Dear 13-Year-Old Me: Your Pain Was Real

Oct 19

When I told my pediatrician at thirteen that I had pain every day, and she blamed it on me, it taught me that my pain didn't matter. It taught me that I shouldn't mention it because it can't be fixed, and it's somehow, inexplicably, upsetting to others.

At some point, you probably learned something similar — not to listen to your body. Maybe a provider told you the pain was anxiety. Maybe you brought in real symptoms and were told you should lose weight. Maybe you just got tired of being told, in so many words, that you were overreacting to your own body — so you stopped reporting in, even to yourself.

That response made sense. It was protective. But it comes at a cost: when a part of you learns to override or drown out what your body is signaling, you lose access to information you actually need — not just about symptoms, but about hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain building before it spikes, a nervous system starting to flood before it's fully flooded.

Why this matters more here

Interoception is the ability to feel, understand, and react to sensations inside the body. A 2021 study found that people who were better able to deliberately direct their attention toward or away from bodily sensations had less severe anxiety and depression. The researchers called this ability a buildable skill, not something you either have or don't. According to Kristin McConnell, OTD, OTR/L, you can increase interoception by repeatedly noticing body sensations that are less fraught, like the feeling of rubbing lotion into your arm. Listen to our episode here to learn more.

If you're hypermobile, part of what makes this skill harder to build is that your body sends more confusing signals in the first place. A study of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) found that people with POTS — a common form of dysautonomia in hypermobile people — showed heightened emotional reactivity specifically when their body was under physical stress, like during tilt-table testing. Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS) can flare with anxiety and panic alongside palpitations, presyncope, and flushing — so the anxiety that comes with a mast cell flare may get mixed up with the physical symptoms it arrives with, or vice versa. And if you're one of the many hypermobile people who also has ADHD, that adds a third layer: one small study found adults with ADHD measurably worse at a basic test of interoception — counting their own heartbeat without checking a pulse. However, other similar studies in the ADHD population showed mixed results.

Then there's perimenopause itself, layering hot flashes, palpitations, and disrupted sleep onto all of it — more physical noise, on top of a body you may have already stopped trusting.

None of this means your body or brain are built wrong, just differently. It means the signal is often genuinely harder to read here, and you may have been taught — by well-meaning providers, by repeated dismissal, or both — to stop trying. A qualitative study of people with hEDS found that the large majority had been told, directly or indirectly, that they were exaggerating or fabricating their symptoms, and many described a resulting self-doubt about their own bodily sensations. That's not a personality trait. That's a part of you that learned, reasonably, to distrust what your body was telling you — because trusting it used to get you hurt.

What Body Dialogue actually means

Body Dialogue means treating a physical sensation as information to get curious about, not noise to override or a verdict to panic about. If the symptom had a color, what color would it be? What shape is it? What does it remind you of? Curiosity without judgement, like a baby realizing it has a hand for the first time.

The practice borrows from two related, well-established therapy models: Internal Family Systems (IFS), which treats the mind as made up of distinct "parts" — including young, wounded ones — that formed to protect you, and schema therapy, which describes something similar in its own language: a "vulnerable child" mode carrying old fear or shame. Both models have a process of learning to meet that injured inner child part of yourself with the steadiness it didn't get the first time around. You don't need formal therapy to borrow the core move from both: instead of either ignoring a sensation or being swept into it, you pause long enough to ask what it's actually telling you.

The part of you that tunes out your body isn't the enemy here, either. It's a protector that took over because full awareness got dangerous or overwhelming at some point. Body Dialogue isn't about forcing that part to stand down. It's about building enough trust, slowly, that it doesn't have to work so hard.

What the evidence says

A randomized controlled trial tested an IFS-based intervention in people with rheumatoid arthritis — a different chronic illness, but one with a lot in common with this population: chronic pain, an immune system turned against the body, and years of medical visits. At nine months, participants reported significantly less pain, better physical function, and more self-compassion; at 21 months, the drop in joint pain and the gains in self-compassion had held, along with less depression. Disease activity itself didn't move — this is a tool for how you relate to your body and your distress, not a treatment for the underlying condition.

A broader look at self-compassion practices across chronic illness populations found consistent within-person improvement in pain, mood, and quality of life from before to after these kinds of interventions, although many of these studies are small or are considered lower quality. Worth trying, but not a proven cure.

What this looks like, practically

Pick an anchor you already hit daily — right when you take your morning medication, right after you sit down with coffee, whenever you already pause. Stack a 30-second check-in there: notice one sensation (tight shoulders, a fast heartbeat, a wave of nausea), name it plainly instead of jumping to a story about it ("there's tightness in my chest" instead of "I'm having a panic attack" or "something's wrong with me"), then ask it one question — what is this trying to tell me, or protect me from? What is it telling me that I need right now? — and let the answer be small. Sometimes it's "I need water." Sometimes it's "slow down." Sometimes there's no clear answer, and that's fine too; the asking is the practice, not the answering.

On a low-capacity day, the practice can shrink to catching yourself dismissing a symptom, and instead acknowledging it without judgement. You're not failing the habit by doing the smallest version of it. A habit you can do in five seconds on your worst day is more durable than one that only works on your best ones.

A caveat worth naming

If this practice surfaces something bigger than a passing sensation — a flood of old grief, a disturbing memory, a part of you that feels much more overwhelmed — that's a sign this deserves more support than a solo daily habit can give it. IFS and schema therapy are both real clinical modalities with trained practitioners. You can find a specialist at psychologytoday.com.

This habit is a doorway, not a substitute for walking through it with someone qualified if what's on the other side turns out to be bigger than expected.

The bigger picture

The BENDY Method is a 12-week habit-based course for perimenopause and menopause in bodies with hEDS, HSD, MCAS, POTS, dysautonomia, and related presentations. Join the waitlist to be first to know when enrollment opens.

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