Born Detached from the Body

 

"Fibromyalgia" AI art imagined by Midjourney

Born Detached from the Body.

I never really felt my body until I got sick. Now I’m forced to feel it every day, especially in the worst ways. That’s what chronic pain means.

Being an INFJ is a very interesting experience. I was always existentially transcendent, aware of the realm of the soul alongside the material one we live in. I didn’t live within the body nor understand it as I should have. I was very aware of my being a soul that will one day leave this vessel that will age and die.

I’m sure everybody remembers a moment in childhood—maybe even now—where, one minute they’re daydreaming out a car window, and the next they have a jolting realization of “Wow, I’m a soul and this body isn’t me. I’m just wearing it to exist on this earth.” Perhaps this experience is exclusive to religious people, I’m not sure. The point is, I had that conscious understanding all the time. It was at the forefront of my mind, every day. I would be sitting with my parents or hanging out with friends and all that goes on in my head is, “How interesting that we’re all souls and none of us look like this. We’re just pretending to live these human lives because we have no choice for now.” It was very strange.

Having no understanding of how the inside of my body worked or even felt like, I pushed myself too hard at everything. At a dance routine, I’d go above and beyond, pushing my body in ways that are too extreme for a beginner. Or working out for hours on end without breaks, feeling like I’d entered a manic state of physical exercise. Or joining a 3-hour Taekwondo class on a random Thursday night despite having no history in martial arts or any sport. I went to university the next day when I should have stayed home to take care of my sore body. Rest was a foreign concept to me. 

I kept pushing my body all the time, my whole life. Including too many all-nighters, bad sleep, and just suppressing my body’s cries for help. Till it had enough and took matters into its own hands (literally—pain in the hands was where it started).

I like to think of what happened as my body quitting on me. It’s a term I picked up from a Regular Show episode. My body really did quit on me. My peripheral nervous system went haywire, permanently. Everyday, the pain signals traveling from my limbs, muscles and skin keep firing on and on. It’s like a fire alarm that won’t stop, despite there being no fire. No injuries, no ailments. Just a broken nervous system. That’s what fibromyalgia is: a chronic neuropathic pain disorder, with debatable causes, but which has a common origin of some sort of trauma. In my case, it was physical trauma. Prolonged out-of-body experience = prolonged stress and overexertion of the nervous system =  prolonged malfunctioned body.

I recommend reading the book, The Ecstatic Soul: A New Look at the INFJ Personality by Renaud Contini. It has nothing to do with fibromyalgia or any other health condition, but it’s a fascinating little book that offers a philosophical approach to understanding why the INFJ lives such a strange and metaphysical existence.

What is your experience as an INFJ like with your own body?