Culture killED my trust in my body

Last week, I shared a laundry disaster. I ignored every internal warning about soaking a chocolate-striped bikini with a white linen shirt. The question haunting me as I stood there with bleach trying to fix it wasn’t “why on earth did I do that?” but “how did I become so good at ignoring my own expertise?”

The answer lies, I believe, in a closer look at the world we’ve inherited. I don’t for a minute believe we stumble into this pattern of self-override by accident. Nor are we stupid or incompetent for struggling with it. We live in a culture that has systematically taught us to distrust our own wisdom. So, in trying to understand these forces, I’m also trying to reclaim some self trust and one day perhaps avoid bleaching any more clothes.

Are We Man or Machine?

Modern life has shaped us to see our bodies as machines that can run indefinitely without a regular service. With better healthcare, longer lives, and prosperity, it feels natural to just plough on, right? I'm not so sure. We've changed how we relate to our rhythms, and the results aren't looking so brilliant.

Below I identify five culprits that systematically tune us out from ourselves, that have made us strangers to our own bodies:

1. Industrial Programming Against Natural Rhythms

For thousands of years, humans lived by the sun's cycle, the seasons, the ebb and flow of energy. Then, quite suddenly in evolutionary terms, we needed bodies available when factories opened, no matter what our internal clocks said. The work shift separated us from circadian rhythms that guided us for millennia.

These rhythms coordinate when your body expects to eat, digest, think clearly, repair itself. When we override this with artificial schedules, we ignore a raft of internal signals. The language around productivity says it all: "No pain, no gain," "Sleep when you're dead," "Push through it." Our bodies are so often screaming at us to slow down, rest, take it a little easier, but persistence is the virtue that comes out on top.

2. Industries That Profit From Your Disconnection

Some of our disconnection comes from industries that profit by convincing us our natural instincts are broken. The diet industry, such a pal to women the world over, is the multi-billion-pound empire that's somehow persuaded us that our hunger cues, refined over millions of years of evolution, can't be trusted without their magic apps and point systems.

Your body is a bloody marvel at knowing what it needs. Holiday in Greece and watch yourself naturally shift from tourist fare to craving the local producer’s fresh beans, eggplant, and sun-ripened tomatoes. But the diet industry reduces this magnificent, seasonal local fare to grilled chicken gyros with lettuce because "the points stack up correctly."

Social media operates the same disconnection racket, just with algorithms instead of calorie counters. These platforms use intermittent reinforcement schedules, the same psychological mechanism that makes gambling addictive, to keep you scrolling rather than listening to yourself. Buy a sports bra online and suddenly you're served Ozempic ads, as the algorithm diagnoses you with inadequacies you didn't know you had.

The pattern is so damn obvious. When you trust your own signals, you don't need their products. And which big business wants that?

3. Medical Systems That Teach Distrust

Modern medicine can transplant hearts and cure cancers, and yet we've created it’s also a system that make us distrust our own flesh and blood, telling us to ignore what you feel until it becomes serious enough to warrant expensive intervention.

Just last week, my aunt presented to her doctor of twenty years with blood in her stool—about as subtle as a brick through a window when it comes to bodily warnings. His response? An 18-month wait for an endoscopy. She's buggered off elsewhere, naturally.

Silence your pain with pills the ads tell us, rather than ‘be curious about the information you might decode’. I ignored fatigue for decades with caffeine and bloody-mindedness. The more we silence these signals, the louder our bodies have to shout to get our attention.

4. Educational Programming From Childhood

You're eight years old, desperate for a wee, but the teacher says "You should have gone at break time." Your leg is bouncing under the desk because you've been sitting for two hours straight, but you get told to "settle down and concentrate." Your stomach is growling because you ate lunch three hours ago, but you can’t eat again until you get home.

Welcome to your first masterclass in ignoring your body's perfectly sensible requests.

Every day for twelve or so years, we train children that their internal guidance system is fundamentally unreliable. Sit still when you need to move. Eat when the bell rings, not when you're hungry. Hold your bladder until institutional schedules permit relief. The message is that your body can and should be managed, rather than that it has wisdom to be trusted.

It took me until bloody 45 to discover I genuinely can't focus sitting still for more than 35 minutes—something any observant eight-year-old could have told me. I'd spent decades forcing myself through hours-long sessions, then getting frustrated when I became sedentary. Now I work in 30-minute bursts (ish), and my productivity has never been better.

Half my job involves helping adults unlearn this early programming. Imagine if we didn't spend twelve years drilling it into them in the first place.

5. Digital Anaesthesia and Outsourced Awareness

Hands up who is now an expert at numbing uncomfortable sensations and emotions through endless scrolling, avoiding anxiety, solitude, or intense thoughts by giving our attention to devices instead of ourselves. Both my hands are up, you should have seen my efforts yesterday.

I never really understood giving my bodily awareness to machines. I walk until I want to turn around. I judge my sleep quality when I wake. Why do I need an app telling me about my REM cycles, my step count, or buzzing to drink water? You probably know you need more water, to get to bed earlier, to walk more. Is it really more complex than that?

In an era of unprecedented access to health information we are handing our awareness over to devices instead of asking ourselves: Do I need to move or rest? Is my heart rate up because of anxiety and what's causing it? The intel we need is inside—in waking depleted, slumping energy, ongoing anxiety, the ache from being hunched over a laptop. Do I need an app to validate that feeling?

NOW THE GOOD NEWS: YOU HAVE A BEAUTIFULLY PATIENT BODY

With all these influences, how could you not be disconnected from the signs you need to govern yourself to marvellous health? Dear woman, it’s not your fault you’re out of tune with your brilliant instinctive wisdom.

The beautiful thing about your body is its endless patience. No matter how long you’ve ignored its signals, it keeps sending them, trying to help you optimise health, energy, and wellbeing. It’s been waiting for you to tune back in.

Research shows people in industrialised societies have poorer interoception (sensing internal signals) than those in traditional cultures. We’ve lost some fluency in our body’s language, and poor interoception contributes to anxiety, depression, and chronic disease.

The good news is this disconnection isn’t permanent. Neuroplasticity that helped us adapt to modern life can help us reclaim internal wisdom. The signals are still there, guiding us to better health and clearer decisions. We just need to remember how to listen.

Next week: Practical surprisingly simple approaches that can transform how you feel within days.