Sometimes I wish I could be less snarky and just embrace the soft voices and flowy fabrics of the typical healing spaces. I would love to see a barefoot woman with wild hair and loose clothing and a beatific smile and accept the positive vibes she offers. But I can’t get past the cynicism. I have learned that I cannot expect any of these well-meaning and often talented people to consider my life experiences in their affirmations.
My body hurts every single day. My energy is limited and I have to turn down most of what I want to do in the world. I cannot repeat some of these positive phrases with a straight face. I have too much experience that tells me it’s nothing more than wishful thinking, and that these wellness practitioners are rarely considering disability.
The thing is, some of us have very good reason to not love our body and no amount of wishing can change that. If your body hasn’t been safe for you, if it hurts you all the time, if its composition makes you a target for oppression, high vibes are not going undo those facts.
Pretending otherwise is gaslighting. By a society that wants to ignore its responsibilities to its citizens, by a medical system that doesn’t have answers, by unsupportive family and community members who don’t want to be inconvenienced.
I have to navigate this world with a body that is often the greatest source of my suffering. Really, how dare someone tell me to love my body? How dare someone who does not know pain or disability tell me to just repeat some loving platitudes?
I am an ME/CFS patient. For decades the medical system has ignored us, when they weren’t denying we existed. When they finally offered a treatment plan, the recommended protocol for people like me was Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Graded Exercise. It turns out that those are about the worst approaches to take.
I love CBT, but in the wrong hands with the wrong application it’s weaponized into institutional gaslighting. When you have a medical system that doesn’t believe you are sick, and doesn’t believe that your condition is even a real thing, the CBT you often get is medical professionals trying to tell you the pain doesn’t hurt as bad as you think, the symptoms are made up, and all your suffering is just a cry for attention.
How dare these people who claim to offer support instead offer skepticism and cognitive dissonance? How is that ever the same as healing?
Look, disability is COMMON. We’ll all experience it in our life, at least temporarily. But that never seems to make it into the affirmations. I’ve never once been following a guided meditation that included the complicated feelings of resentment and loss disability can bring. Just lots of love, light, and empty promises.
We’re born with the body we get and we just have to do the best we can with it. We can make choices that get us to the top end of our potential, but some of us just have to live with bodies that cause us grief and we still deserve to know something besides self hate. We still deserve dignity, and we still deserve peace.
I can say, from where I sit today, that I love my body. But anyone who tried to promise that to me in the midst of my suffering just proved they didn’t understand and weren’t the one to help me. I do believe that love is possible, because I love all kinds of people who sometimes hurt me. That’s what it’s like to be in a relationship. We have just developed ways to resolve and repair that hurt.
Repairing my relationship with my body meant that I had to stop treating it as my enemy. I didn’t have to jump straight to love, but I needed to put my weapons down. I needed to stop trying to return the pain by punishing my body through neglect and hate, because obviously I was only punishing myself.
By practicing the principles I developed for Body Loyalty, I found a way to resolve and repair the hurt I experience with my body. The pain and disability and limitations are still there to be navigated, but my body and I are in it together now.
Your body is the only ride or die you get. It is your one companion in life, the only being who will see you through life from beginning to end.
It’s like any other relationship you didn’t choose, but have to make work. Your body is your co-worker at your job of Being Human. You might be frustrated with your co-worker, maybe even hate them, but there’s no getting out of it. At work, you’d just have to focus on having a productive relationship in order to get the job done. You’d stop sniping at them and just engage as necessary to do the work. No one would ask you to fall in love with them. You can do the same with your body. You don’t have to pretend love you don’t feel. You can still have a productive relationship.
There is a whole lot of room between enemies and lovers. You and your body can settle somewhere in between and be just fine.