WHO OWNS YOUR BODY?

 .............................  by Stanley

......Whist still alive a person can abandon their body; and can do so for all kinds of reasons. Perhaps it is too painful, or is the repository of too many painful memories; or perhaps they have been seduced by an otherworld spirituality; or maybe they just detest the look of it. But I have become interested in another situation: when a person has given their body away and now someone else owns it.

......Why on earth would anyone do that – give away their own living body? Why would a person say to someone: ‘OK, you can have it’ – and forever after go on living a normal life – except that their body doesn’t belong to them.

......That’s right. Nobody would do this without some powerful reason. But perhaps it was the best thing to do if you’d lived in a poisonous family. It works like this: ‘nobody actually sees me. I am invisible. They really don’t know I’m here. They see me only as a physical presence in the family. I’m forced to behave and take part in their crazy games – I pretend, but it’s not me. The object they criticize and boss around is a ‘thing’ I inhabit.  I am angry with my body because they control it. It belongs to them It’s the symbol of my capitulation, of everything I despise. They hate it and I hate it too.  No one in my world talks about themselves, only about things. My body is just another object. It belongs to the world of them. A thing – well, I want nothing to do with it. It’s not me !

......The family knows ‘somebody’ is there, or rather they know a ‘body’ is in their space, but that’s all. It’s hard to believe that there are people to whom the existence of other subjectivities is quite unreal. Shocking I know, but they have no grasp that other persons exist in the way they themselves do. 

......But there’s a worse scenario – another nasty twist. When my body becomes the hated object, I switch over and adopt the family’s viewpoint and hate the ‘thing-body’, my ex-self, as much as, sometimes more, than they do. I am thoroughly on their side. Put graphically, I become part of the family that owns my despised body. I agree with them. I view it and hate it through their eyes. In such a family I tell myself: ‘everyone is beating me up, so I may as well beat myself up. Join the club. Let’s have a nice gang rape.’

 ......Years later the psychic situation remains the same. I may even insist that my family was always quite OK. But I find it strangely hard to take care of myself. I have this curious sadomasochistic attitude toward myself, particularly my physical being. I don’t even hate my body now, I just neglect it, use it with disregard. But my real dislike comes out whenever I look in the mirror.

......Childhood sexual abuse is another very strong reason a person will abandon their body.  I have seen some awful cases where, for a child, the physical and emotional pain of sexual abuse is so unbearable that they have simply given their body over to the abuser. It belongs to them; but it’s a body that is now disgusting. This is the psychic situation for the child – and can remain so for the rest of life.

......A consequence of any kind of evacuation of the body is a shortage of sensation. The body is the medium of communication with the world and we are hard wired to have all channels of perception wide open. Simply as an organism we need this to survive; as a human being we need it to enjoy the world. When the ‘doors of perception’ are wide open the grass looks greener and the sky looks bluer and the world comes alive.

......People who have experienced sensory deprivation in lightless, soundless floatation tanks will normally start hallucinating after a time. The mind makes up its own stimuli when the normal channels are shut down. 

......When I don’t own my body it has an anesthetizing effect so that I become sensation starved. I start to invent sensation. Self-harming is one way to satisfy this hunger. Pain is then somehow desirable. When you are deprived of sensation, any sensation is better than none. 

......Of course, since my real body belongs to the enemy, I can always have a substitute body like a shiny automobile that I make love to and masturbate in the garage every Saturday morning. But my real body is my primary home. If am a refugee from it, I can’t get back into it without help. Trying to do so by myself confirms that I can trust no one. And I will react badly to any manipulative therapy, simply because manipulation is why I left home in the first place. 

......If I am sensation starved there are all kinds of ways I can create some high powered input. I can always pick a fight with the wife or get paranoid about the neighbours. There is a thirst for excitement, the shot of adrenalin, the hit of drugs – anything that will open the doors of perception, if only for a moment.

......What do I really need?

......Some would call it human love. But it has to be of that rare kind that lets me be, that lets me own myself; the kind of connection with someone who doesn’t want to possess me or change me or make me a better person. As Carl Rogers said, I need that kind of regard for me as a person that is unconditional. I need someone who has an insatiable appetite to know who I really am, someone who doesn’t see me as reprehensible or ugly or deficient; above all, someone who doesn’t covertly try to manipulate me. And it will be someone who doesn’t even have to forgive me because there is nothing to forgive. But even then, it’s a long haul to trust again.