Understanding the Disconnect Between Body and Mind
Have you ever said yes to something and immediately felt your stomach drop? Agreed to plans and felt your chest tighten? Been with someone—perhaps in a relationship or just dating—and your mind is telling you all the logical reasons this is good, this person is good, you should want this… but your body is saying something completely different?
Your body is pulling back. Contracting. Going numb. Wanting to leave, to escape.
Or maybe it’s work-related. You accept a job that looks perfect on paper—good salary, good opportunity, exactly what you thought you wanted. But from day one, your body feels wrong. Heavy. Tight. Like you’re dragging yourself through concrete every single morning.
Or perhaps it’s something smaller, more everyday. Someone asks you to do them a favor, and before you can even consciously think about it, your throat closes up. Your body knows the answer is no. But your mouth says yes anyway, automatically.
This disconnect between what your mind decides and what your body knows—this is what we’re going to explore today.
I’m Abi Beri, an integrative holistic therapist and somatic practitioner. Through years of working with somatic therapy in Ireland and internationally online, I’ve learned something crucial: **your body is not wrong. Your body is not confused. Your body is not being dramatic, too sensitive, or irrational.**
Your body is reading something your conscious mind isn’t picking up on. And when you override that signal repeatedly—when you make your thinking mind the boss and tell your body to shut up and comply—there are real, tangible consequences.
What’s Actually Happening: Two Different Systems
Let me explain what’s occurring in your system when this mind-body disconnect happens.
The Thinking Mind: Logic and Should
Your brain—your thinking, rational mind—operates on logic, on “shoulds,” on what makes sense according to the story you’ve been told about how life works. It thinks in language, in explanations, in socially acceptable reasons. It considers:
- What’s practical and makes sense
- What others expect of you
- What looks good on paper
- What you “should” want or do
- Social conditioning and norms
- Future planning and consequences
The Body: Ancient Wisdom and Safety Detection
But your body? Your body operates on something much older, more primitive, more instinctual. Your body is reading safety and danger at a level that’s beneath conscious thought. It’s picking up on:
- Micro-expressions in faces
- Energy shifts in rooms and relationships
- Tone of voice beyond the words
- The feeling and atmosphere in an environment
- Incongruence between words and energy
- Threat detection from thousands of years of evolutionary survival
Your body is constantly scanning: Is this safe? Is this right for me? Can I trust this person, this situation, this commitment?
And your body doesn’t give you a logical argument or a PowerPoint presentation. It gives you sensations:
- Tightness in your throat
- Heaviness in your chest
- A sinking feeling in your gut
- Numbness or disconnection
- The urge to leave or escape
- Shallow breathing
- Clenching in your jaw or fists
- Tension in your shoulders
These aren’t random. These are signals. Your body is trying to communicate something essential to you.
Why We Override Our Body’s Signals
But most of us have been thoroughly trained to ignore these body signals. We’ve been conditioned to believe that the mind is more reliable than the body. That logic trumps feeling. That we should be able to reason ourselves into wanting what we’re supposed to want.
So when your body says no and your mind says “but this is a good opportunity” or “but they’re such a nice person” or “but I should be grateful for this”—your mind wins the internal battle. You override the signal. You push through. You tell your body to be quiet and cooperate.
And you know what happens? Your body doesn’t just give up and comply silently. Your body starts screaming louder through other channels.
The Cost of Overriding Your Body’s No
When you consistently ignore your body’s signals, when you force yourself to do things your body is actively saying no to, your body doesn’t surrender—it adapts. It finds other ways to protect you, other ways to communicate what you’re refusing to hear.
Physical Manifestations
**Chronic tension and pain.** Your shoulders are perpetually tight. Your jaw aches from constant clenching. Your back hurts despite no obvious injury. This isn’t just stress—this is your body creating boundaries when you won’t create them yourself. The pain is literally saying: stop. Rest. Don’t do this thing.
**Frequent illness.** You catch every cold that goes around. You’re exhausted all the time despite sleeping. Your immune system is compromised because your body is using all its resources just to cope with being forced into situations it knows aren’t right for you.
Psychological Responses
**Dissociation and numbness.** You check out mentally and emotionally. You’re physically present but not really there, not truly engaged. This is your body’s way of protecting you from feeling the full impact of betraying yourself. If you have to stay in the situation, at least you don’t have to fully feel what it’s costing you.
**Anxiety and hypervigilance.** Your nervous system is constantly activated because you’re forcing yourself into things your body reads as unsafe. So your body stays on high alert, trying to keep you ready to escape the very thing you keep making yourself stay in.
Real-Life Examples: When Body Wisdom Conflicts with Mind Logic
Let me give you specific, concrete examples so you can recognize these patterns in your own life.
In Relationships
**Your mind says:** “They’re kind, they’re stable, they check all the boxes on paper. I should want this relationship. This is good for me. They would make a good partner.”
**Your body says:** “I feel numb around them. I don’t want them to touch me. I feel like I’m performing and pretending. My chest feels tight and constricted when they text me. I feel trapped.”
And you override your body. You tell yourself you’re being too picky, you’re self-sabotaging, you’re not giving it a real chance. So you stay. You force yourself to be present and engaged. You have sex even though your body doesn’t want to. You smile and act affectionate even though there’s no genuine warmth flowing.
And eventually? You get physically sick. Or you shut down emotionally. Or you end up having panic attacks. Because your body has been trying to tell you for months: *this isn’t right for you*. And you wouldn’t listen.
In Work
**Your mind says:** “This is a good job. Good money. Career advancement. I should be grateful. I’m being lazy or entitled if I don’t want to do this. Everyone else would kill for this opportunity.”
**Your body says:** “I wake up with dread every morning. My stomach is tight and churning all day. I feel dead inside. I count the hours until I can leave. I feel like I’m dying slowly.”
And you override your body. You tell yourself everyone feels like this about work, work isn’t supposed to be enjoyable, you just need to push through and be more disciplined.
And eventually? Burnout. Serious illness. Depression. Your body is forced into shutdown mode because you wouldn’t honor its clear no.
In Sexual Intimacy
**Your mind says:** “I should want this. They want this. I don’t want to reject them and hurt their feelings. I don’t want to seem difficult, frigid, or broken. This is what couples do.”
**Your body says:** “I feel nothing. I want this to be over. I feel pressure in my chest. I’m somewhere else entirely in my head, not present at all.”
And you do it anyway. You give your body to someone when your body is actively saying no. Not because you’re being physically forced, but because you’re forcing yourself, overriding your own internal signal.
And eventually? Sex becomes something to endure rather than enjoy. Your body learns it can’t trust you to protect it, to honor its boundaries. So it shuts down even more completely, going further into numbness as a protective mechanism.
Do You See the Pattern?
Your body knows before your mind consciously figures it out. Your body is picking up on what’s not being said, what doesn’t feel right, what isn’t truly aligned with your authentic self. And when you override that wisdom repeatedly, your body finds alternative ways to say no—through pain, through illness, through numbness, through complete shutdown.
Why We Learn to Ignore Our Bodies
This pattern of overriding body wisdom doesn’t develop overnight. We’ve been systematically trained to do this from childhood.
Childhood Conditioning
From the time we were young children, most of us learned that our body’s signals weren’t as important as being good, being compliant, not making waves or causing problems.
You learned to hug relatives you didn’t want to hug. To say thank you politely even when you felt uncomfortable. To eat when you weren’t hungry because that’s what good, obedient children do. To stay in situations that didn’t feel safe because leaving would be rude or disrespectful.
People-Pleasing Patterns
If you became a people-pleaser, if you learned that your worth and lovability depended on making others comfortable and happy, you became an expert at overriding your body’s signals. Your body’s no didn’t matter as much as keeping the peace, maintaining harmony, not disappointing others.
Survival Adaptations
If you grew up in a chaotic, unpredictable, or unsafe environment, you might have learned that your body’s signals weren’t reliable or helpful. Because even when your body clearly said “danger,” you couldn’t leave. You were a child. You were dependent and stuck. So you learned to stop listening, to disconnect from those signals entirely because they didn’t help you anyway—they just made you feel worse.
Cultural and Educational Messages
Or maybe you were explicitly taught that the body is less important than the mind. That you should be able to think your way through anything. That feelings and bodily sensations are irrational and shouldn’t be trusted. That logic is superior and the body is just along for the ride, something to be controlled and managed.
So now, as an adult, when your body clearly says no, you don’t even register it as valid, trustworthy information. You think you’re being too sensitive, too emotional, too difficult, too high-maintenance. You believe you should be able to handle this, that you’re weak if you can’t.
The Truth: Your Body’s Wisdom is Superior Intelligence
Let me be absolutely clear about something fundamental: **your body’s wisdom is not inferior to your mind’s logic. In many cases, your body knows MORE than your conscious mind.**
Why Body Wisdom is More Reliable
Your thinking mind can be manipulated, conditioned, gaslit. It can talk itself into things, rationalize away red flags. It can convince itself that what’s happening is fine, normal, acceptable, something you should be able to handle.
But your body? Your body is reading the raw, unfiltered data in real-time:
- The subtle tone of voice that reveals true feeling beneath polite words
- The energy in a room that feels off or unsafe
- The micro-expressions that flash across someone’s face
- The thing that’s not being said, the elephant in the room
- The mismatch between someone’s words and their actual energy
- The incongruence between what they say and what they do
Your body is connected to thousands of years of evolutionary survival wisdom. When your gut says “something is off here,” that’s not paranoia or anxiety disorder. That’s sophisticated pattern recognition. That’s your nervous system detecting threat before your conscious mind can articulate exactly what the threat is.
Real Examples of Body Wisdom
When your chest tightens around someone, even though they seem perfectly nice on the surface, your body might be picking up on something controlling, something manipulative, something subtly coercive that your mind hasn’t consciously registered yet.
When your body doesn’t want to have sex with someone, even though there’s no logical reason to refuse, your body might be reading that you don’t actually feel safe with this person, or that they don’t truly see you as a whole person, or that you’re performing rather than genuinely connecting.
When your body reacts to a job offer with dread and heaviness, even though it looks perfect on paper, your body might be sensing that this environment will drain you, that the culture is toxic beneath the professional surface, that this will cost you more than any amount of money can compensate for.
Learning to Listen: A Somatic Approach
So what do we do with this knowledge? How do we bridge the gap between mind and body?
We practice listening. Actually, genuinely listening. Not overriding. Not explaining away. Not convincing yourself that your body is being dramatic or irrational. Just pure, open listening to what your body is actually saying.
A Guided Practice for Body Listening
Let me walk you through a simple but profound practice. You can do this right now.
Your body is trying to tell you something important.
**Now, staying with those sensations, ask your body a question.** Not with your thinking mind—let your body answer intuitively. The question is simple:
*”What are you trying to protect me from?”*
You might get words. You might get images or memories. You might just get a deeper sense of the feeling, more clarity about the sensation. You might get nothing at all consciously—just more of the physical sensation itself.
Whatever comes or doesn’t come, just receive it without judgment. Your body might be saying:
- This isn’t safe for me
- This isn’t right for who I really am
- This will drain my life force
- This person doesn’t truly see me
- This will cost more than I can afford to give
- I need to protect my energy
- This violates my boundaries
**Place your hand somewhere on your body.** Maybe your heart. Maybe your belly. Maybe wherever you feel that “no” most strongly.
And offer your body this acknowledgment:
*”I hear you. I’ve been overriding you. I’ve been making you do things you don’t want to do. I’ve been telling you that you’re wrong, that you’re too sensitive, that you should be able to handle this.”*
*”But you’re not wrong. You’re trying to protect me. You’re trying to tell me something important and true.”*
*”I don’t know if I can honor your no yet. I don’t know if I’m ready to leave this situation, to change this commitment, to actually listen to what you’re saying and act on it.”*
*”But I hear you now. I’m starting to listen. I’m beginning to trust you.”*
**Notice what happens when you offer this to your body.** Does anything shift? Does anything soften or relax? Or does your body stay tense because it doesn’t believe you yet, doesn’t trust that you’ll actually follow through?
Either response is completely okay and valid. Your body has learned through repeated experience not to trust that you’ll actually listen and act. It might take consistent time and practice before your body believes you’re serious about honoring its wisdom.
Take a few more breaths here. Just being with your body. Not trying to fix anything. Not trying to make yourself do anything differently yet. Just practicing the radical act of actually listening, of treating your body’s signals as valid, intelligent information.
When you’re ready, gently deepen your breath. Move your fingers and toes. Begin to bring yourself back to full awareness.
Moving Forward: Building Trust with Your Body
Before you fully return to your day, I want to offer you this: You don’t have to immediately quit your job, leave your relationship, or cancel all your commitments based on this awareness. That would be overwhelming and potentially chaotic.
But you do need to start genuinely listening. Because every time you override your body’s no, you’re communicating to your body that you can’t be trusted to protect it. And your body will find other, more disruptive ways to protect itself—through pain, through illness, through shutdown, through forcing you to stop.
Small, Sustainable Steps
Learning to honor your body’s wisdom doesn’t mean your life suddenly gets easier or simpler. It might actually mean your life gets more complicated temporarily. Because you might have to:
- Say no to things you previously said yes to
- Disappoint people who are used to you accommodating them
- Set boundaries you’ve never set before
- Admit that something isn’t working even though you desperately wish it was
- Make difficult changes that feel scary
But the alternative—continuing to override your body, continuing to force yourself into situations your entire being is rejecting—that has a cost too. A serious cost. And eventually, that cost becomes too high. The body will force the issue through breakdown.
The Practice: Start Small
Start by simply noticing when your body says no and your mind says yes. Start by acknowledging the disconnect instead of pretending it’s not there or doesn’t matter.
And maybe, slowly, gradually, you start to honor your body’s wisdom. Not perfectly. Not all at once. Not without difficulty or fear. But step by step, you learn to trust that your body is not your enemy. Your body is your ally, your oldest and wisest friend. Your body is trying to keep you safe, keep you aligned with truth, keep you connected to what’s actually authentic for you.
Conclusion: The Journey Back to Body Trust
Thank you for taking this time to listen—not just to me, but to your own body. That’s the real practice. That’s the actual work of somatic healing.
Your body holds profound wisdom that your thinking mind alone cannot access. Learning to listen to that wisdom, to trust those gut feelings and physical sensations, is one of the most important skills you can develop for living an authentic, aligned, healthy life.
This is a journey, not a destination. Be patient with yourself as you learn a completely new way of relating to your body’s signals.
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About the Author:
Abi Beri is an integrative holistic therapist and somatic practitioner based in Ireland, offering sessions in Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, and online internationally. He specializes in body-centered healing approaches that help people reconnect with their body’s innate wisdom. Abi creates guided meditations and healing content available on YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Insight Timer.
For More Somatic Healing Practices:
- Website: www.blissfulevolution.com
- Somatic Therapy: www.somatictherapyireland.com
- Family Constellations: www.familyconstellationseurope.com
