Following the popular reel on Insta about psychosomatic causes of excess weight I wanted to elaborate a little more on one of the points that I've made.
One of the root causes of weight gain could be the need for protection. Our body is designed to follow our psychological needs and create the best and the simplest possible physical solutions.
Weight is one of those simple and literal solutions, and one of the most common problem it is trying to solve is our need to feel safe, to create an impenetrable barrier between our body and the outer world.
The root conflicts can be anything from physical or sexual abuse to being poked with a pencil by the boy sitting behind you at school, it is anything that made you feel like sovereignty of your body was violated and you couldn't fight for it.
And that brings us to weight gain after giving birth. Yes there are hormones involved and so many other factors, however, all of that is also created by our body and it has done it for a reason.
Sadly, in our day and age birth is often taken from the hands of the women and managed by timeframes and doctors protocols. For one reason or another woman's body sovereignty is not respected, the rush of emergency interventions, and the "no choice" attitude towards vaginal examinations and other checks leaves no space for requests, explanations, or rejections. Sovereignty of our body is violated and the psychological need for safety arises.
The protective layer that forms around our abdomen, bum and thighs creates that physical barrier that should protect our body from the harm that most commonly comes to those act areas during traumatic childbirths.
Perhaps, before hitting the gym, dieting and exhausting our body, battling it into submission, we could look back at birth, face the dark corners, overcome the guilt and "but the baby is safe, what more can you possibly want!" comments from relatives and give ourselves time and space to say, scream, punch it all out, everything that you wanted to say, enact what you wanted to do, remove the emotional charge from the memories and liberate the body from the burden of birth trauma.
As soon as our body knows that it is safe and there is no longer need for protection (even from the memories) it will collaborate and become the best it can possibly be for you with the least amount of effort on your part.
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