What the body knows (and the mind often doesn't)First we shape our relationships, then our relationships shape us

Who do you think you are? This isn’t just a rhetorical question, it’s a fundamental invitation to examine what you think you know about yourself. What your mind “knows” about you and what your body experiences over time are different.

Most of what we “think” is mind-talk. That is, the dialogue that we have with ourselves, the chatter than runs in our brain’s Default Mode Network. We experience our minds as a separate sound track loop that seems to run on its own volition unless we take hold. But the brain isn’t our mind. The brain and body operate together in relation to the world.

We learn about ourselves and the world through our interactions with people and objects in our daily environment. Over time we build up an understanding or body map of the world and can predict largely how the objects in our world behave. Happily, many of the objects in our world don’t change much. Once we learn their characteristics and placements, we don’t have to expend much more energy tending to them. For instance, we learn that the chair in our living room aren’t likely to jump up and run around the room when we aren’t looking, so our brain can automate the placement of the chair and not really pay much more attention to that chair. Unless someone moves it a little when we aren’t there, then we can stub a toe.

Our physical interaction with the world then shapes our brain, and our brain shapes our interaction with our world. We unconsciously make body maps of our world all the time without realizing it. The book, The Body Has a Mind of Its Own lays out the research supporting this. Reading the book began to change my perception of my body. This is all fine for the most part and we can hum along without much effort. Until something changes. Losing a job, moving house, even losing a pet can significantly impact not just our mind, but our brain-body feedback loop for daily life. These disorganizing changes disrupt our automated responses and can be very stressful for multiple reasons.

On top of chairs and other basic parts of daily life, we are relentlessly social creatures. As neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett outlines in this Ted Article, the body-brain lives in relationship, we influence others through our behavior and words. They in turn influence us, right down to the chemicals we run through our bodies. A kind word at the right moment from a trusted friend can release endorphins. A harsh word at the wrong time can set off a stress hormone cascade.

In the constellation work we see over and over again how this body-brain-world loop informs and shapes us at deeper levels than our mind is aware of. For example, a colleague told me of a child born through IVF who repeatedly would gather six stuffed animals around himself and then feel better. He came from a petri-dish with seven fertilized eggs. His body remembered his siblings. This fits what I’ve learned from the developers of the field of pre- and peri-natal trauma.

In another case, I worked with a couple who had suffered through a period of betrayal and infidelity on the part of one partner. Even though she wanted to forgive her partner, try as the betrayed partner might, her body would flinch when the unfaithful partner touched her, the consequence of repeated unprepared ruptures over time. Her body was telling a different story than her mind.

Finally, I’ve worked with a number of clients who have a phenomenon I call “slack face”. They grew up in a household where having a normal emotional response to an out-of-control parent put them at either emotional or physical risk of harm. Not showing facial expressions of their feelings was adaptive and continued into adulthood. The body was still telling the story of childhood.

Couples therapist Terry Real likes to say, “Show me the thumbprint, I’ll show you the thumb.” He means this in terms of the imprint of trauma or dysfunction in the couples behavior. I would tell you that this is true of our bodies as well. Through constellations, we can access a view into how our relationships shaped us by placing out our felt sense of who stood where in relation to us . And because we all live in these complex webs of relationships, we can resonate and empathize with the experiences of other people in these family constellations. What is it like to have been that child with an angry alcoholic mother taking out her frustration by yelling at you? Or knowing that your partner had repeated lied to you? Or even just to have to struggle with the daily grind of poverty or racism? All of our interactions, positive and less than positive, affect the stories that our soma tells. Let's learn to listen to these stories as well as the stories of the mind.