovery. The body we had at twenty is not the same body we inhabit at forty, fifty or later. And this can bring not only frustration, but grief.
Why It Can Be Hard to Accept the Body
I have rarely met a woman who has a simple, peaceful relationship with her body. This is not because women are naturally dissatisfied. It is because we live inside a culture that teaches us to look at the body from the outside.
From a young age, many of us absorb messages about what kind of body is acceptable. We learn which bodies are praised, desired, admired or seen as disciplined. We also learn which bodies are judged, mocked, ignored or treated as a problem to solve.
Sonya Renee Taylor, in The Body Is Not an Apology, writes powerfully about body shame not simply as a personal issue, but as something shaped by wider systems and cultural expectations. This matters, because many people carry body shame as if it is their private failure, when often it has been learned in relationship with family, culture, media and society.
When we feel ashamed of the body, we often try to control it. We try to make it smaller, younger, smoother, stronger, more acceptable. But control is not the same as relationship. Control often comes from fear. Relationship requires listening.
The Body as a Lifelong Relationship
It may be helpful to think of your relationship with the body as you would think of a relationship with another person.
Do I know this body?
Do I listen to it, or only criticise it?
Do I respect its limits?
Do I notice when it is tired, tense, hungry or overwhelmed?
Do I treat it as something I live with, or something I have to constantly manage?
Like any long relationship, the relationship with the body needs attention. It cannot survive only on demands. If another person repeatedly ignored our needs, dismissed our pain, pushed us past our limits and only valued us when we looked a certain way, we would probably not call that love.
And yet this is often how we relate to the body.
We expect it to carry us through stress, parenting, work, grief, sleeplessness, emotional strain and daily pressure. Then, when it begins to ache, slow down or change shape, we feel betrayed.
But perhaps the body is not betraying us. Perhaps it is telling the truth.
Ageing, Limits and Grief
As we age, the body often becomes harder to ignore. In younger years, many of us could push through tiredness, override pain, sleep less, exercise harder, recover faster and live as if the body had no limits.
Then something changes. We may get injuries that take longer to heal. We may notice stiffness, hormonal changes, back pain, fatigue, inflammation, changes in weight, skin, sleep or energy. The body begins to remind us that we are not limitless.
This can bring grief. A sadness that the body cannot do what it once did. A frustration that we need more rest. A fear that time is moving. A sense of loss when we realise we cannot treat ourselves as endlessly available anymore.
There can also be an existential fear in this. Body limitations remind us that we are mortal. We are not machines. We cannot control everything. The body ages, changes and eventually declines. This is painful to face, especially in a culture that often treats ageing as something to fight, hide or defeat.
But psychotherapy invites a different kind of question. Not ‘How do I defeat my body?’ but ‘How do I relate to this body now?’
When Control Replaces Listening
Many of us learned to approach the body through control. Diet rules, exercise rules, beauty rules, anti-ageing rules, productivity rules. We may believe that if we stop controlling the body, everything will collapse.
People sometimes say, ‘But if I listen to my body, it will just want to lie on the sofa and eat sweets’. But often this is not the voice of the body. It is the voice of an exhausted part of us that has been deprived, pressured or overburdened for too long.
The body is not usually asking to be abandoned. It is asking to be heard.
There is a difference between caring for the body and controlling it. Control says, ‘You are not acceptable until you change’. Care says, ‘I am listening. What is happening here?’
This does not mean we stop caring about health, movement, food or strength. It means we begin from a different emotional place. Not punishment. Not fear. Not trying to fit someone else’s standard. But relationship.
The Body in Psychotherapy
In psychoanalytic and relational thinking, the body is never just a physical object. It carries meaning. It may express what has not yet been spoken. Alessandra Lemma’s psychoanalytic work on the body explores how bodily appearance, modification and body image can be linked to deeper emotional states, identity, shame, longing and psychic pain.
This does not mean every symptom has a simple psychological meaning. Bodies are real: pain, illness, hormones, injury and ageing are real. But it does mean that our relationship with the body is emotional as well as physical.
In therapy, we may become curious about how you experience your body. Do you feel at home in it? Do you feel detached from it? Do you feel angry with it? Do you feel ashamed of it? Do you listen to pain, or do you push past it? Do you feel your body belongs to you, or does it feel as if it is always being looked at from the outside?
These questions can open a different kind of conversation. Less about fixing the body. More about understanding the relationship.
It Is Never Too Late to Begin Again
For many people, this relationship with the body becomes more conscious in midlife. Perhaps because the body starts to speak more clearly. Perhaps because old strategies stop working. Perhaps because there is a growing wish to stop living in constant judgement.
It is never too late to begin attending to this relationship. Not through another rigid plan or more punishment disguised as discipline. Not through trying to become a version of yourself that belongs to someone else’s idea of beauty, youth or success. But through listening.
What does this body need now?
What has it carried for me?
Where have I ignored it?
Where have I been cruel to it?
What would it mean to be in conversation with it, rather than at war with it?
The body will continue to change. This is part of being alive. The question is whether we can meet those changes with more tenderness, honesty and respect.
Perhaps making peace with the body is not about loving every part of it all the time. Perhaps it begins with something quieter: being willing to know it, listen to it, grieve with it, and stay in relationship with it as it changes.
If you would like to explore your relationship with your body in therapy, you may want to read more about how I work on my Psychotherapy & Counselling page. You are also welcome to contact me for an initial conversation.
