Why It’s Hard for A Woman to Trust Her Body (and Why It Matters)

Listening to and trusting my body has been one of the most transformative shifts of my healing journey. And truthfully, life continues to invite me deeper into this trust. I’m standing in one of those invitations right now, a moment of integration, of listening more closely, of responding more honestly. I know I’m not alone in this.

Reconnecting with the body is a cornerstone of my healing framework. Learning to listen to it, converse with it, respect its rhythms, and respond to its needs is how we rebuild self-trust from the inside out. When we follow through on what our body is asking for (rest, nourishment, movement, expression) we begin to trust ourselves again.

And yet, for many women, learning to trust the body feels anything but simple.

So many of us are living in survival mode: constantly alert, constantly performing, constantly “holding it all together.” When you don’t feel safe in your environment, trusting yourself (let alone your body) can feel impossible. Over time, this disconnection often leads to burnout, resentment, frustration, and a quiet sense of unfulfilment that no amount of external success can soothe.

I’ve lived this reality firsthand. Years of disconnection from my body showed up as hair thinning, the loss of my menstrual cycle, and deep body dysmorphia. Without realizing it, I had become my own harshest critic—isolating myself, trying to “figure it all out” alone. Yet beneath it all, what I longed for most was to be loved, held, and accepted exactly as I was.

Through my own trials and initiations, I slowly learned how to build a healthier relationship with my body. That shift changed everything: how I show up with my family and friends, how I move through the world, how I relate to myself. I moved from rushing, pushing, forcing, and controlling… into greater ease, trust, and enjoyment of life.

Today, it is a privilege to guide women back into relationship with the wisdom of their bodies, so they can lead from wholeness, trust, and love.

In this article, I want to explore why it’s so hard for women to trust our bodies, and why reclaiming that trust matters more than ever.

The Historical Layer

For women, distrust of the body isn’t just personal, it’s collective and ancestral.

For centuries, women’s bodies (and energy) were framed as dangerous, sinful, and in need of being hidden or controlled. Wise women, healers, and midwives, those deeply connected to the rhythms of nature, the shifting shades of the moon and the wisdom in the body, were labeled threats. Many were persecuted, silenced, or killed for embodying their feminine gifts.

This history lives in our nervous systems.

Even if we can’t name it consciously, many women still carry an inherited fear of trusting their intuition, their sensations, their inner knowing.

The Cultural Layer

Modern patriarchal culture rewards linear living: wake up, push through the day, produce, perform, repeat. This way of life directly contradicts a woman’s cyclical blueprint.

Over time, many women disconnect from their bodies to keep up with the pace.

Sensations are numbed. Needs are postponed. Rest is earned rather than honored.

Hustle becomes normalized, and survival mode becomes the default.

A woman in chronic survival mode may appear “fine” on the outside, yet internally she experiences what I call soul death: depression, resentment, exhaustion, and a quiet grief for the life she’s not living.

Add to this the immense pressure to be perfect (especially in relation to beauty) and the disconnection deepens. Many women learn to believe their worth is tied to their appearance, their desirability and how much they feel needed. We are sold endless solutions to “fix” our bodies, emotions, and natural rhythms. And in accepting the plethora of pills available nowadays, our pain remains hidden and dismissed and our intuition overridden.

Logic is favored over inner knowing. Productivity over presence. Doing over being.

**NOTE: While I’m focusing on women here, I want to acknowledge that patriarchal systems also harm men and disconnect them from their bodies and emotional worlds. But for the sake of this article, I chose to focus on women.

The Personal Layer

On an individual level, trusting the body can feel hard when it was never modeled for us, or when it feels like our body has betrayed us.

Many women learned early that it wasn’t safe to express joy, sensuality, radiance, or authenticity. Perhaps we were shamed, shut down, or hurt when we did.

We learned to protect ourselves by withholding parts of who we are.

As our bodies change (through puberty, illness, trauma, aging, or chronic symptoms) it can feel easier to control them than to trust them.

Control feels safer than feeling. So we live from the neck up, avoiding the grief, anger, or longing stored in the body. Over time, the body becomes an inconvenience…or a problem to fix.

And the more we ignore it, the louder it must speak.

Why Trusting the Body Matters

Trusting your body matters because you cannot experience the fullness of life you crave without it.

And when you embark on the journey of healing your relationship with your body, you realize that it is inseparable from healing beliefs, emotions, and suppressed expression.

At the heart of a woman’s healing journey is the realization that she is innately worthy, without earning, proving, or external validation.

When a woman learns to trust her body, she gives herself permission to move at her own rhythm and to create a life aligned with her deepest desires (without guilt, without shame).

We are entering a new Era, one where women are reclaiming their bodies as sacred, their energy as precious, and their sensitivity as power.

This is the Era of the Embodied Woman.

As we heal ancestral wounds and step out of systems that never honored the feminine blueprint, we don’t just heal ourselves, we catalyze healing for others. One embodied woman at a time, we disrupt the old paradigm, and start building a new way of living, relating and leading.

And the beauty of this process, is that when the feminine rises, the masculine rises to meet her.

Within each of us lives feminine energy (intuition, creativity, emotional depth, nourishment) and masculine energy (presence, focus, discernment, containment). A woman’s healing journey restores right relationship between the two, where her feminine expression is witnessed, held, and honored rather than abandoned, shamed and diminished.

As self-trust grows, her feminine gifts naturally come online, and she becomes a healing force just by being Her.

A Simple Place to Begin

Learning to trust your body is a Journey Home.

I can’t give you a rigid formula. As an embodiment guide, my role is to hold space and invite women into inner journeys that transform how they relate to their bodies and to life itself. Shadow Alchemy, Tantric Wisdom, Archetypal work, and attuning to the Cycles of Nature are some of the pathways I love most.

One of the simplest and most potent ways to build trust with your body is to honor its impulses.

When you respond to your body’s needs, you show it that it can trust you. When the body feels heard, it doesn’t need to scream.

Many symptoms aren’t betrayals, they’re information & messages.

Much like a child acting out, the body is often saying something very basic: See me. Hear me. Feed me. Feel me. Below are a few foundational practices. They may seem simple, and they are. Yet it’s often the basics that disappear when life feels busy or overwhelming.

• Eat when you are physically hungry. Keep healthy food ready and nourishing snacks nearby so you can respond rather than override hunger. Pause and notice whether you’re feeding stress or true hunger.

• Stop eating when you feel physically comfortable. Overeating often points to unmet emotional needs (commonly love or acceptance). Stay curious, not critical when you find yourself over-eating! Pause and notice what is there.

• Hydrate throughout the day with water or herbal teas. Honor thirst with nourishment, over stimulants found in caffeine and high sugar drinks that will cause your energy to crash. (Pause fluids at least two hours before bed.)

• Eliminate when your body signals it’s time. Don’t delay your need to go poo-poo or pee-pee for the sake of productivity or politeness!

• Rest when you feel sleepy. Even 5-15 minutes lying flat, closing your eyes, or stepping outside can reset your nervous system and bring about freshness to your body, emotions and mind. A midday walk in nature can be profoundly regulating.

  
  

Each time you respond differently, you strengthen the bridge of trust between you and your body.

In Summary

Many women struggle to trust their bodies not because they’re broken, but because they’ve been conditioned, pressured, and disconnected over time.

Rebuilding this trust is both deeply personal and profoundly collective. When a woman learns to listen to her body, honor its rhythms, and move from self-trust, she reclaims her vitality & creativity and in turn, helps reshape the world around her.

A Gentle Invitation

If something in this article resonated, know that you don’t have to walk this path alone. I guide women in reconnecting with their bodies, restoring self-trust, and living in alignment with their natural rhythms through retreats, one-on-one journeys, and group immersions.

If you feel the call to deepen your journey, I warmly invite you to reach out (sophia@alkimiahealingarts.ca).

Sometimes, one conversation is all it takes to begin coming home to yourself. 💃🏻