Body Image and Trauma: Reclaiming Your Body After Childhood Abuse

We're talking about something deeply personal tonight: body image and trauma. How childhood abuse changes the way you see your body. How it affects eating. How it affects sexuality. How it affects your sense of safety in your own skin.

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Topic

SPEAKER_01 0:20

If you're struggling with self-sabit, you don't know where to start.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Hello, and welcome, welcome, welcome to Terror to Triumph. I'm Alfonso Pelt, your host and creator of the show. And with me today is Storm. Hey Storm, how you doing?

SPEAKER_06 1:30

Hey, how you doing? I'm fine. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Well, we all know that because you're the beautiful co-host, Storm.

SPEAKER_06 1:42

Hi, lovely. So hi everybody. Hi, I am Fonzo. So, what's tonight's topic?

SPEAKER_03 1:55

We're talking about something deeply personal tonight. We're talking about body image and trauma, how childhood abuse changes the way you see your body. We're talking about how it affects eating, how it affects sexuality, how it affects your sense of safety in your own skin.

SPEAKER_06 2:21

For survivors, the body is not always a home. Sometimes it's a battleground. Sometimes it's a stranger, it's a place where abuse happens.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

Yes, we're talking about reclaiming your body, about healing your relationship with a physical you, and about rebuilding body autonomy.

SPEAKER_06 2:48

Just quick side note, we're streaming right now on Facebook, Twitch, or our YouTube channel,

When The Body Becomes A Threat

SPEAKER_06 2:55

Terry to Trump Live. If you're watching, drop a comment. Tell us how has trauma affected your relationship with your body. Let's go, Alfonso.

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Oh, okay. When you experience childhood abuse, your body becomes the site of the trauma. It's where the abuse happened. It's where you learned that you're not safe. Your nervous system registers, your body is a threat. Your body is a liability. Your body is not yours. And that changes everything about how you move through the world.

SPEAKER_06 3:39

How trauma changes your body relationship. Some survivors dissociate from their bodies. You check out. You're not present in the physical form. You're floating above it, watching it happen. This is a survival mechanism. It protects you from feeling the pain, but it also disconnects you from your body. You may not feel hungry. You may not feel pain. You may not feel pleasure. Your body becomes a dean that happens to you, not a dean that you inhabit. It's been deep because no hungry, not being hungry, I have I have suffered it, you know. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Well, I'm kind of a big guy, but there have been moments where I just did not have an appetite and feel

Dissociation And Body Hypervigilance

SPEAKER_03 4:35

like eating. So I I can attest to that too. Well, some survivors become hyper-aware of their bodies. You're constantly scanning for danger. You noticed every touch, every look, and every movement. You might develop body dysmorphia, seeing your body as wrong, ugly, disgusting. You might hate the way that you look. You might avoid mirrors or you might wear clothes that hide your body, like baggy clothes or something like that. You're trying to make yourself invisible because if nobody sees your body, nobody can hurt it.

SPEAKER_06 5:23

Yeah, I've been through that one, you know, and a lot of people think just because you're little, or they think because you're slender that, oh, you know, you shouldn't have nothing that affects you. You know, you should be okay. But just as, you know, big girls feel like, you know, they want to be little, small girls feel that they don't want to be extra small, neither, you know. So yeah, we have our own defaults. Everybody does. And some of some survivors develop a complicated relationship with control around their body. You may restrict food, you might overeat, you may exercise over-accessively, you might engage in self-harm. These are ways of controlling your body, uh punishing it, of asserting domain dominacy over the things that was taken from you. It's not about vanity, it's about survival, it's about reclaiming power.

SPEAKER_03 6:24

So let's

Control, Self Harm, And Survival

SPEAKER_03 6:25

talk specifically about eating and trauma. I know this might touch a lot of y'all out there because food is complicated for survivors. That's me. That's I got to be a big guy. Food can be a source of comfort. Yes. You ever heard the term we eat away our pain? That's where it comes from. But it can also be a source of shame. Your relationship with eating might reflect your relationship with your body.

SPEAKER_06 7:10

Yes. Count calories overlaces, feel guilty after eating, use food restrictions as a way to control your body, use food restrictions as a way to punish yourself. Food restrictions can feel like power, but it's actually a way of harming yourself. The one that you have to regurgitate. Yeah.

Eating Patterns Shaped By Trauma

SPEAKER_03 7:50

Yeah. Because they feel like something's wrong with their body or they're ugly and stuff. So this is what it's talking about. Feel guilty after eating, or you count calories obsessively, or using food as a restriction to control your body, or to punish yourself. So that I never thought that could be tied to childhood trauma or abuse. So now I'm understanding something a little bit better. I only had the issue where I skip meals, you know, sometimes, but I never got that deep into it, except for the part where I felt guilty after eating sometimes, because I was overeating. To eat, you know, comfort myself. I was overeating. Still do that today, sometimes. But yeah, I would feel guilty after eating, so I can see that, but it didn't feel like power though. It felt like I don't know if I was punishing myself by overeating. Oh, that's a sidebar. I'm trying not to get too far off topic. So wow. Okay, I swear I didn't see this where I was about to go with this and and what I wrote, but some survivors binge eat. Just got through talking about that. That's crazy. You might eat when you're not hungry. Me, you eat until you're uncomfortably full. Me, I use food to numb emotions. I do that. I use food to fill an emotional void. I do that. And I do feel shame after eating. I swear, is this thing like writing after the fact? Because I said all this. I swear to y'all, I did read this before time. I did write it, but I did not know that was coming like that. Wow, that's crazy. I'm getting I'm feeling some kind of way right now. Bench eating can feel like comfort, comfort, but it often leads to more shame, more disconnection from your body.

SPEAKER_06 10:22

And some survivors have a combination of restriction, then bench, then restrict again, a cycle of control and loss of control. The truth is, your relationship with food is often a reflection of the relationship with your body. And your relationship with your body is often a reflection of your trauma. Healing your relationship with food means healing your relationship with your body.

Sexuality After Abuse And Shame

SPEAKER_03 10:48

So sexuality is deeply affected by childhood abuse, okay? Especially if the abuse was sexual. Your body learns sex is not safe, sex is not pleasurable, and sex is something that happens to you, not something that you're involved in. So in adulthood, sexuality can be complicated, confusing, and painful.

SPEAKER_06 11:23

Some survivors avoid sexual entirely. You might have no desire for sex, feel triggered by a sexual touch, be unable to be vulnerable with a partner, disassociate doing sex, feel shame around sexuality. You're protecting yourself, but you're also preventing yourself from experiencing pleasure, connection, and intimacy, which brings me to mind because for a long time I have to be truthful and say I didn't care about sex up until I was 38 years old. And I didn't care, you know, about sex. I did it only because of my partner, you know. I feel like if they asked for it, you know, you got it, you know. And but for us me, you know, wanting it or designing for myself, I probably acted in. It was kind of confusing, like they say, it was confusing because it was mixed, mixed signals because I only gave you what I feel like you wanted, you know. And I feel like however you wanted me to act, that's how I acted. But was I really into it? No. Did I really want it? No. Did I enjoy it? No. Because some of the sexuality that I did do during those times, I faked everything, you know, because I really wasn't into it at all. And I guess I did a good job of it because I never had no complaints, but that's it.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

For me, it's crazy because I don't know. I'm so messed up when it comes to that part. It's like I'll have a desire for sex, but my body doesn't respond. But sometimes my body responds and I don't have a desire. It's it's like my mind might be disconnected from what my body is feeling, and vice versa. You know, sometimes, okay, full disclosure, from sometimes I'll have an erection, but I won't feel the desire to have sex. It's crazy, it's crazy. Sometimes mentally, I'm worked up, like, yeah, I want to do this, but my body, like, uh I don't I don't feel it tonight. And it's like weird. It's like, what are we doing? We supposed to be one, you know, it's a disconnect, it's an emotional disconnect with the physicality of who I am. So that that part, uh yeah, sometimes I don't have a desire to have sex at all, you know, physically or emotionally. And then I don't know, I don't think that I feel triggered by sexual touch, like I withdraw from the sexual act, but I would avoid sex because of that disconnect that I have with myself. Because there's well, we talk about feeling shame. Shame comes from I might not be able to perform because my mind ain't there. She might be ready, I might want to please her, but my mind ain't there, you know. So this it's a disconnect, and I feel shameful that mentally or physically, I can't connect with you in that way because I got a disconnect going on there.

SPEAKER_06 15:11

Yeah, so I feel yeah, I feel you on each one of those because I even went so far as going to like your GNC's, you know, trying to get you know, pills that what made me have a desire. I used to take the pills back out the dirty days and tell them, you know, and drum on the stand and say, I want my money back because it ain't doing nothing, you know, and it's for me.

SPEAKER_03 15:38

I've tried the uh viagrin stuff that had absolutely zero effect, nothing. It was like, well, you need to take two at the same time. It didn't do nothing to me. Oh my God. I'm like, I don't know what's going on, you know. So the getting out of the fact, it's like I it's not like my body cannot perform because there's times when man is like, you know, and I'm sitting up here like, where'd I come from? You know, I'm I'm trying to hide it and stuff, you know. Not that I'm feeling that way, but sometimes my body is like that. So it's not like my body cannot get to that point, but emotionally, I'm not tied to my body. It's a disconnect there. So yeah, that that's what I was trying to refer to on that. So you're retrying to claim, reclaim the power, like you said, but you're re-traumatizing yourself. I get that. I get that because you want you want to be intimate with your significant other, you want to share those special moments, those close moments, the the the heat and all of that, the wonderful things that love is supposed to be when in close proximity to your significant other. But for trauma survivors, there is a disconnect. You know, there is problems when it comes to intimacy like that. Sometimes they might be able to perform, but emotionally they're disconnected. They're like not really there, but they want to please you, so they'll do all the stuff that they want or can do to please you, but they're not receiving the pleasure that they should be receiving. It might be an emotional disconnect for them. That's not to say that you're the fault, but it's because of what we've been through. I just want to state that. So sorry about that. I came off on a tangent.

SPEAKER_06 17:51

I'm gonna I'm gonna really that's what it's all about. You know, we get into the deep end of it. You know, you never know how these gonna go.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you have to be open, like I always say, the healing comes from being totally open and honest about the things that happen in your life, and you can't heal unless you really get there, really be bare bones, honest with yourself about the things that's happening, and but I didn't used to say that, you know, I used to be the person that was hiding all the stuff in in, as they say, the closet or whatever. But, you know, when I started talking to the therapist, while I didn't get to share everything yet, but when I started feeling like I could open up and start talking, I started feeling a lot better. It was starting to feel like oh, somebody took a 20-pound weight off today, somebody took another 10-pound weight off today, somebody took another, and I'm like, I'm starting to I can really start to feel something. I don't know exactly what it is, but I'm starting to feel something, and that something feels a lot better than what it's been feeling. All right, to keep talking about it, keep getting it out there, and the more I get it out there, the more healing that I can receive. And not only that, you know, going through the steps that they teach you to retrain your nervous system and all that, all of that combined is helping you get to a place where you can live trauma-free, where you can live to cope with what you've been through, where you can try to retrain your nervous system to learn how to think without the trauma responses interfering in your adult life, and that stuff that's that's powerful.

Desire Disconnect And Performance Fear

SPEAKER_03 19:55

So I'm going to stop there because I'll keep going.

SPEAKER_06 20:09

Okay, and some survivors have a complicated relationship with desire, you might feel intense. Sexual desire as a way to feel alive, use sex as a way to non-pain, struggle to distinguish between desire and compulsion, feel shame about your sexuality. Your sexuality is not broken, but it been sharpened by trauma and it can be healed.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

So this is interesting because early on in my younger life, I mean, like from like 19 to like 35 when I was around those ages, I was hyper sexual. I was the total opposite of what I am now. It was like I had to have sex all the time, all the time, all the time. If I wasn't getting sex, I was taking care of myself just just to try to, you know, keep it clean. But it was. I was chasing that constant feeling. I wanted that constant euphoria feeling, you know, that you get from orgasms. I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna put it out there. You know, I I was chasing that. I wanted to constantly be in that state. And I'm looking at this and I'm like, they was talking about how I was back then. So now I'm thinking, okay, so if I was that way back then and I am like I am now, something had switched somewhere inside of me. So I did feel shame about my sexuality because I was hypersexual. I didn't struggle to distinguish. I could not distinguish between desire and compulsion. I was just at it. Using sex as a way to none pain, I probably did. I probably did. I'm pretty sure I did. I ain't gonna lie about that one either. And to feel intense desire, I just explained that one. Yeah. So yeah, back then, yeah, I was I was a mess. I ain't gonna lie, I was a mess. And I was all over the place, and I was I was totally out there. What did you feel about that?

SPEAKER_06 22:45

I was a mess. When I was younger, I have to say I was the opposite. When I was young, I didn't want nothing. Didn't care about you getting none. Because if you didn't ask me for nothing, you weren't getting none. I don't care. You know, I didn't care about your feelings. I was like, I tried, you know, I tried, you know, I stayed in GNC. Like I said, I tried, but I would drone back things up. I'd be like, that don't work, you know, this don't work for me. And you know, and the sad part about it is, and this is before my childbearing ages, you know, I did try, you know, I did resort to small amounts of drug use just so that I could make somebody happy. You know, it wasn't for me, it was for them. And do I feel the shame? I did because I feel like I shouldn't have to even go through that to

Hypersexuality As A Coping Strategy

SPEAKER_06 23:45

make somebody happy. You know, I could have ruined my own life trying to make somebody happy. And by the time I got dirty eight years old, it's like that's when my body changed over. So my body at dirty eight changed over to gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. I don't know where it came from, but it was like out of the blue. And for two years, it's basically I like you said, I wanted, I was, you know, just wanting, wanting, wanting, chasing this, you know, morning, noon, night, you know, whatever. Just want it, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. And to a person, a little birdie told me, look, you need to be still, you need to sit down, you know, you need to do this. And I wasn't too keen on it at first, but I listened to that person, and I was happy that God sent that person to help me out because it ain't no telling what could have happened at that time, and my life took a turn for the better, and I learned how to put my sexuality under control because of that little birdie, and God sent that birdie to tell me about that. And so I put it under control whereas I put locks and keys up on it, you know, like I got to stop, you know, and it was hard because my body was still going through gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. And I had to, you know, kind of like control it and down, you know. So it's like now how do I turn it off? You know, so like how do I do that? That's not funny.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

It's funny now, but it's not funny because when you go into it, you do ask yourself, like, how do I stop this? You know, how why can how can I stop myself from being like this? I used to pray on that, to be honest. I was like, I used to pray about it.

SPEAKER_06 25:40

I was asking God to help me to be sexual with the person, but now I'm asking God, can you cut this off?

SPEAKER_03 25:50

You know what? That is so serious. I did the same thing. I I used to pray, I was like, God, please take this away from me because I I was so gone with that. I mean, so far gone with that.

SPEAKER_06 26:08

And I was still hyper acted before my husband passed, and I was like, you know, and he's like, You're gonna give me a heart attack. We cannot do this, and I'm like, Okay, well, God, just take it. And he got mad. I'm like, what you get mad for? You said I was gonna give you a heart attack. So you know, just dealing with I like God, just let me God just take it away, baby, because uh it ain't no need to be heavy. He's gonna catch a heart attack because baby, you know.

SPEAKER_03 26:48

Well, he got with you for some reason. He didn't know it was gonna be that much though. He didn't realize it was gonna be that much, though. That got to him. That's what he was like, wait a minute, Elizabeth. I'm coming to see you. No, I'm just kidding. He was he was a little he was a little bit caught up, you know, because he didn't realize what he was getting into. But yeah, we talk about some real stuff tonight, and um yeah these these things that we're talking about is is it's it could obviously you as a survivor out there, your situation can be different. You know, you could be the one that runs from any type of intimacy, you know, sexual intimacy. So we're not saying that all people will experience what we've experienced, we're just showing from our aspect what we have experienced or are experiencing at the moment, like I just told y'all about. This is another reason why I say we get full disclosures wrong here. I keep telling y'all, I'm an open book. Y'all want to know something? I'll tell you. If you listen to me tonight, you would have heard a lot of things I shared about myself. People ain't just gonna open up and share that

Speaking Up And Getting Help

SPEAKER_03 28:30

kind of stuff. But for you guys, for my survivors, I put myself out there because I need y'all to find the healing that y'all need to have. I need y'all to do that. I need y'all to look at these numbers down here and and call these numbers if you're in a constant state of emergency, if you're in the current state of emergency, or if you are in a place where you can get a chance to call to get some help. Look at these websites right here, coming up right here. Those websites link you to therapists that can get you the help that you need, talk to you, and help you deal with your current mind state to help you find ways to cope. So this is why we're doing this, and she's doing this just as much as I am. She's out here exposing everything because she believes in the open, open mouth. What they say? No, I'm saying it wrong. It said closed mouths don't get fed, right? So if you open your mouth, the feeding in this case would be your healing. You have to talk about it. You have to say, okay, I'm finally gonna face this. I gotta face my fears down because I'm tired of living like this. So do that. Do that. I implore you to do that. That's what we're here for. If you need to use those numbers, feel free to write them down, share them with somebody, you know, talk to somebody. You might know somebody that's going through something right now. Anyway, so we don't want

Body Autonomy Starts With Ownership

SPEAKER_03 30:05

to get too far off topic, but I want to talk about reclaiming your body autonomy, okay? Healing your relationship with your body starts with this. Your body is yours, it's not your significant others, it's not the person who caused you the trauma, it's not your mamas, it's not your daddies, it's not your uncles, it's not your cousins, it's not your brothers, it's not your sisters, it's yours. Your body is yours, right? This is yours. You don't have to abuse you. It's not your societies wherever you are in the world, it's yours. Reconnect with your body and start small, then progress. Don't try to do everything at one time. You have to notice how does your body feel right now? Where does where do you feel the tension? What sensations are you aware of? What parts of your body do you avoid? Reconnection to your body is the first step.

SPEAKER_06 31:40

Start saying no to things you don't want, no to food you don't want to eat, no to touch you don't want, no to clothes that make you uncomfortable, no to situations that don't feel safe. Practicing no with yourself teaches your nervous system. I get to choose, I get to decide. And I know about this because I owned a tennis skirt at one time. And I was trying to, you know, be in the fashion, you know, and it was out of my comfort zone because I wasn't a dress. I I could dress, but I wasn't a dress girly, you know, that liked it to wear dresses. So I had a tennis skirt on with the matching jacket, everything.

SPEAKER_03 32:28

And those tennis skirts are really short too.

SPEAKER_06 32:32

And so it was some guys, and they was like, you know, they was hollering, you know, the you know, collar holler. And I felt so jacked up. And, you know, I had a significant other with me, and I was like, when we went off, I was like punching him in his chest because I am so sorry, people, but that's the way I used to be a long time ago. So it was a fight

Catcalling, Clothing, And Triggers

SPEAKER_06 32:55

because I feel like you should have protected me, you should have said something to the old gentleman, you know, like that was hollering at me. You let them get all this cat calling, and you didn't say anything to you, to them. I went home, I took every last one of the tennis skirts that I had because I owned two more and I burnt them. I put lightning fluid on all the clothes, and I burnt, I put, I set them on fire because I felt like I didn't never want to see them anymore. It wasn't beyond the call of duty. Yes, it was, but that's just how bad I felt, everybody, because I never would put on nothing else that made me feel comfortable again. I felt uncomfortable one more time in life, and I was working, and I was working at a job and I wore like a it was a nice little short, you know, skirt once again. It was like a short, nice little short sleeve shirt. And they went to Holland and Keck calling. And I took the shirt, I took the dress home and I folded it this time. I didn't burn it. I went and I gave it away. So no, I just can't. So yes, it was close. I don't no longer wear nothing that makes me feel uncomfortable no more.

SPEAKER_03 34:06

I can see how the clothes wasn't just from how it made you feel. I mean, you didn't obviously you didn't feel that way when you bought them, but it was the nature of those dudes cat calling you and bringing that. That was your trigger, and that trigger made you feel some kind of way on the inside. It could have made you relive that trauma, and you you didn't want to associate that with your trauma whatsoever. That's why you burnt those clothes. And did did the gentleman that you were dating with at the time, did he know about your trauma situation?

SPEAKER_06 34:56

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because at that time I believed that I was open enough to say, and that's why the fight happened, you know, down the street, you know, but it wasn't, it didn't happen in front of the dudes that was kept calling. It just kind of happened like in another area down the street because it was like, why you did what you did, you know, because you know, it just kind of like just made me feel like some type of way, you know, like you said, it was a trauma, you know, everything started to play back in my mind. So just think about it. You're on a bus, you're not in the car, you're you're not home, you're not getting home in 15 or 30 minutes, you're getting home in an hour because it was an hour bus ride. So the whole hour I had that was what's going through my head, you know, and when I got home, it was like burner because too much time had my mind was twisted, and I wasn't there. And the the good part about it is that he didn't ride the bus with me because I would have been in jail. Because I would have put lightning from the business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Okay, well, think about it this way. If if I may, yeah. He wasn't the one catcalling. I know you felt like he should have protected you, but it was like several dudes. It's catcalling, it's just him. His method of area, you know, because he didn't want to fight the dudes, and you know how it is. A guy can say something, and that'll be a fight, even if it is a, you know, y'all need to cut that out. You know, that'll be enough, even if you're not being disrespectful.

SPEAKER_06 36:57

Well, I feel like maybe his way the dudes was not young, they was older cats, so I feel like it was a way to say it because it wasn't too much fight that they could give him. So I feel like he could have said something like y'all too old for it, you know.

SPEAKER_04 37:16

These dudes was old enough to be my damn daddy. Yeah, I can hear you. Oh my god Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Sometimes that uh and then it does that.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:18

So don't worry about that. We as long as we don't it's not a problem.

SPEAKER_04 38:26

Yeah, that would grow.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

I thought I had to situate it a little better. But Yeah. Being young and those dudes are older.

SPEAKER_04 38:46

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

So it's not all on your boyfriend. He didn't know. You know, those guys like that. You know, they just started doing it because they saw something that they like, even though they were older and they were calling to a minor like that. You know, that pedophilia situation. But yeah, the young man probably said he's looking at them, he probably had some fear in his heart. You know, all these big older dudes, big cat calling to my girl, you know, I'ma end up getting in the fight. I can't fight all of them by myself. The next thing you know, you whooping on his butt. You feel like he didn't protect you. You know what I'm saying? So that's how it's it's not that we hate y'all, you know, when we're in a situation, it's that we feel extremely vulnerable. Okay. Who are supposed to protect us. We if they do not, we feel like they're failing, we will take it out on you. Be it if we yelling at you, if we uh beating on you or whatever, you know, but you just seen me relive my trauma. You didn't try to hold me, you didn't try to say or comfort me, say it's okay, it's nothing happening to you, you say you know, any of those comforting things you can say, okay, let's get out of it. You got me out the danger, you got me away with that comfort, got the comfort. That's a big portion. We have to comfort each other. If we can and that might be another thing I just thought of he might not have known how you can be triggered. He might not have known that you were being triggered at that moment because let's face it, most people who don't know how to deal with us do not know trigger, they might not even know about trigger, you know. We might be in the realm of the we suffer.

SPEAKER_06 41:14

Yeah, you you you totally right because I didn't even know that it was gonna trigger me to that degree. I never doubt that I was gonna.

SPEAKER_03 41:26

I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 41:28

Yeah, I didn't like I said, I didn't know that it was gonna trigger me. I never doubt I would go home and do that, you know. So I didn't never know. And like you said, as we learn, we live and we learn, we learn about what you know, as we go through, we learn what triggers, you know, what triggers us because we never know. Because I had not got derpy yet.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

Let me put these on right quick so I can hear you a little bit better. To me, you you sound far away, and I know this microphone I sounded far away too because I didn't have the mic up close.

SPEAKER_06 42:03

Oh, you can sound good. You sound good, okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Okay, well, yeah, I

Reclaiming Pleasure Without Shame

SPEAKER_03 42:10

appreciate that. Yeah, let me get back on topic right quick. Okay, so reclaim body autonomy reclaiming bodily autonomy, okay. So step three is to reclaim pleasure slowly, safely. It might look like taking a bath, just relaxing yourself, releasing tension, getting a massage might be another way to do it, or moving your uh body in a way that makes you feel good. If exercise makes you feel good, stretching makes you feel good, that's okay. You can eat foods that you enjoy without shame. Like for those who like to binge, eat and stuff like that, eat healthy. Or how about touching yourself with kindness? What does that look like? Nothing is wrong with that. Nothing is wrong with self-appreciation. Because sometimes you can't get it from other people, you have to appreciate who you are. And if you're taking steps to go the right way, that's a good thing to appreciate how far you've gone. So you can appreciate yourself. Pleasure is not selfish, pleasure is healing.

SPEAKER_06 43:49

Heal your relationship with fools. This is a somatic work. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. Eat fools that nourish. You and you just got through sin. You know this. Eat foods that bring you joy, release the shame. Foods is not the enemy. Your body is not the enemy.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Yeah, because we make our bodies the enemy when we eat all the stuff we're not supposed to eat.

SPEAKER_05 44:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

McDonald's. All the other major ones out there.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

Water.

SPEAKER_03 44:41

What'd you say?

SPEAKER_04 44:47

Drunk on the bark. I got a cough.

SPEAKER_03 44:59

But I'm I'm just saying, you know, we eat a lot of stuff that's really not good for our bodies. We do that. Fast food is not good. Everybody knows. We all know fast food isn't good for us. We still eat it anyway. And we just don't eat fast food. We eat a lot of it. Like we'll get up in the morning. Oh, let's go to McDonald's and get us a sausage egg McMuffin. We got the hash browns and we got the orange juice or the coffee to go with it. And we're going about our day. Oh, but lunchtime comes around. What are we gonna get? Hmm, let's get some Q doba. And we're gonna stack that boy with extra meat, rice, and come on, man. You got all the starch and rice and beans, double starch, and then you got the meat, whatever protein you got in there, and then you doubling in that, doubling that, and then you got the salsa, then you got the pica de gallo, you putting on two types of tomatoes. We do a lot of stuff to ourselves, the sour cream and all that stuff on top of that. So we got to start treating ourselves better, we got to start treating our bodies like they're fragile, they're not meant to last forever. But your body can run longer if you feed it the right food. It's like an engine, right? If you got a sports car, you got a Corvette. We were all born, just imagine, I'm just throwing this out there metaphor. We're all born as Corvettes, right? You know, Corvettes are high maintenance, you know, they're sports cars, finely tuned. That's how we're born. We grow and we have this body, this prime. As we grow, it's getting better. We keep eating stuff that's not good for the body. That's like eating less than 87 octane. We're supposed to be taking in like 108 octane premium gas. We keep eating like 47. 47 octane, and it's tearing our engines up, and our engines are still fighting and trying and and trying to get us to go and all this stuff. The body is wearing down over time, just like a motor. Fatigue, tired. And what happened when a motor wear down? You get leaks, you get uh exhaust fumes and smoke, your lungs, yeah, aching and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's a good analogy if y'all really think about it, because as you get older, you start getting all these symptoms, but you're wondering, oh, it's just the age thing, you know. I'm just getting older. This is how it's supposed to be. When no man, no man, no, that's not how it's supposed to be, but we keep eating the fast food, we keep eat eating the 47 octane. We we they got it out there for you because they selling it. That don't mean you're supposed to eat it,

Consent Boundaries And Partner Talk

SPEAKER_03 48:35

but hey, okay. Anyway, I'm getting off track. Rebuild your sexuality at your own pace. I was getting off track for real. Rebuild your sexuality at your own pace with your own consent. That means it's okay if you want to do it how you want to do it. This might mean saying no to sex you don't want. That sounds like a boundary to me. Somebody say, Oh, can we have sex? No, and I'm not gonna say yes because you want to do it and you my mate, and I'm supposed to please you, but no, if I don't want you to tear my body up, I'm not gonna let you do it. Okay, okay. What if a woman says I want to go down on you and you don't feel comfortable with it? You can say no. You hear guys talk about I don't like going down on women, but my girl, you know, I'm trying to keep her so no man. If you don't like doing it, don't do it. Find somebody else who's cool with you not doing it. Don't stay in a relationship with somebody who keeps begging you to do stuff and you're not doing it because they're gonna find somebody else out there that will. So be kind to yourself and say, I don't like to do this thing, I know you want it done. So I I'll I'll let you go ahead and you know, we'll dissolve this relationship. Go ahead and find you somebody who's gonna do something like that. Because I don't want to hinder myself trying to please you. There's things I don't want to do. You know, you can explore sexuality on your own terms, you can communicate with your partners about your needs. I just got through saying that. You can set boundaries around touch, you know. Okay, here's a perfect example. I'm not gonna mention no names, but this is the actual thing that happened with me. I was with a woman, obviously, and this woman says, I don't want you to touch me with your hands down there, because she had experienced trauma, and that's how her trauma was. So it was a thing with fingers, you know, by her privacy. So I had to respect that. If I wanted to stay with her, I respected that, so I didn't want to touch her like that down there. It got to a point where I didn't even want my hands nowhere near that. You know, other things was okay, but just the fingers, it was a finger thing with her, so I didn't do that. That was cool, that was cool though. She set that boundary. I respected the boundary, but you can you can set boundaries with your partners. Tell them, look, I don't like this, I don't like that, whatever it is, you can say it, it's okay, and then you can find things that do pleasure you with your partner, and you don't have to just do everything. Your sexuality is yours, it's not something you owe to anybody,

Somatic Tools And Grounding Outdoors

SPEAKER_03 52:07

okay.

SPEAKER_06 52:09

Practices that helped brew work movement like dance, yoga, walking, cold water, immersion, you know, how you can put your face in silicone, ice water, grinding techniques, massage or body works, time in nature. You know, people say you take a walk and you put your feet, you know, you put your feet on the on the ground, you know, you put your feet on the grass, you know, the nature, you know, your body can learn safety again. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

I was just thinking, you know, when was the last time I grounded myself? I mean, I go outside and I I use the dog. I use the dog as an example of grounding myself. When I take the dog outside, so the dog can use the bathroom or whatever. Uh I take the dog outside, but sometimes I'll have on flip-flops. Something you can kick off right quick, right? And I'll kick off the flip-flops, and I'll just be like walking through the grass. Okay. I get an echo. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Can you hear me now?

SPEAKER_06 53:43

I can hear you.

SPEAKER_00 53:45

Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Is it an echo?

SPEAKER_06 53:50

No, it just sounds far away. That's all.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 53:55

Well, that means I can do this. We learn in as we go. I sound better now.

SPEAKER_06 54:07

Oh, you still kind of sound a far away, but we can manage.

SPEAKER_00 54:14

You know, we we do things on the flat trying to learn how to uh make things work, and sometimes they don't.

SPEAKER_03 54:21

So okay. So I'm gonna just X that on the sound tip and leave that up.

SPEAKER_04 54:35

All right, I can't.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

We can go through things that uh can you hear me?

SPEAKER_06 54:45

Yeah, but um, I think I'm trying not to I got echoes again.

SPEAKER_00 54:51

Don't I don't it's a W.

SPEAKER_03 54:58

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to fix it.

SPEAKER_06 55:00

Okay, all right, there you go. There you go, there you go.

SPEAKER_03 55:05

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

So now okay, so so um, by nature, everybody can learn as fast as you can, right? So pursue the work movement, cold water, immersion, grounding techniques, massages, but I guess she

Challenging Body Shame With New Words

SPEAKER_00 55:25

said all that.

SPEAKER_03 55:25

So so now challenge body shame, right? Right, the shame you carry is not yours, it belongs to your abuser. My body is my body is not the problem. So you want to reassure yourself, you want to make sure that uh what you say is gonna be uh permanently uh changing your outlook, if if I can say it that way, it's changing your nervous system the way you think. So you can say, My body is not shameful, my body deserves respect. My body is mine, okay? I'm safe in my body. You can repeat these, you can write them down, but most of all, believe them. Okay, that's important.

SPEAKER_06 56:27

Celebrate, yeah, celebrate your body, not for how it looks, for what it does. Your body survive abuse, carry you through pain, learn to protect yourself, is capable of healing, deserve, celebration. Your body is not your enemy, your body is your home.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Yep, your body is your home. So you gotta realize, guys, you gotta realize that you have survived. You are a survivor, you're here, you're present. Your body carried you through the pain. As a matter of fact, it's still doing it, it's still trying to protect you, even as an adult, it's still trying to protect you. But now it's just need some help. You have to tweak it a little bit so you can make it to where you can cope in adults' situations, in adult situations, right? So, the questions. I'm gonna ask you a question. You ready for the question?

SPEAKER_06 57:40

Yeah, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

Okay, here's a good one. How has well we already talked about that one? I want to try another one. Oh, here's a good one. What small way, what's one small way that you're reconnecting with your body?

SPEAKER_06 58:04

Um, and I I really did, I didn't even think about this, but I have been in the morning. I have been doing exercises, you know, in the morning, like before I get up, and I've been doing like a bed exercise, you know, to get back in balance. You know, years ago, I I was, you know, I did a lot of exercises and I had disconnected a lot, you know, I disconnected with my body. I just did a lot of stuff, and I just wanted to start trying to connect back with, like you said, connect back with myself, and that's a way of me starting because it's not critical, you know, it's just some stretching that I do in the morning before getting out to bed, and it's like some day exercises that I sing from somebody,

One Small Step And Closing

SPEAKER_06 58:55

you know, on LP. So I I enjoyed it and it's been working, you know, and it's kind of hard because your legs, you know, I guess that's why my legs have been hurting. Now that I think about it, you know, I never really thought about it until now. I was like, hmm, so maybe that's why my leg is hurting. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:15

Yeah, would you exercise too much? Yeah, you can you can what I say, you exercise too much, you'll tear the muscles, but the muscles rebuild themselves, so that's cool. We're running close. Well, we're out of time, actually.

SPEAKER_06 59:32

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 59:33

Yeah, we you know, this is a powerful episode reclaiming the body. Survivors, we need to hear this stuff. This is powerful information. Okay, so this week, I'm gonna go straight to the call to action, y'all. This week, do one thing that reconnects you with your body. Okay, move it, touch it, feed it, celebrate it.

SPEAKER_06 59:58

Okay, your body's your body survived, your body is worthy, your body's yours. Join us next time on Terra Trump Live.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:08

Don't forget to head over to Pelsemporium.com to shop and help support the podcast. This has been Terror to Triumph with Storm and myself, Alfonso, and we will see you Tuesday. We will be on Tuesday. Don't forget, all our shows are 9 30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Right now is our schedule. Please join us on Tuesday. We will see you then and take care for now.