The problem
Most of us don’t lose our connection to our bodies in one moment. It happens slowly, underneath a life that got full, fast and loud. Symptoms show up eventually, brain fog, poor sleep, fatigue, joint stiffness, mood shifts, and we treat them like failures. Like our body is letting us down. But by the time a symptom is loud enough for us to notice, the relationship has usually already gone quiet long before that.
For women, this tends to surface hardest in midlife, in perimenopause and post-menopause, when the body gets loud enough that ignoring it is no longer an option. But the disconnect itself isn’t age specific. It can show up after childbirth, illness, injury, or during the time leading to a burnout, any time life asks more of us than we have room to give, leading to not paying attention to our bodies anymore.
What’s actually going on
Two things, underneath all of it.
When your body sends a signal and your mind runs straight to the worst case, that’s not you being dramatic. It’s a wiring issue, not a willpower issue. Your brain has a negativity bias, it’s built to focus on what’s broken rather than what’s working, so it amplifies the signal as a threat rather than treating it as information. That’s biology doing what it’s built to do.
The disconnect can feel sudden even though it built up slowly, and that’s not random either. It comes down to interoception, your ability to sense and read your own body’s internal state, which genuinely decreases under chronic stress. Perimenopause is a particularly demanding stretch for this system.
None of this is permanent though. Neuroplasticity means your brain can build new pathways at any age. Compassion activates a different neural response than pressure or shame does, so forcing anything on your body or too much pressure won’t work. Learning to read the signals is always possible, it just has to be practised, not forced.
The path
This isn’t a five step program you complete and move past. It’s more like a spiral you return to, but there is an order to how it tends to unfold.
- Notice the moment. Meaning recognising that you have stopped listening. This usually happens in hindsight, subtly rather than dramatically, although sometimes it might do exactly that. A change in your life that shakes you to the core forces you to stop and notice that you have neglected your body’s signals.
- Translate the signals. Learning to read your body’s symptoms as communication instead of failure over time. Understanding that brain fog, fatigue, tension, aches all of it is your body trying to reach you, not letting you down. It will not fail you. It works exactly as it has been planned to work until the timestamp of each cell is due.
- Give yourself permission. Permission to stop performing wellness, to rest without earning it, not to add one more thing on your plate, but rather work on reducing them. This is where a lot of the pressure quietly lifts. Because if you don’t have time to listen, you won’t hear.
- Practise small and often. Think of it like a new trail in the forest. You won’t see it until it’s been used often enough. Then everyone else will see it too. The same with your brain. It needs repetition and trust. Trust that you will show up for yourself so start small. Make one promise and keep it. Change one small habit and keep it. Agree with yourself to take a walk you actually take. Small, sustainable changes and your body will learn to understand you are there to help, not push.
- Reconcile, over time. Your body never left you. It just tried to keep you alive by putting out fires because it did not have time to rest. But rest helps your nervous system to balance and balancing your nervous system helps you to notice the signals earlier and earlier. Rebuilding trust after years of disconnect takes as long as it takes. You cannot rush it because your body is used to putting out fires. What you need to do is trust the data and eventually you will find the balance.
Change is inevitable. Neglect is optional.
Your body will change over time. Your mind will change over time. Change is simply not something you can stop. It happens anyway. Our cells age and there is no point trying to say “age is just a number.” It is not. It is much more than that physically and mentally. So change is inevitable, but how you react to the change is optional. You choose your reaction. You choose what to do, how to perceive it and how to go forward with the knowledge you have.
So it’s not worth putting the effort into changing the inevitable, but rather put your efforts to what you CAN control, meaning helping your body the best you can to handle the changes and listen when it’s sending the signals. Be accountable to yourself for your actions towards your body because it’s the only one you got and if you don’t do that who else will?
The path back is simpler than it looks, it just asks for attention instead of effort. Trust me and the process (and data :D)
