This article is for the overthinker in you.

Do you know why we don’t remember the first couple of years of our life? It is because that part of the brain that stores memory is not active yet at that age.

Nevertheless, we do have body memory. For many of us – especially the ‘overthinkers and overdoers’, and for those of us programmed not to listen to our body – this fact can stay on a conceptual level. And that is a big miss. Almost like a different world.

Why do I mention trauma in relation to body memory? Because I want to make conscious that it is traumatic experiences that get registered in the body (be sudden and ‘big’, or long-lasting, ‘small’, and ‘subtle’ in nature.) And mostly, they are the real causes of long remaining physical issues. (As I mentioned above, this article is for the ‘overthinker’ in you – which I have been-, and my only goal is to trigger your consciousness (maybe the article finds you at the right time) to concentrate more on your body. But anyways, if you want to go deeper, I can recommend a great resource: The Body Keeps The Score )  

What worked with me

(In short: Learn what to let go.)

I have been a serious overthinker. It has become my habit that I wanted to find the cause-and-effect relationship behind all of my behavior. My general logic has been that if I could state clearly and honestly (i.e. it resonates) what was the cause behind a problem of mine then cool: I was almost there to solve it. While this habit of mine proves truly valuable in my life, it took some time for me to realize that there is a catch: It just simply wasn’t effective when working with my body (I mean things like yoga asanas, meditation, breathing, jogging, etc.).

It just simply did not work. Why? The way I started to put it was that those memories in my body are not conscious – in the sense that they are not connected to my thinking/memory-keeping mind. And more importantly maybe: I just don’t know. Luckily life is not as mechanical as our thoughts and our thinking mind. 

The change started to happen when I stopped wanting to conceptualize, verbally describe, or ‘understand’ my aches, cramps, and all those kinds of things in my body. I changed from trying to make them conscious through my old ways of doing it, to just simply looking at them. It was such a good feeling for me that I could let myself stop doing something that actually never resulted in anything useful ( perhaps other than the realization that it was not useful…)

The story would not be complete if I did not mention this: Ok, I stopped trying to find causes all the time as my main tool, but I also did this: I kept in mind that they are traumas and I started to look at them as ‘beings in their own right’. I am not sure if this is the best way to put it but what I am trying to say is that somehow this developed in me: They are with me, part of me, they exist – but they are not me. 

For an overthinker, as I have been, it was a huge change. It helped me to start to think less and let things happen more naturally.