When The Body Holds On...

What if the body doesn't just remember the past, but rehearses who we believe ourselves to be?

For regular readers of this Substack, you may haver noticed that I’ve been quiet the last 8 weeks.

The reason for this is that it has seemed like life threw a proverbial grenade into our lives and said: “This Chapter is over”.

The biggest shock was that my mother-in-law, Irene, died totally unexpectedly.

I’d known her for 30 years and for the last 10 she lived with us, and I had seen her pretty much everyday during that period.

She was a big part of our family life and had seemed so healthy at 74, not even taking any medication or having any physical complaints. Yes, the last few years for her had been hard. She’d spent them grieving the loss of her husband, of over 50 years, but in recent weeks she had been slowly rebuilding her life. In fact, on the day she suddenly passed away, she was actually out enjoying herself with friends in London.

And then, suddenly, she was gone...

As if this wasn’t big enough, it wasn’t the only ending.

- A professional relationship ended.

- A friendship ended.

- The person who helped us look after our garden suddenly left.

- My son finished school and will be leaving for university this September.

- Even the reason we live where we do has gone. We moved where we are now to be able to live with Linda’s parents and her grandmother. Now 10 years on, they have all passed on (far too soon), and for the first time we’re asking whether the house we built for 4 generations still belongs to the life we’re now living.

It has literally felt like one ending after another.

Unsurprisingly, grief has been part of that. But something about that grief has fascinated me in the context of this Substack, and that is how physical that experience has been.

For example, a few days after Irene died, I had to register her death. I woke up that morning and was feeling fine physically, but as the day went on I started feeling awful. In my head I had rationalised that this was a simple administrative job, but something was just off.

I felt lightheaded and shaky. Panicky even...

And I haven’t had a panic attack for years.

The closer I got to the registry office, the worse it became, and a growing dissonance began to arise in me. Why was I feeling so rough when I was just going to do what I was perceiving as some paperwork?

Eventually I stopped trying to make the feeling disappear and became curious.

I let myself observe and simply asked my body: “What is this?”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

And then, I saw something I’d never seen before.

My mind had understood (just about) that my mother-in-law had died.

But my body hadn’t.

It was like it was still trying to steer me back to an idea of safety in the only way it knew how.

If you’ve been following this Substack for a while, you will know that a big part of it is understanding that transformation isn’t just about insight. It’s also about seeing how consciousness shapes the physiology of the body and how it “locks-in” identities which we have rehearsed over and over.

Through repetition, it learns who we are, our roles, who we protect, who protects us and what normal feels like.

And this is not just intellectual. It is physiological.

For decades I’d been a son-in-law. Since she came to live with us, we ate most meals as a family together. She cooked for us. We holidayed as a family countless times. She was the matriarch of our household.

And she was dearly loved by us all…

Then, in an instant, life asked my body, without warning, to become someone else. Overnight.

So what I was experiencing on the way to the registry office was like a protest.

It was as though my body was saying:

“No.

We’re not someone whose mother-in-law has died.

We’re not someone who walks into a registry office and formally records her death.

We’re still a son-in-law.”

When I saw this, the panic suddenly made perfect sense. It wasn’t trying to stop me driving to the registry office. It was trying to protect an identity which had been rehearsed over and over again, and which it had determined through experience was ‘safe’.

In that moment, I suddenly felt compassion for what was happening. Tears flowed and I actually began to speak to my body and said this:

“I know you don’t want to do this.

I know.

But we’ve got to.

There is no going back now. We can’t.

I’m with you.

You can panic if you need to.

But we’re doing this together, and I will show you that it is safe.”

So I walked into the registry office fully expecting I might have a panic attack, but also not caring if I did.

I knew that my body needed to re-arrange itself to the truth of who we were now becoming.

So I let it shake and tremble. I let myself feel dizzy and disorientated. I even let myself off the hook for not being sociable with the kind lady doing the paperwork. I figured she would probably be used to people being quiet in this context anyway.

I registered the death.

Collected the paperwork.

And walked back to the car.

As I sat down, I noticed that something had changed. It felt as though my body had finally caught up with reality. Like it had quietly accepted that this was who we were now.

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A few weeks later, a similar set of events happened again.

You see we also reached another milestone ending in the last 8 weeks as Linda was discharged from cancer treatment after two and a half years.

No more maintenance, hospital appointments, blood tests or scans.

She actually rang the bell to signify the end of her treatment and we felt the release and elation of seeing the final part of the vision that she had rehearsed for the last few years finally come into reality.

She was now officially done.

A few days later I had to drive around five hundred miles on my own. This is not something that would typically be a problem for me. I like driving and I especially like it on my own where I just get to be with myself and ponder the world.

About halfway through the journey I stopped for a break. But as I walked back to the car, another huge wave of panic hit me.

This time it was different and the message was incredibly clear.

“Go home.”

I became curious again.

Why?

I rang Linda and just said to her that something is telling me strongly that I need to go home.

She just said kindly and calmly:

“That seems such a shame. You’re already halfway there. I’m absolutely fine. Why don’t you just keep going? If you really want to come home later, you can. But I’m okay.”

The moment she said the words: “I’m okay”, I burst into tears. And then I saw it again.

For two and a half years I’d lived in the identity of being Linda’s protector whilst she navigated her healing journey.

Not that she had been dependant during her journey. She had been incredibly empowered and sovereign.

But this protector ‘identity’ had formed early in her journey and part of it was arranged around being nearby and available. Walking beside her and actually making sure that she really was okay.

And now, just days after she’d been told she no longer needed any more maintenance treatment, I was driving hundreds of miles away.

Again, my mind was on board with doing the journey. But I had forgotten that the body was still living in the past and was still running the physiology of the protector.

It was trying to get me to go home because there is no way I would have done such a journey in the last two and half years without Linda by my side.

Again, once I saw it, and I heard from the person that my body was trying to protect that she was “okay”, the tears came and the panic dissolved.

It was like the program completed and the identity dropped.

These two experiences have really evolved how I think about the nervous system. From what I can see it isn’t just trying to protect us from danger. It seems to also be protecting our identity. The two aren’t completely separate either because if the identity that we have rehearsed for so long seems to have kept us safe, then it makes sense that it would be monitoring for changes in behaviour that seem to contradict who we believe ourselves to be.

It’s also made me see panic with so much more compassion, because often it is seen through the lens of dysfunction.

But in this case it was clear that it was just being triggered by an old program which had simply not been updated physiologically. The moment I saw what it was doing I was able to bring compassion and observation to the system which allowed for it to transmute and settle.

It allowed the body to calibrate to a new sense of safety.

But it’s also a clear reminder of what I have shared in this Substack over time.

If we want to create change, we don’t just have to aim our gaze towards a new reality.

We also have to teach the body that a new identity and reality are also safe, emotionally.

Sometimes, as in this case, we do that in the moment by recognising what is going on within it and giving it the gift of our presence to allow it to evolve.

And sometimes we do it through rehearsal of new states of being through embodiment practices like meditation and visualisation that allow it to change safely, before we actually start living those realities.

But it is clear to me that Identity, and creating a new reality, aren’t just ideas we carry in our minds.

They are something the body learns and embodies.

Every repeated way of being becomes a familiar physiological pattern.

Every role we inhabit becomes embodied.

Every relationship leaves its imprint.

When life changes.

Our thinking may update quickly.

But our physiology often doesn’t.

The body keeps trying to preserve the person we’ve been because, from its perspective, that’s who has survived until now.

Looking back through this lens, neither panic attack was irrational.

Each one was completely logical.

One was trying to preserve a son-in-law.

The other was trying to preserve a protector.

Neither of those identities existed anymore.

My mind knew that.

But my body didn’t.

These experiences have left me wondering how many of the sensations we call anxiety, resistance or panic are actually the body trying to remain loyal to a version of ourselves that no longer exists.

If that’s true, then perhaps the question isn’t:

“Why is my body doing this to me?”

Perhaps it’s,

“Who is my body trying to protect?”

Because if my experience has taught me anything over these last eight weeks, it’s this:

The body is always protecting someone.

The question is whether it’s protecting who you are today...

...or who you used to be.

With love,

John x

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Have you ever noticed your body holding on to an old identity after life had already changed? If this resonated for you, I’d love to hear in the comments.

We also have a free meditation designed to help you experience a greater sense of internal safety, which you can access here:

https://www.breakthroughthat.com/meditation

And if this blog speaks to something you are navigating right now, Linda and I explore this territory much more deeply in our private coaching and retreats.

Feel free to browse our website if you’d like to learn more:

https://www.breakthroughthat.com

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