Getting Back to Your Body: Seeing the Patterns Beneath the Surface

Getting Back to Your Body

Eight men joined me at The Healing Barn on Thursday night, making nine of us altogether. It was good to welcome two new men and to see two others return for their second week.

As always, we started with a topic, but the conversation went exactly where it needed to.

The theme for the evening was Getting Back to Your Body.

It can be easy to think that getting back into your body is simply about noticing your breathing or becoming aware of a physical sensation. That is certainly part of it, but the body can also become a doorway into understanding the reactions, choices and patterns that have quietly been shaping our lives.

The mind can explain, justify and create stories about why we do what we do. The body often responds before that story has even been formed. It tightens, pulls away, prepares to fight, wants to run, shuts down or reaches for something familiar.

When we slow down enough to notice that response, we can begin asking what is actually driving us.

Are you moving towards pleasure or away from pain?

One of the conversations was around identity and the things we build to prove who we are.

Our work, achievements, relationships, possessions and responsibilities can all become part of the identity we are trying to maintain. We can spend years building a life that proves we are successful, dependable, strong or needed without ever stopping to ask whether it is a life we genuinely want.

That led into a conversation about whether we are moving towards pleasure or simply moving away from pain.

We often think we are moving towards something better, but many times we only change when the pain of staying where we are becomes greater than the pain of doing something different. It can look as though we are choosing pleasure when, in reality, we have simply reached the point where the old situation hurts too much.

Actually moving towards pleasure can be much harder. It asks us to notice what we enjoy, what brings us alive and what we genuinely want.

Underneath that can be an uncomfortable question:

Am I actually allowed to have something that feels good?

That brought us to one of the simplest but hardest questions we can ask ourselves:

What do you actually want?

Not what you want another person to change.

Not what you want your partner, family or employer to do differently.

Not what everybody else expects from you.

What do you want?

We reflected on how that answer can change over time. At first, what we want can be entirely dependent on other people behaving differently. We want someone else to change so that we can feel better.

As we begin taking responsibility for our own lives, the question becomes less about changing everyone around us and more about what we want to build for ourselves, regardless of what other people think or choose to do.

For some people, there is no immediate answer. When you have spent years doing things for everyone else, there may be so little room left for you that you no longer know what you enjoy or what you want.

That does not make the question pointless. It may make it one of the most important questions you can keep returning to.

When connection and hurt become tangled

Another part of the conversation touched on relationships and how confusing it can become when connection, hope, hurt and responsibility all get tangled together.

Sometimes a relationship can have moments that feel painful or reactive while still containing something that feels deeply familiar or meaningful. When there is time apart, the intensity of the difficult moments can begin to fade. What can remain is the connection, the good moments, the potential we see in the other person and the belief that perhaps things could be different next time.

We may also see a part of the other person that we want to help, heal or rescue. Sometimes that part touches something within us that we have never quite known how to heal in ourselves. We can be drawn towards helping them with it because, in some way, it feels as though we are also trying to reach that part of ourselves.

That can bring two people close again. There may be hope, affection and a genuine desire for things to work. But once the closeness returns, each person can begin touching the sensitive and unhealed places within the other.

The reactions begin again, they pull apart, and after enough time has passed, the painful parts become less vivid while the hope and connection become stronger again.

This does not mean someone is weak, foolish or choosing to be hurt. It means there can be something much deeper happening beneath the decisions being made.

The body can play a large part in this. Familiarity can create a powerful pull, even when the relationship itself does not feel safe or settled.

Getting back into the body is not about automatically following every feeling or impulse. It is about slowing down enough to notice the pull, the reaction and what it may be asking us to see.

When we can recognise what is drawing us back, what we are hoping to repair and what part of ourselves may be involved, we have more choice about whether we repeat the same cycle or respond differently.

The vampire metaphor

Narcissism came up in a couple of conversations during the evening. It is a word that gets used often now, but there are still plenty of people who do not really know what it means.

Four years ago, if someone had asked me about narcissism, I would not have known what the hell they were talking about either.

I shared a picture that helped me begin to make sense of it.

I think of a narcissist a bit like a vampire.

A vampire does not want to be truly seen. They stay in the shadows and cannot face their own reflection. They cannot come out into the full light because then other people might see what has been happening behind closed doors.

A vampire survives by sucking the blood from another person. In the same way, being around strong narcissistic behaviour for long enough can feel as though your energy, confidence and sense of self are slowly being drained from you.

It can feel less like someone is taking your blood and more like they are taking your soul.

The metaphor goes further. In the vampire story, when someone is bitten, they eventually become a vampire too.

We can see something similar when harmful patterns are passed through families and relationships. When someone lives around those behaviours for long enough, they can learn to protect themselves and relate to others in similar ways.

We also talked about how these patterns can begin early in life.

Imagine a young child growing up between two very different experiences. One parent may be abusive, highly critical, controlling or unpredictable, while the other overcompensates by rescuing the child, overprotecting them or constantly giving them whatever they want.

The child is left trying to understand what love is.

Is love criticism, fear and control?

Or is love being handed everything on a silver spoon and never being allowed to struggle, fail or take responsibility?

Neither experience teaches the child what safe, balanced love feels like. They can grow up continually searching for something to fill the part that never learned how to receive or recognise love.

Understanding that does not mean pretending the harm does not matter. It simply gives us another way of seeing the person behind the behaviour.

Instead of deciding that someone is simply a prick or a monster, we can hold compassion for how the pattern may have formed while still protecting ourselves from the damage it causes.

The most important difference is that a person is not a mythical vampire. People can become aware of their patterns and work on themselves.

Maybe the stake through the heart is not made of wood.

Maybe it is the courage to finally face your own reflection.

Once a pattern is seen clearly and brought out of the shadows, it no longer has to keep controlling your life in the same way.

Looking beyond one system for support

Another important conversation was about what happens when someone needs help but does not fit neatly into the boxes offered by the recognised health and mental-health systems.

Within the system, support may come through a GP, psychiatrist, psychologist, counsellor, social worker, mental-health team, hospital service, disability service or funded community organisation.

These services can be extremely valuable, particularly when someone needs assessment, diagnosis, medication, crisis support or coordinated clinical care.

The difficulty can be that each service has its own criteria, funding limits and scope of practice. When someone has several diagnoses, complex behaviour or needs that cross different areas, families can find themselves being referred from one service to another.

Each person may be able to support one part of what is happening while another part falls outside what they are allowed or funded to work with.

When that happens, it can begin to feel as though nobody is seeing or supporting the whole person.

We talked about how there are also forms of support outside the usual system, but they are often not handed to you on a referral sheet. You may have to ask questions, follow recommendations and actively search for the practitioner or approach that feels right for you.

That might include hypnotherapy, somatic or body-based work, trauma-informed coaching, breathwork, Reiki or other forms of energy healing, Emotion Code or Body Code work, spiritual healers, intuitive practitioners, massage and bodywork, meditation, men’s groups, peer-support communities, Human Design or other holistic approaches.

These approaches are not all the same, and they will not all suit every person. Some people may find one approach particularly helpful, while others may need a combination of clinical, practical, emotional, physical and spiritual support.

The point was not that one side is good and the other is bad.

The point was that the system can generally only recommend what exists within the system. It cannot always direct you towards practitioners and approaches that sit outside its recognised pathways.

To find those, you often have to begin looking for yourself.

Labels can sometimes be helpful. They can give language to an experience, open the door to funding and help professionals decide what kind of support may be appropriate.

But the label is never the whole person.

Someone who does not fit neatly into one category is not necessarily beyond help. It may simply mean the answer will not come through one doorway, one practitioner or one way of looking at the problem.

At The Healing Barn, we tend to sit somewhere in the middle. We are not funded through the public system, but we are also not purely focused on spiritual healing.

We work with the mind, the body, the nervous system, beliefs, emotions and the deeper patterns beneath what is happening. We also recognise that sometimes another practitioner or form of support may be a better fit for what a person needs.

What are you willing to invest in yourself?

A question came up about whether support outside the system was free.

That question can lead into a much bigger conversation because every path asks something of us.

Sometimes the cost is money. Sometimes it is time, energy or waiting. Sometimes it is trying to meet the criteria for support. Sometimes it is allowing somebody else to decide whether you qualify and what kind of help you are allowed to receive.

None of those paths are completely free. There is always an exchange of energy somewhere.

Just because something is free does not automatically make it the right choice for you.

Equally, paying for something does not automatically make it right either.

Taking your power back means making a conscious decision about where your time, money and energy go. It means exploring your options, asking questions and choosing the support that genuinely helps you move towards the life you want.

If you genuinely want things to change, there comes a point where you have to be willing to support yourself.

That may mean investing money, but it will also require time, courage, commitment and a willingness to participate in your own healing.

The question is not simply:

What can I get for free?

It is:

What support is actually helping me move forward, and am I willing to invest in myself to receive it?

Coming back to yourself

Although the conversation moved through identity, relationships, narcissism and different forms of support, it all came back to the same place.

Getting back into your body helps you notice what is happening before the mind explains it away.

It helps you recognise when you are building an identity to prove yourself, when you are only moving away from pain, when you are being pulled back towards a familiar relationship pattern and when you are handing the responsibility for your life to someone else.

Awareness does not magically fix everything, but it brings the pattern into the light.

Once we can see it, feel it and understand what it is trying to do, we have more choice about what happens next.

These reflections are not here to tell you what to think. They are simply a window into the conversations that unfold when a group of men are willing to slow down, listen to themselves and speak honestly.

If something in this reflection has shown you a part of your own experience, you do not have to work through it alone. You are welcome to join us at the Men’s Group or work with me one-to-one to explore the patterns beneath what is happening for you.

Speak Up Cambridge Men’s Group
Thursday evenings at 7 pm
The Healing Barn, Cambridge

Helping heal the mind, body and soul by bringing awareness to the patterns beneath the problem, so you can reconnect with yourself and move forward.