The Real Reason So Many Women Feel Disconnected From Their Bodies
Updated: Mar 16
Written by Therese Lyander, Writer & Private Mentor
Therese Lyander is a Swedish writer and private mentor whose work explores the relationship between the body, human behaviour, and the deeper patterns that shape our lives. Alongside her writing, she works privately with a small number of clients each year through long-term mentorship focused on embodied change and nervous system regulation.
In my work with women, I often notice something subtle but deeply revealing in the way they speak about their bodies. They speak about the body as if it were something separate from themselves.
”My body needs fixing.”
”My body is too big.”
”My body is wrinkled.”
”My body doesn’t fit.”
The body becomes an object. Or rather, a project. Something that needs to be corrected. It is rarely spoken about as something we are. But the truth is that the body is the only vehicle designed to operate on this Earth. The mind is merely a passenger.
This separation is often the first sign that the relationship between a woman and her body has been fractured. Beneath it, there is often something deeper, a profound hardness toward the self.
The violence we turn inward
Many women carry an incredibly harsh inner dialogue. The language they use toward themselves can be surprisingly violent, not outwardly, but internally, a constant pressure to correct, discipline, and control. The body must behave. The body must look right. The body must not take up too much space.
Over time, this creates a relationship with the body built on control rather than trust. What appears as self-discipline is often a form of self-rejection.
What we have to realize is that the body takes shape from the conditions we place it in, not the other way around. If you put yourself in an environment you are not meant to be in, suffocating the signals of the body, it will have to compensate for that.
If you are making yourself smaller than you are, your body knows that. It will compensate by putting on weight. Because the body always knows the truth, it has been with you throughout your life, holding more memories than the mind can comprehend.
How the body moves directly correlates to how we allow ourselves to express. If you are not using your voice, expressing yourself freely, the body will become stiff and hold back. If it is not safe to express ourselves freely, the nervous system naturally shifts into protection and alert mode.
I began to see it differently
The body is rarely the problem. What we experience as "problems" in the body are often the consequences of a deeper disconnection from it. That disconnection usually doesn’t happen randomly. It happens when something in life has been too much to fully process. Experiences, emotions, or events that the nervous system could not safely digest remain unresolved within the body.
Instead of moving through us, they stay in the system. Modern psychology sometimes describes this through different "mental" diagnoses like PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, panic syndrome, and so on. But in essence, it is something simpler, an undigested response held in the body.
The body does not forget what the mind cannot process. For the body and mind to actually process the undigested responses throughout our lives, we have to slow down. But unfortunately, the opposite usually happens when we are stuck in a response. Our lives move faster, we push harder to perform, and we forget about rest and the natural pace of nature.
The natural pace of nature is cyclical and moves in seasons. We are part of nature, but we forget that during winter everything is dark, frozen, and dead (or deeply asleep). Yet we perform like it is peak summer, when everything is fully alive, flowers in full bloom, and birds singing.
The inherited patterns we carry
This disconnection that women carry is not only personal. It is also generational. If we look honestly at the history of women, we must ask a difficult question, when, collectively, were women truly safe to fully inhabit their bodies, express their needs, and live according to them?
For many of us, the patterns we carry today were shaped long before we were born. We inherit subtle lessons about what is safe and what is not, coping mechanisms we absorbed from our caregivers and society at large, through their subconscious to ours.
For example, many women unconsciously learn that meeting their own needs is dangerous, that the safest way to belong or survive is to sacrifice themselves for others.
This pattern of self-sacrifice can look virtuous on the surface. But over time, it often creates exhaustion, resentment, and suppressed anger, not because women are weak, but because they have been taught to override themselves.
When the nervous system shuts down
When someone grows up learning that their needs are not safe to express, the nervous system adapts. It becomes safer not to feel too much and not to need too much. It is best not to listen too closely to the body and its signals. In this way, disconnection from the body is often a form of protection.
The body is not betraying us. It is protecting us from experiences that once felt overwhelming or unsafe. But the same protection that helped us survive can later prevent us from truly living.
How can we expect ourselves to be fully nourished by the food we eat or the relationships we have if we are in a pattern of self-sacrifice?
The answer is that we cannot. This is why, over time, we may develop nutritional deficiencies, live in dysfunctional relationships, and work jobs that we quietly hate.
The body is not the enemy
When we finally begin to rebuild the relationship with the body, something profound happens. The body stops feeling like an obstacle. Instead, it begins to feel like guidance.
This guidance can be incredibly scary to follow at first, as your system used to protect yourself from it to survive. But as time goes by, you will release stored and locked-in emotions and patterns. You will get to know yourself on the other side of restriction.
The body’s natural rhythm is in resonance with the rhythm of nature. When we align with the natural rhythm of nature, the undigested experiences can start to surface safely.
It is not a straightforward path, as the more your system relaxes, it will trigger the protection response. Before, it was not safe to be in a relaxed state. Relaxation itself then becomes a trigger. This is where you need to keep going to get to the next layer.
The body was never the enemy. It has always tried to protect us. And when we are ready, it can guide us back to ourselves.
Read more from Therese Lyander
Therese Lyander, Writer & Private Mentor
Therese Lyander is a Swedish writer and creative entrepreneur whose work explores the relationship between the body, human behaviour, and the deeper patterns that shape our lives.
Her background spans art, fashion, and cultural work, from sewing costumes for West End theatre productions in London to curating art exhibitions in Stockholm. A prolonged period of complex illness later redirected her life toward a deeper exploration of the body and human healing, leading her to study subjects such as trauma, nervous system regulation, nutrition, contemplative practice, and Human Design.
Today, her writing focuses on why intellectual insight alone rarely changes deeply held patterns—and how meaningful change often begins in the body.
