THE BODY TELLS A STORY - Chapter 3

 

THE BODY TELLS A STORY

Luke 12:15-21 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Thursday, 23 July 2026

Learning to Listen

I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul within me is like a weaned child. PSALM 131:2, adapted from the ESV and NRSV.

Erin is a busy mom in her mid-thirties, not given to slowing down. After all, she has three children to raise and a husband whose business travel leaves her parenting solo quite often. During one of our first sessions together, I ask her how she is doing. She blushes and blurts out, “I’m running on empty, and I didn’t even see the warning light.”

Erin has learned to ignore her gut feelings, unaware of the storm brewing within. She has become more and more impatient with her youngest, sometimes ignoring his cries altogether. She has lost weight at a pace that has worried her closest friends. They notice her increasing distance—not answering texts, not showing up for coffee at their weekly gathering. She can’t sleep at night. She sometimes skips her scheduled therapy sessions. And she doesn’t really feel like eating. After accidentally falling asleep and missing her children’s afternoon school pickup, she calls me in a panic, apologizing profusely for missing some sessions and asking for my earliest appointment.

During our next session, Erin expects a guilt-laden chastisement, perhaps some condemnation for being a bad client and a bad parent. But I sense her quiet suffering and meet her with a tender gaze, thanking her for asking for what she needed. She sits on my couch and exhales, tears immediately welling. “That feels strange and good,” she says with a delighted smile. Her body seems to unfurl, her hands releasing their grasp on the arms of my office chair.

“I think your body is happy you’re back,” I tell her.

“Yeah, I’ve been kind of pushing everything down, kind of ignoring it all,” she says.

“There’s no rush, but maybe you can begin to pay attention a bit more to what’s happening within you,” I note.

She closes her eyes and places her hand on her chest, rubbing it gently, tears again emerging. “It’s time,” she says.

Our Inner Dashboard

Sometimes we drive inattentive to the dashboard warning lights flashing before our eyes. Our lives are busy. There are emails to return, groceries to buy, meetings to attend, bills to pay, leaky faucets to fix, diapers to change, bosses to please, and snow-covered driveways to shovel—at least in West Michigan. Our bodies adjust to the adrenaline-fueled survival game of life. We keep our heads above water most of the time, our ailing and weary bodies drifting below, tossed in the currents. We ignore what’s happening within.

The kinds of symptoms that emerge when we ignore our warning lights may seem subtle at first. Imagine an inner dashboard that might alert you when signs of stress become noteworthy. Most of us can manage a few yellow warning lights, or so we think. “I can handle it!” we tell ourselves. But sprinkle in a few red warning lights and things get messier. I know someone who’d cover any vehicle warning light that came on with black electrical tape so as to avoid the hassle of car repairs. That is, until he found himself unable to brake one day, leading to a collision with a large truck.

Indeed, when we don’t have the words, our bodies inevitably tell the story of where we really are. Sometimes, our bodies will even do drastic things to get our attention. This is what happened to me. After several years in San Francisco, my workaholism caught up with me. I thought hard work and success might dim the churning anxiety within, but they just covered the warning lights. And then it happened—all the lights came on at once while I was on a dream vacation in Cabo, Mexico. The pain in my stomach became severe, joined by lower back pain and a growing fever. With each passing day, I’d medicate with more ibuprofen. I woke one night in such pain that I stood in a hot shower as long as I could, letting the pulsing water fall on my throbbing lower back. My wife and friends finally convinced me to go to a local hospital.

If we refuse to say “Help!” and if we’re unable to cry out “Ouch, that hurts,” our bodies may speak for us. And my body had an important story it wanted me to know.

The capable doctors ran multiple tests before an ultrasound revealed the culprit—gallstones. What should have been a fairly normal gallbladder removal was complicated by sepsis, my system having turned toxic. My defiance of suffering had only caused more suffering, and my body told the story. I was sick and hurting. Truth is, I’d been sick and hurting for some time.

Though I’d been in therapy and was continuing to heal in that space, I discovered the depth of my disconnection in the weeks after my gallbladder surgery, as I reflected on how my body had absorbed years of stress. An unfortunate consequence of this disconnection is that we “often become expert at ignoring . . . gut feelings,” prone to “numbing awareness of what is played out inside,” as Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, notes.

I realized that though I’d told stories of what had happened to me in therapy, I’d ignored how my body held these stories—what was happening within me. I saw that I’d disregarded multiple warning lights over the years—exhaustion, IBS symptoms, sleeplessness, shame, hypervigilance, panic, dread.

“Where are you?” God asked me. And I sensed then that I needed to pay attention much more carefully than I’d thought.

Learning the Warning Signs

If it’s helpful, consider your own internal dashboard for a moment. Imagine a place for your thoughts, your emotions, your bodily sensations, your relational energy, and your behavior, all of which may go unnoticed if you don’t bring intentional awareness to your body.

In the image below you’ll see some examples of each of these. You might take just a moment to write down which words resonate with your own experience. You can note which give you a sense of pause or caution (a yellow warning light to slow down and pay attention) and which give you a sense of more significant alarm (a red warning light to stop and attend right now).

Follow the link to this endnote for a textual description of the preceding image.

In the case of my client, Erin, we worked to create her own list of where she was experiencing yellow and red warning lights on her internal dashboard:

YELLOW

• Sadness
• IBS
• Withdrawal
• Heartburn
• Irritation
• Shame
• Angry outbursts

RED

• Emptiness
• Fear
• Desperation
• Self-judgment
• Sleeplessness
• Exhaustion
• Lack of self-care

Erin was stunned as she stood back and looked at her list. “I can’t believe I’m still standing,” she said.

The practice of paying attention, as Erin did in this exercise, is important on a scientific level as well. The warning lights on your personal dashboard are symptoms of stress that can become wounds of trauma if neglected, disconnecting you in ways that hurt yourself and others. They are the first sign that allow you, and perhaps a trusted friend or counselor, to know what more might be happening within you. And with careful attunement and attention to your inner experience, you can become curious about what these signals are telling you. In this way, you begin to provide a concrete answer to the question, “Where are you?” What has been ignored is now on paper, a clear invitation to pay attention and begin to heal what’s within.

It helps me to know that Scripture offers many pictures of this. King David himself listened to his body and offered its groanings in prayer before God:

My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning. My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. All my longings lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away. PSALM 38:5-11

David’s attunement to his pounding heart, his searing pain, his unhealth, even his anguish—both here and in many other psalms—opens the possibility for you to attune and attend to your pain too. David’s prayer paints the picture of a man desperate, eager to come out of hiding and to be known by God in his suffering. This is your invitation too. The call to pay attention isn’t an invention of a modern therapist, but a call to faithful presence—to ourselves, to God, to each other.

Lost in the Storm and Fog 

Remember Pierce, the Silicon Valley lawyer from the last chapter who’d followed his father’s career path and ways of coping? Successful by all accounts in the world’s eyes, Pierce had ignored symptoms of underlying pain for years. He’d learned to navigate life with too little sleep and too much drink, with a constant buzzing anxiety within and a relentless drive to chase after experiences that he thought would fulfill him. In time, these symptoms felt like familiar friends instead of the warning lights they actually were, cues from his body that something was dreadfully wrong. As a result, he wasn’t paying attention. If he had been, Pierce would have seen that he had resided in a place of constant inner tumult for most of his life. Stress trumped security in his early years; his parents were largely emotionally unavailable, taxing his nervous system from his first days. Unlike his twin brother, Pierce gravitated toward his father, idolizing him, even amidst his marital unfaithfulness and exhausting workaholism. When the sense of aloneness or disconnection became too pronounced, he’d self-soothe in ways that filled the empty gap for a moment but only escalated his sense of isolation and pain in the long run. Feeling unseen and longing for connection, he went with his dad on a business trip while still a teenager, only to be drawn into a sexual encounter while away from home. He recalled both the exhilaration and loneliness of it, and in time a repeated pattern of exhilaration and loneliness became normal for him.

Pierce lived in what I call Storm. [4] From a nervous system perspective, Storm is a state of hyperarousal, where our sympathetic system is activated in an effort to survive a perceived threat of any kind. Our blood pressure and heart rate are elevated, adrenaline pumping, with involuntary responses of fight, flight, fawn, or find. [5] In fight, we’re stuck in “enemy mode,” [6] defending and protecting ourselves, demanding from others, frustrated and resistant. In flight, we’re anxious and vigilant, avoiding anything that we perceive as threatening. In fawn, we’re overly appeasing and compliant, escaping the tension of possible conflict. And in find, we’re desperately searching for someone to soothe and protect us. These responses are our bodies’ attempts to keep us safe and get our immediate needs met, however we can. These states are meant to be temporary—quick fixes to make the warning light stop flashing. The issue is that, for many, this Storm begins to feel like home. We may adapt to life here, staying for years, even for decades, suffering alone.

While some are lost in a Sympathetic Storm, others are stuck in a Fog. Still a means of survival, this is the opposite end of the spectrum, our bodies slogging into a perpetually dulled state where we experience chronic weariness, shame, depression, disengagement, and unhealthy self-soothing. This is a state of hypoarousal. And in contrast to the Storm-like churning of the sympathetic nervous system, this Fog-like state is governed by the parasympathetic nervous system. Psychologist Stephen Porges calls this the dorsal vagal state, which helps us understand how our primitive vagus nerve does what it’s been doing for ages in all animals, including fish, in times of danger—shutting us down to protect us.

If in a Sympathetic Storm one is mobilized to actively protect and defend, the Dorsal Fog is a place of immobilization. Here we may freeze or fold. In freeze, we experience a clash between our desire to mobilize and our desire to self-protect. We may feel panicky, rigid, and stuck. Our muscles tense, our eyes widen, and our heart rate speeds up. If the threat passes, we may relax. But if it doesn’t, we may fold. In fold, we experience a chemical bath to numb the pain, leaving us foggy and dissociative. Our heart rate lowers, our muscles relax, and vital connection processes within us shut off, possibly rendering us unable to remember what happened that led us to fold. We may feel ashamed and helpless, becoming severely depressed or submissive to someone harming us or to the overwhelm. At worst, we may completely shut down.

This is where Pierce’s brother, Chase, lived the majority of his life. From an early age, Chase recalled feeling more aligned with his mother, even amidst her depression and emotional unavailability. Considered the more sensitive of the brothers, Chase grew to resent his father’s busyness and infidelities, and internalized a sense that he wasn’t worth his father’s time and attention. Feeling powerless to connect to either his father or mother and wrestling with a constant sense of shame, worthlessness, and emptiness, Chase found some comfort during his teenage years when he smoked weed with his friends. As an adult, he’d make enough money to pay for a bed at night and fund whatever substance he required to keep his pain at bay. Numbing dulled his agitated emotions and disconnected him from a sense of his parents’ abandonment, leaving him in a perpetual state of foggy dissociation.

Pierce was stuck in the Storm, constantly churning internally. Chase couldn’t escape the Fog, a thick blanket that didn’t let the light through. Both were far from home. And for each, life in these states had become normal. Their dashboard warning lights had been ignored for years.

Homing

One of the ways we can better recognize what weather pattern is raging is to feel the warmth of the sun, to know the glorious, clear-weathered view of the horizon. Of home.

I was born on Long Island and went to college in Iowa. Sara and I have lived in Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco, and Holland and Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s a lot of transition! Most recently, we downsized as empty nesters into a small, mid-century modern house. Its clean lines, flat roof, and large windows allow for views of the lovely oak and hickory trees behind it. We fell in love with the house, but the anxiety of the move and the process of unpacking left my body in a state of unrest for at least a couple of months. It took some time, but as I lay in bed one lazy Sunday afternoon watching the last browning leaves of autumn fall, I whispered to myself, “Home.”

Perhaps you know the feeling. When a house becomes a home, it’s a place where you can relax, where you can be completely yourself, where the cares of the day seem to melt away. If you travel much, you know the disruption of being away from home, especially if you’re in hotels or crossing time zones. And if you’re in tune with your body, you’ll likely long for home again, for your own bed and pillow, and for the fresh-brewed coffee you don’t have to pay a small fortune for.

Now imagine a great bay window in your internal Home offering a view of all that is good and beautiful. Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel calls this the window of tolerance (WOT), a space within you where you feel present, grounded, and emotionally regulated. He describes this WOT as a place of calm within you where you’re able to feel your feelings in a right-sized way and act from a centered place. The safer you feel, the wider the window is and the more able you are to experience all that life throws at you, without being pulled into Storm or Fog. And the good news is that you can cultivate a life in this Home, expanding your window, opening yourself to what Jesus calls life abundant (John 10:10, ESV).

When the writer of Proverbs invites you to “guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23), I suspect this is exactly what Porges, Siegel, and other psychological cartographers of the self are referring to. Though they likely don’t know it, they are signaling the physiological experience of living from our true selves, anchored in God.

Home begins in Eden, its memory still with us. As Frederick Buechner reminds us, “At the innermost heart, at the farthest reach, of our remembering, there is peace. The secret place of the Most High is there. Eden is there, the still waters, the green pastures. Home is there.” You might even imagine this place as the warm living room in your very center, right beside that spacious bay window (WOT), a place for you to return to when it feels like the Fog is looming or a Storm is brewing.

Indeed, Home is within the “still waters” of God’s love and care (Psalm 23:2, KJV). It is where we discover God as our refuge, our safe place amid danger (Psalm 46:1). Home is being “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3) and “rooted and grounded in love” (Ephesians 3:17, ESV). It is where we’re anchored in a sense of our image-bearing worth, belonging, and purpose (Genesis 1:27). And we’re not alone here, because the Holy Spirit dwells in us and with us always, even when we’ve strayed far from Home (1 Corinthians 6:19). As Martin Laird writes, “God is our homeland. And the homing instinct of the human being is homed on God.”

When you do stray, as you’re apt to do, God awakens your inner homing beacon with the curious and kind question: “Where are you?” And God runs to greet you with joy and compassion upon your return (Luke 15:20). Home is your access point, always fixed. You may drift, but you’ll never become completely untethered, because nothing can separate you from God’s love (Romans 8:39). Your heart may wander, but your deepest longing is for Home, because it is the only place you’ll find shalom, the wholeness and flourishing for which you were created (Psalm 42).

Just as we work to understand our body’s warning lights, it’s important to learn what it feels like to be at home in your body when you’re centered and secure, rested and resilient. St. Teresa of Ávila wrote, “What could be worse than not being at home in our own house? What hope do we have of finding rest outside of ourselves if we cannot be at ease within? . . . If we don’t cultivate peace at home, we will not find it in alien places.”

Cultivating this peace at home is an active process, one that invites each of us to familiarize ourselves with our lived experience of Home.

For me, there is a certain grounding in my body and attentiveness to my senses that makes me feel alive and present. I’m not floating above myself as I’m sometimes apt to do when I feel a bit disconnected or even dissociative, but I’m anchored, as if gravity is pulling me down into myself. I’m breathing deeply, something I don’t do when I’m rushing about. I’m relaxed and spacious, an elusive reality when my schedule is packed and I’m racing from meeting to meeting. I have access to all of my emotions, but they don’t overwhelm me. I feel connected to myself, to God, to those I love. Mostly, I feel like myself, and I kind of like myself when I’m here, which isn’t always the case.

You might just take a moment right now to get curious about your own experience of this spiritual and physiological state of Home. You might even journal as you consider these questions: When do you feel most at Home? Where? With whom? What conditions in your life contribute to this lived sense of being at Home? On the flip side, when do you feel disconnected, alienated, and out of touch with yourself and others?

The Practice of Paying Attention

“Search me, God, and know my heart,” King David asks in Psalm 139:23. I suspect he knew that God was already looking. Perhaps he read the first chapters of Genesis and heard God asking, “Where are you, David?”

Truth is, we know a lot about David. He leaves very little hidden. Of the 150 psalms, he wrote nearly half, offering us more than a glimpse into his glaring vulnerabilities, his desperate fear, his self-sabotaging ways.

In the early centuries of the church, St. Augustine would follow his lead, devoting nine of the thirteen chapters of his autobiographical Confessions to his own harrowing story, honestly naming the detours and disorders of a soul in search of Home. And these two men were not the only ones who paid attention.

St. Teresa of Ávila wrote about her own somatic symptoms, likely vestiges of childhood trauma. The English preacher Charles Spurgeon detailed his consuming depression in vulnerable letters to his parishioners, a depression that sometimes kept him from preaching on Sundays. St. Thérèse of Lisieux chronicled her battles with doubt, feeling enveloped in darkness, even abandoned by God. And Thomas Merton’s autobiographical work The Seven Storey Mountain details his own painful story, naming how his own hurt spilled over, even in a narcissism that harmed others. These women and men paid attention to what was happening within. Their stories compel us, and their lost-and-found journeys give us permission to name the realities of our own wandering and wayward hearts. Their stories invite us to home in on our own hearts, as the psalmists invite us to do.

The saints and psalmists practiced paying attention, and this was well before therapists began touting the benefits of analysis, introspection, and self-awareness. Perhaps this might bolster your own courage. ... (The section continues with reflections on self-knowledge, narcissism, and the value of paying attention as an antidote to disconnection.)

Our bodies tell the story, quite honestly. They may just give us the best data around what’s happening within. And we had best begin to listen. Our bodies were designed to flourish. And they’ll tell us when we’re not.

“If you’re willing to pay attention to and dialogue with what’s happening inside of you, you’ll find that your body already knows the answers about how to live a full, present, connected, and healthy life,” says Hillary L. McBride, author of The Wisdom of Your Body. And what she means is that our God-created bodies are already equipped to reconnect and be restored with some intentional practice on our end. The poet Mary Oliver echoes this when she writes, “Though Eden is lost its loveliness remains in the heart.” Even if you’ve lived for years mired in symptoms and states that have become normal for you, your body can and will respond as you reengage and reconnect to it.

[1] Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of

Trauma (New York: Penguin, 2014), 99.

[2] For more tools on attending to thoughts, emotions, somatic experiences, and more, see the

excellent work of Arielle Schwartz, The Complex PTSD Treatment Manual: An Integrative,

Mind-Body Approach to Trauma Recovery (Eau Claire, WI: PESI Publishing, 2021).

[3] The word Symptoms in the center of the diagram with an exploding background art. Surrounding

Symptoms are categories with potential feelings or responses an individual might be

experiencing. List as follows. Thoughts: all-or-nothing thinking, confusion, delusion,

inattentiveness, indecision, judgment of self or others, memory problems, obsessiveness, self

contempt, self-doubt, suicidal ideation, trouble concentrating or orienting in time. Relational

energy: angry outbursts, avoiding particular places, avoiding people to preserve energy,

constant checking up on others, constant scanning, relaying on others to meet your needs.

Emotions: anger, desperation, distrust, emptiness, fear, guilt, hopelessness, irritation,

listlessness, loneliness, numbness, overwhelm, panic, rage, resentment, shame, sadness.

Behavior: addictive behaviors, busyness without boundaries, job losses, lack of self-care, not

getting out of bed, overeating or overdrinking, self-harm. Body: aches, blurred vision, chronic

pain, disconnection, exhaustion, headaches, heartburn, hypervigilence, irritable bowel

syndrome, nausea, out-of-body feelings, racing heart, sleeplessness.

[4] For examples of others who identify weather patterns for the sake of spiritual growth, see Martin

Laird’s Into the Silent Land and Lisa Colón DeLay’s The Wild Land Within.

[5] These four Fs are from the work of trauma and attachment psychotherapist Sarah Schlote at

https://sarahschlote.com/.

[6] See Jim Wilder and Ray Woolridge, Escaping Enemy Mode: How Our Brains Unite or Divide Us

(Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2022).

[7] Freeze is a kind of transitional state in between Storm and Fog, moving from sympathetic to

dorsal, and you’ll find it variously listed in different books and resources, sometimes called

hyperarousal and at other times called hypoarousal. Regardless of where it is listed, I

understand it as more of a hybrid state.

[8] Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who

We Are, 3rd edition (New York: Guilford Press, 2020).

[9] Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1991), 66.

[10] Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2007), loc. 64 of 2057, Kindle.

[11] St. Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle, trans. Mirabai Starr (New York: Riverhead Books,

2003), loc. 700 of 3148, Kindle.

[12] For a compelling look into the psalms and their invitation to us to find ourselves in God’s story,

see Kevin Adams, 150: Finding Your Story in the Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Square Inch,

2011).

[13] Diana Gruver, “Charles Spurgeon Knew It Was Possible to Be Faithful and Depressed,”

Christianity Today, February 26, 2021, 

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/february

web-only/diana-gruver-companions-darkness-spurgeon-depression.html.

[14] Hillary L. McBride, The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection

through Embodied Living (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021), 46.

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[15] Mary Oliver, “Fireflies,” New and Selected Poems, vol. 2 (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).

[16] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (New

York: Convergent, 2022), loc. 241 of 2620, Kindle.

[17] For a body scan you can easily access online, see “30 Minute Body Scan,” Calm,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPwHmaaaxLc.

[18] See Arielle Schwartz’s work at 

https://drarielleschwartz.com/therapeutic-yoga-classes-in

boulder/.

[19] See Andy Puddicombe, “The Ministry of Mindful Walking,” Headspace,

https://www.headspace.com/articles/walk-into-a-mindful-moment.

[20] McBride, The Wisdom of Your Body, 108.

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