I find the wording of being "inside your body" quite weird really, i only started hearing it in the last few years.
When I was little, I always pictured myself like the little alien guy controlling a body like in Men and Black. I remember the day I realised I was a person, I was watching pinocchio and I looked at myself in the mirror, I was like 6 or 7, maybe older. I remember seeing my body and knowing my mind and thinking, okay, these things fit together to make a person. There's this thing inside that makes the other stuff work.
So I never really thought of it like a whole being, more like, I guess, an avatar. They say bpd people have probelms with identity, but that's not really how I would call it. It was like the outside didn't match up, or it was a thing that I didn't have much control over. I've never felt particularly coordinated or graceful (and that's feedback i received), and my body, or fatness was fair game to be commented, criticised, observed, sexualised. It didn't feel like a good thing to own or have.
When I was younger, I was told a lot - that's not ladylike to sit like that, walk like that. Your body isn't doing what it should do, and that is your fault. You are failing to do the bare minimum of being a girl, and you're fat too.
later, it was like there was a narrow window of expectation, and if you could exist like that, you would be largely left alone. Look like a doll, dress like a doll, act like a doll. So i did that for a bit. I think I was quite good at it. And you do get left alone, although some people don't like that either, though at least the men would say that to your face and not behind your back.
Also i wanted to be so small. i hated being my height, because the other girls got to be small and that meant people would take care of them. I wanted to shrink myself as small as possible so that someone would love me and take care of me. i know it doesn't work like that.
I couldn't do it after I got pregnant and i had to figure it out again. Being pregnant is another "being inside your body" thing - because i didn't feel that at all, but I did feel like another person was inside my body, because they were. I struggled a lot and no-one felt sympathy that the thing I'd struggled to maintain got thrown out very abruptly, and it never came back. I remember a nurse saying, you might feel like yourself again in a few months, it might take a few years. It felt like dread and sadness.
I like going to the gym, I like strength training, I wish they taught you how to do that when you were young instead of running or sport which is useless if you don't have the strength in the first place. I like that it has shown me stuff that my body can do, but it's just about my body, not anyone elses, there's no classes of people that are more coordinated or uncomfy situations. It is slow and gradual and it feels like growing into my body because it feels like I am getting bigger on the inside, instead of feeling full of stuffing like like a doll