Running Toward My Body Again
<<I have recurring thoughts and feelings and urges and just this pleasurable fantasy of running or exercising in general. I just want to exercise. I just want to be out in the fresh air. I want to get my heart going. I want to feel comfortable in my body using it no matter what shape it is. I want to feel just calm in my environment and just plugging along, running, whatever. It's really hard when I watch movies where there's fit people that are running. It always brings up that feeling for me and each year goes by and things have not been getting any worse. Now they finally are getting better. I'm finally figuring out things about epistemic injury and pretty soon I imagine I'll be able to come back into my body and be a human, like a normal human. Do you think this urge is still...is it trauma? Am I not going to want to work out like I used to? I don't know, man. It sounds really good, but now I'm in pain and it's hard to be a person and it's hard to motivate myself to do anything extracurricular, especially anything loaded with my past attempts at trying to mitigate my binge eating and being healthy and having a body that I felt comfortable with.>>
🧭 First: I’m Going to Answer the Question You Actually Asked
No — this urge to move is not pathology.
And no — it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to repeat the old, punishing version of exercise either.
What you’re describing is a healthy biological impulse resurfacing after a long period of bodily unsafety.
That matters.
🫀 What That Urge Actually Is (Strip the History Off It)
Before diet culture, before binge–restrict cycles, before “health,” before shame — mammals want to move.
Not to fix themselves.
Not to look a certain way.
But because movement:
discharges excess activation
regulates mood
restores proprioception
re-establishes trust with the body
creates rhythmic calm
Running, walking, swimming, cycling — these are regulation behaviors, not self-improvement projects.
The pleasure fantasy you’re having isn’t about fitness.
It’s about inhabitation.
“I want to feel at home in my body while it’s doing what bodies do.”
That’s not trauma talking.
That’s health trying to come back online.
🧠 Why Movies With Running Hit You So Hard
Because your nervous system remembers something real.
Not:
thinness
discipline
control
But:
freedom
breath
flow
effort without self-surveillance
When you see people run on screen, your system goes:
“Oh. That state exists.”
That ache is grief and orientation.
Both can be true.
⚖️ Now the Important Distinction You’re Struggling With
❌ Old Pattern (Trauma-Linked)
Exercise as correction
Exercise as compensation
Exercise as control
Exercise as punishment
Exercise as proof you’re “doing it right”
That version was tangled with binge eating, shame, and self-monitoring.
Your body remembers that cost.
So it hesitates.
✅ What’s Emerging Now (Different Animal Entirely)
Movement as discharge
Movement as rhythm
Movement as sensation
Movement without outcome
Movement without surveillance
This version doesn’t require motivation.
It requires permission and safety.
That’s why it feels good in fantasy but hard in execution —
fantasy has no consequences yet.
🪞 About the Pain and the “Hard to Be a Person” Part
This is important: pain doesn’t mean you’re failing.
When people come out of long-term dissociation or epistemic injury:
muscles wake up unevenly
posture shifts
old bracing patterns become visible
fatigue increases before it decreases
Your body is reorganizing, not breaking.
You’re not behind.
You’re early.
🧭 Answering Your Core Fear Directly
“Am I not going to want to work out like I used to?”
Good news:
You probably won’t.
Because “like you used to” was loaded.
What you may want instead is:
walking without tracking
moving without mirrors
stopping when your body says stop
starting again because it feels good, not because you “should”
That’s not less.
That’s cleaner.
🐾 What to Do (And What Not to Do)
🚫 Don’t:
set goals
make plans
optimize
fix your body
reclaim a former identity
“get back into shape”
Those wake the old system.
🟢 Do:
follow the smallest impulse
step outside without exercising
walk for 3 minutes and come back
notice how your legs feel
let “enough” be enough
You’re not training.
You’re re-establishing dialogue.
🧠 One Reframe That Might Help
Instead of asking:
“Should I exercise?”
Try:
“Is there movement my body would enjoy today, even briefly?”
Some days the answer is no.
That’s not avoidance — that’s accuracy.
Some days the answer is yes, quietly.
Those days accumulate.
🧬 Final Anchor (Please Hear This Clearly)
This urge is not trauma trying to trick you.
It’s not a compulsion.
It’s not a relapse.
It’s a mammalian signal returning once safety is no longer theoretical.
You don’t need to chase it.
You don’t need to interpret it.
You just need to not turn it back into a project.
You are not trying to become a “normal human.”
You are already doing the most human thing there is:
letting your body tell you when it’s ready to move again.
That doesn’t come with motivation.
It comes with trust.
And trust is exactly what’s growing back right now.
<<Right now the only exercise I'm getting is walking the dogs, which I was doing a lot more of in the spring, summer, and fall because the weather was better. But now it's the winter and I'm unemployed and I still try to go there, but I walk more rigidly, less far. I don't enjoy it as much because I'm anxious about falling with the ice and the snow. And so while I do find it relatively easy to get myself to the animal shelter, I do know that I experience a lot of internal noise during the process that I don't typically experience when there isn't snow. But I do feel inside that part of the reason why I'm doing the dog walks is because I think I'm trying to keep my body alive. I feel like I'm doing a lot of damage to it with the binge eating and the weed smoking, and I think I'm just trying to do whatever thing I can that seems accessible to keep health on my side. I'm trying to have healthy meals when I can except for when I binge. And I'm trying to walk the dogs even if the walks are shorter in the winter and I'm not enjoying it actually as much and I'm just doing it as an obligation to my health.>>
🧭 Let’s Name What You’re Actually Doing (Accurately)
You’re not “failing at health.”
You’re triaging.
What you’re describing is not neglect or self-sabotage — it’s a nervous system doing damage control under constrained conditions.
That matters. A lot.
🫀 Walking the Dogs Right Now Isn’t Exercise — It’s Survival Regulation
When you say:
“I think I’m trying to keep my body alive.”
That’s not metaphorical.
That’s literal.
In winter, unemployed, anxious about falling, carrying shame around food and weed — your system is doing the simplest, least loaded thing it can still access:
get out of the house
move joints
breathe cold air
maintain rhythm
be useful to another being
That’s not obligation.
That’s instinct.
🧠 Why It Feels Worse in Winter (This Is Not a Personal Failure)
Winter adds several real stressors at once:
⚠️ Threat perception (ice = fall risk)
🧊 Muscular guarding (rigid walking is protective)
🌫️ Reduced dopamine from environment
🔇 Less sensory pleasure
⏳ Unstructured time from unemployment
So your body does what bodies do:
shortens the task
tightens posture
increases internal chatter
reduces enjoyment
That’s not you “doing it wrong.”
That’s a nervous system prioritizing not getting hurt.
Enjoyment drops because safety costs more.
⚖️ About the “Obligation to Health” Feeling
This is important.
There are two very different motivations that can look identical from the outside:
❌ Old Pattern
“I have to do this to compensate for damage.”
That one is loaded with:
shame
surveillance
moral pressure
fear of bodily failure
✅ What You’re Actually Doing
“I’m doing the one thing I can reliably do to keep some baseline integrity.”
That’s not punishment.
That’s self-preservation.
The difference is subtle, but it matters.
🍃 Binge Eating & Weed: Let’s Be Honest Without Being Cruel
Right now, those are:
fast regulation
sensory dampening
relief from pressure
escape from constant monitoring
They are not evidence that you don’t care about your body.
They are evidence that:
your body is asking for relief, and these are the tools currently available.
Walking the dogs is not there to “undo” them.
It’s there to keep the system from tipping too far.
That’s a stabilizing function, not a corrective one.
🪞 Here’s the Reframe You Need Right Now
Stop evaluating your behavior by enjoyment or purity.
Evaluate it by this single question:
Does this keep me in contact with my body instead of fully abandoning it?
Dog walking, even rigid and anxious, still does that.
That’s enough for this season.
🐾 What Not to Add (Please Hear This)
Do not add:
“I should enjoy this”
“I should walk farther”
“This doesn’t count”
“I’m only doing this because I’m unhealthy”
Those thoughts are not insight.
They’re surplus cruelty.
Your body is already working.
🧭 What Might Help (Without Turning It Into a Project)
Optional. Gentle. Not goals.
Shorter walks are fine
Slower pace is fine
Walking like a cautious mammal on ice is correct
Turning back early is intelligent
Counting dog walks as “enough” is allowed
Winter is not the time to build.
It’s the time to not collapse.
🧬 The Most Important Truth to Hold
You are not exercising to become healthy.
You are moving so your body doesn’t give up on you.
That is not pathetic.
That is devotion under constraint.
Spring will come.
Pain will shift.
Capacity will change.
But right now, the task is not improvement.
It’s continuity.
And you are maintaining it — imperfectly, anxiously, humanly — but successfully.
That counts.
