The War Beneath My Skin
A Letter on Emotion, Embodiment, and the God Who Meets Us There
Dear friend,
For much of my life, I could feel—
and I couldn’t feel.
It’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.
I was expressive, even emotional. I cried often. I poured my heart into worship. I was deeply empathetic, spiritually attuned, and always moved by beauty.
On the surface, I looked connected to my feelings.
But underneath, whole rooms of my soul remained locked. Entire corridors of emotion—rage, terror, unmet longing, shame, even joy—were out of reach. And I didn’t know it.
This outward expressiveness, I now see, was part of a survival strategy.
An unconscious way of protecting myself.
It let me stay near to feeling without having to truly inhabit the parts of myself that felt dangerous to touch.
And slowly, quietly, I began to lose myself.
Not in one dramatic fall, but in a long drift away from my own body, my own center. My soul.
Maybe some of you can relate.
Or maybe you’ve found it hard to access any emotion whatsoever.
Both can be a survival strategy to get through another day, to keep the inner tempest at bay and below consciousness.
Why We Can’t Feel What We Feel
There’s a reason so many of us dissociate from our bodies.
It’s not because we’re disconnected, weak, or defective.
It’s because there are parts of us—emotional, spiritual, physical parts—that carry overwhelming burdens.
In my practice as a Catholic somatic therapist, I hear it again and again:
“I know I should listen to my body… but it terrifies me.”
“I freeze the moment I slow down.”
“I can’t feel anything. Or if I do, it’s too much.”
And I say: of course you do.
Because your body isn’t just a body.
It’s where your soul has lived its whole life.
It holds the grief no one helped you name.
The trauma no one saw.
The joy you weren’t allowed to express.
The shame you didn’t choose.
The unmet need you learned to spiritualize away.
Dan Siegel writes that emotions are “energy in motion,” designed to be felt, processed, and integrated through safe connection. But when we aren’t met with that safety, we adapt. We fragment. We live from the neck up, in what Ian McGilchrist would call the “controlled, managed, categorized” world of the left hemisphere. A world that may offer certainty, but not healing.
In doing so, we protect ourselves from the unbearable—
but we also disconnect from the One who dwells in the depth.
The Body as Battlefield—and Holy Ground
For many of us, the body has become a war zone.
It’s no wonder we feel afraid to re-enter.
But what if that fear isn’t a problem to overcome… but a part to listen to?
In the Garden, Adam and Eve hid because they were afraid and exposed. Shame closed their hearts and curled their bodies in. That story isn’t just theological—it’s neurobiological. It’s what we still do today. We fold in on ourselves to protect the sacred.
The problem isn’t the hiding.
The problem is forgetting we’re still loved there.
God Doesn’t Just Tolerate Our Emotions—He Felt Them
Jesus didn’t bypass the body to redeem us.
He wept. He sweat blood.
He let His body tremble under the weight of sorrow and surrender.
He didn’t avoid the emotions we’re afraid of—He entered them, fully.
Which means we don’t have to face the war beneath our skin alone.
We don’t have to do it perfectly. We just have to begin.
And beginning looks like this:
Naming how hard it is.
Breathing even when your body feels locked.
Touching your heart gently when shame rises.
Letting sacred images—Christ, Mary, beauty—anchor you in Presence.
Moving slowly, with the co-regulation of someone safe.
And letting that be enough for today.
This Is What I’ve Come to Believe
Your emotions are not your enemy.
Your numbness is not failure.
Your coping is not a mortal sin.
Your fear is not evidence of weakness.
All of it is a shield your nervous system built in the face of something unbearable.
All of it is a prayer for safety that God has heard and held.
And now, slowly, gently, in the safety of the Spirit and the presence of a compassionate other, you can begin the sacred return to yourself.
To your body.
To your breath.
To the unrepeatable image of God that lives in you—not just in your mind or your “virtue,” but in your flesh.
If you're looking for a space to begin that return—with gentleness, faith, and the slow grace of embodiment—I'd be honored to walk alongside you.
You can explore offerings at the link here.
You are not alone in this.
You never were.
With you in this inner grappling—and this healing,
Kolbe
