The Body Knows: On Holding Ourselves Through Exclusion
June 30, 2025
A reflection on how the body responds to being left out and how we can hold ourselves with care through that pain.
Sometimes the body registers the truth before the mind can name it.
That drop in energy — the sudden fatigue, the tightening in the chest, the sinking feeling in the gut — it’s not random. It’s not laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s your body responding to something it deeply understands:
You’ve been left out. Again.
And not because you didn’t try, or because you weren’t good enough. In fact, perhaps because you were too much of something — too honest, too strong, too perceptive, too unwilling to play the game. Too true.
There’s something unbearable about being quietly excluded with no explanation. It forces you to hold a strange contradiction: knowing you did your best, and yet being made to feel like you’re the problem.
The body feels it. It always has. Even when we were younger — when the teacher overlooked us, or a parent gave love conditionally, or a friend pulled away without saying why — our body carried the weight.
And now, as adults, the same wound flares when history repeats.
So what do we do?
We feel it.
We name it.
We hold ourselves through it — not because we’re trying to fix it, but because our nervous system needs to know we’re here now. That someone is listening. That we won’t abandon ourselves too.
Sometimes that means resting. Sometimes that means crying. Sometimes it means putting a hand on your chest and whispering, “I know, love. That really hurt. But I’m still here.”
This isn’t about blaming the people who left us out. It’s about refusing to gaslight ourselves out of what we’re feeling. It’s about reclaiming the truth that:
- You do deserve feedback.
- You did show up fully.
- You are worthy of belonging.
And when others can’t see that — or won’t — it becomes our responsibility to stand by ourselves all the more.
Right now, the body might be exhausted. That’s okay.
Let it be tired. Let it grieve.
And when it’s ready, it will rise again — with even more integrity, more gentleness, more strength.
Because the body knows. And when we listen, it teaches us how to stay soft in a world that often feels cold.