Learning to Doubt Yourself

Learning to Doubt Yourself What happens when we learn, from an early age, that our own bodies cannot be trusted? In Episode 6 of Wild Child Summer, we explore the experience of distrusting sensation—and what it takes to reconnect with the body as a source of information. Drawing on neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s work, we examine why emotion and decision-making cannot be separated neatly from the body. His research on somatic markers demonstrates how bodily signals contribute essential information to our choices, challenging the idea that rational thought operates independently from physical experience. We then explore interoception: our ability to sense and interpret what is happening inside the body, including hunger, thirst, breathing, heart rate, and muscle tension. When we repeatedly learn to override or dismiss these signals, we can lose access to an important source of information about what we feel and need. How does that disconnection happen? Sometimes through seemingly ordinary messages: You’re not hungry. Stop crying. You’re overreacting. You’re not tired. Over time, external expectations can become more trusted than internal signals. The episode considers what disrupted interoception can look like, including its relevance to emotional awareness and eating disorders, while emphasizing that difficulties connecting with bodily signals can exist across a broader continuum. We also explore somatic approaches to healing, including Somatic Experiencing, and the possibility that a connection lost through repeated experience can gradually be rebuilt through new experiences of safely noticing and receiving bodily information. But reconnection doesn't begin with simply “trusting your gut.” The first step is contact. This Week’s Practice Three times a day, pause for two minutes. Place one hand on your chest and one on your belly and breathe slowly. Ask yourself: What is actually here right now? Not what should be there. Not what is reasonable to feel. What is physically present? Notice the sensations—tightness, warmth, heaviness, ease, or something you cannot name yet. Then remind yourself: This is information. I am allowed to receive it. You don't have to act on it. Not yet. Next week, we turn toward the voice—the words we never said, the truths we swallowed, and what happens when they have nowhere to go. References Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 655–666. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn894 Damasio, A. R. (1994). Descartes' error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Putnam. Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books. van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.