During the first four decades of my life, the most “in tune” I ever felt with my body was when I was trying to get pregnant.

I could nail down almost exactly when I was ovulating. And knew every single sign of my period coming. I had never ever felt so connected with my body, so….embodied. 

It would have been celebratory if it hadn’t been so stressful. 

But in the years that followed, after I did get pregnant and give birth to a baby, I became super connected to my child, but less intuitive about my own body. 

Somewhere along the line, body intuition becomes really hard for moms+. (Including trans, femme, and non-binary parents). 

If you feel disconnected from your body lately, it might be one or all of these 6 reasons.

6 REASONS WHY MOMS+ STRUGGLE WITH BODY INTUITION

1. You’re attuned to your kid; but not to you.

It’s awesome to feel that you deeply understand your child’s needs and desires. Emotional connection, after all, works 10x better in our household than traditional authoritarian style (e.g. punishment disguised as consequences, etc). But – and this is a big “but” – you may be so in tune with and focused on your child’s needs that you’ve lost sight of your own.

You’re wiping your toddler when you realize you’re parched. When was the last time I had a sip of water? You race around the house looking for the lost sock before the bus comes and you think – I gotta pee so bad! 

The more minutes you spend with your kids, the less likely you probably are to notice your own needs.

Quick Tip: model for your children that’s it’s okay for you to tend to your basic needs first. Sit down and drink a glass of water and let your children know you’ll help them in a few moments.

Elevate it: during playtime, read a book (an adult one, just for you) in front of them so they can see you do something completely for yourself. 

2. Attachment to what your body used to look like

Don’t know about you, but I never learned in Health class or physical education that my body would not only change from childhood to adulthood, but for the rest of my life. Bodies are always changing! But somehow we never learn that in school or science.

Instead, you believe your 23 year-old body is what you’re “supposed to” look like for the rest of your life. But that just isn’t true, or likely.

Bodies are always changing. Not just if you happened to birth children, but in every stage of life. Hormones, aging, stress, and health conditions are just a few factors in how your body evolves over the years.

Quick Tip: think of yourself at 70, 80, and 90 years old. What do you want to know about life? How do you want to feel? Smile as you think of the little old version of yourself and how lucky she is for the wisdom and the years.

3. You focus outward instead of inward.

You stay “busy” trying to manage your external life instead of listening to your body and soul. 

Have you ever heard your “woo woo” spiritual friends ask questions like, “what is your true purpose?” Or “what are your dreams for yourself?” And you roll your eyes thinking, puh-lease – My dream is for someone else to make dinner and drive the kids to practice! It’s difficult to think beyond that.

It’s easy for you, as a busy parent, to escape your body and live in your head instead. A life of to-do items and checklists is safer than a world where you try to live out your dreams. Especially if you carry the majority of the child care, house work, and mental load.

But as long as you live in your head, body intuition will be almost impossible! 

Quick tip: give yourself permission to dream. Grab a paper and pen and write down some of the dreams that seem ridiculous/impossible, whether it’s traveling around the country in an RV for a year or learning to fly a plane. 

4. Trauma and oppression

If you live in a body that experiences daily oppression, simply for being who you are, body intuition is extra challenging. To quote Sonya Renee Taylor in The Body is Not an Apology:

“Living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a fat body, a body with mental illness is to awaken daily to a planet that expects a certain set of apologies to already live on our tongues. There is a level of “not enough” or “too much” sewn into these strands of difference.” 

How can you listen to your body when the world tells you that you are wrong for simply existing? Especially when you experience several of these intersecting identities.

“Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies.”

– Sonya Renee Taylor in The Body is Not an Apology

This is why the work to free ourselves of unrealistic body standards is not simply an individual one. It’s a social justice issue and requires a dismantling of overlapping systems of oppression.

Quick Tip: this problem won’t be erased quickly. But you can contribute to body freedom for all people by listening to people with identities different from yours. Go follow 2-3 people on social media with 1+ of these identities. 

5. You treat your body like a project

Instead of thinking about your body as an awe-inspiring vessel that supports you in your everyday activities, you think of it as a project to conquer, a problem to be tamed. 

This is known as disembodiment or self-objectification. 

The idealization of thin, white, cis, able-bodied, young bodies combined with the sexist and racist roots of fatphobia creates the perfect storm of body dissatisfaction. 

Plus, diet culture leads you to believe that, if you only had enough “willpower” or “discipline,” you could look a certain way. So, you must not be trying hard enough! (Which of course isn’t true.) But it leads you to treat your body like a bathroom renovation or a sleeping bag that needs to be rolled up and stuffed into a too-small bag. Instead of listening to your body, the frustration and guilt of this “failed project” leads you to penalize and shame it. 

Quick tip: write a thank you letter to your body for the ways that it helped you in the past week. 

Related: 5 ways to be kinder to your body

6. Discomfort with feelings 

Do you know what your body feels like when you’re anxious or stressed? When you’re feeling shame or guilt? What does it feel like – other than “bad”? 

Body intuition falters when you try to use an active solution to remove each negative feeling. It goes something like this:

Kids are complaining? Scroll through Instagram or text a friend. 

Feeling anxious about work? Go for a run. 

Feeling shameful or disappointed about how your body looks? Binge on ice cream and create plans to start restricting tomorrow. 

Stressed about all the ways you’ve screwed up your kids already? Have a glass of wine.

We learn early that so-called bad or negative feelings should be avoided. No one tells you that life may bring almost equal amounts of pain and joy; heartache and love. So when you feel these bad feelings, it seems like you’re doing something wrong. Why aren’t I happy? Then you use distraction or avoidance, in hopes that they’ll just go away. To try to get back to the “good” feelings.

Sadly, this never works for long. The stuff we bottle up always comes out eventually, even it looks different.

Quick Tip: Next time you experience a negative feeling, sit down or lie down for 2-3 minutes (longer if you’re able) by yourself and do absolutely nothing. Try to identify any physical sensations of the feeling, such as tightness, pulsing, ache, stomach “butterflies” or chest constriction. 

These 6 barriers to body intuition are so common for women. But you can break the cycle of objectification, shame, and guilt. Once you connect to your body intuition, you will not only understand your physical self better – but unearth your desires, your larger purpose, and path to fulfillment. 

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If you need support in your body acceptance and self-love journey, let’s chat about how 1:1 coaching may help you. Sign up here for a free discovery call.