How often do you ask to be held? Or tell a friend you wish a hug if you end up struggling and need to feel protected and supported? “Physical touch is as essential because the oxygen we breathe in, the food we eat,” says Dr McGlone, professor of neuroscience. It’s fundamental to our wellbeing, our mental and physical health, and yet our buttoned-up culture often discourages and appears down on asking for help, admitting you must be comforted. 

After watching her brother Tom’s body fail him and his death from cancer at just 19, Freya Bromley developed an advanced relationship together with her own body. Not only did she feel disconnected physically and emotionally, but she discovered that everybody round her was often equally incapable of offering physical and emotional support. 

Afraid to ask someone to carry her, she used sex as a solution to get the touch she craved. Finding that her friends rejected her attempts to debate her grief about Tom, she would get hysterical over bad dates because people know learn how to be sympathetic about being ghosted. Discouraged to make noise through excessive crying at her brother’s funeral, her anger and confusion and pain built up until she began going to pools so she could scream underwater and let every part out. 

It was these two avenues – sex and swimming, particularly within the cold water experienced while wild swimming the tidal pools across the country – that almost all helped Bromley release her anger, find comfort in being held, and connect together with her body again. It’s a journey she documents in her latest book, The Tidal 12 months. Here she talks to Dazed about learning to understand her body, finding places to scream and her struggles to precise grief and trauma.

There’s a study that found men are seen as whole, whereas women are viewed as body parts. Within the book, you speak about how swimming helped you think that of your body as an entire.

Freya Bromley: I’m at all times pondering [about my body] ‘if I could just change this bit, it might be higher’. But if you begin to get within the practice of celebrating your body for movement and for having the ability to conquer cold and being resilient, you appreciate it more. 

I also think there’s something about seeing women’s bodies of all different ages, sizes [while swimming]. How often can we see a unadorned body of a 50, 60, 70 yr old woman? And once I view their bodies I’m not pondering, ‘oh, take a look at her thighs’. I’m pondering, ‘that’s so nice, I can see the road where her calves are all red from the water after which her feet are only a bit more white because she’s had wet socks on’. Those things are very nice and people are the belongings you notice. You don’t criticise other people’s bodies as much as you do your individual. 

And the swimming itself, I imagine you’re really interested by your body especially the primary moment if you get that rush of cold. Has that also helped by way of interested by your body as more of a functioning thing?

Freya Bromley: Definitely, because having the ability to have a body that may move you across a body of water is amazing. That’s something to rejoice, to feel fortunate for. It’s been really good to prioritise strength over something more aesthetic. Swimming also has an intensity that actually creates a connection along with your body slightly than your mind. I feel for anybody that has anxiety, depression, PTSD, or any sort of grief, you’re so in your head on a regular basis that having the ability to be in your body is admittedly freeing.

The one other way you get that’s with sex. As a society, we’re not excellent at finding acceptable ways to precise anger. And if you undergo something horrible, you’re so offended and confused on the world. How are you speculated to let those feelings move through your body? I felt like I wasn’t allowed to shout, not allowed to be aggressive. For a very long time, [I coped] through the intensity of sex after which had a rather more healthy way of doing it with swimming. I feel those two things are really, really connected.

Within the book you say that sometimes you would like your body to feel prefer it’s every part – the sex side. After which sometimes you would like the sensation that your body is nothing and the weightlessness that you simply get from swimming. Do you see those as a binary?

Freya Bromley: I suppose you’re feeling such as you’re drifting between the 2 plenty of the time. Watching Tom get unwell gave me quite an advanced relationship with my body because I watched his body fail him. I’d like to say it made me appreciate the amazing things my body can do while I’m well. Nevertheless it also makes you’re feeling like at any point you possibly can be let down. 

While you’re swimming, you’re floating, you’re feeling weightless but you furthermore may feel held. A number of people say that to me, ‘I actually like swimming because I get to feel held’. And I feel for a lot of us, why now we have sex isn’t the actual sex, it’s not for the orgasm. I used to be sleeping around loads when Tom died, because I used to be too scared to ask for anyone to carry me. How lots of us are sleeping with people because we just are too scared to ask for a hug?

It’s interesting, that dual aspect of swimming, because you could have that weightlessness but then you definitely also really feel your body, especially in cold water.

Freya Bromley: I feel that intense feeling of the cold also helps me hook up with anger another way since it feels so intense. After I first met my partner, I remember him saying, ‘I’m into swimming since it’s a extremely good place to scream’. I still do this quite loads because if you could have a lot frustration, what are you speculated to do with that? Where in London are you able to go to scream? 

There’s plenty of cultures on the planet which have wailing, grief cries. When someone dies people at funerals will audibly cry and scream. And it’s really essential for the grieving process so that you can give you the chance to precise those feelings. But if you happen to go to British funerals, it’s like everybody’s attempting to actively not cry. I feel there are some things that you must move through your body. So I at all times recommend people to go to a pool and scream. Or have someone to fuck really intensely. And then you definitely could make that very same noise, each are the identical.

You speak about using sex as a solution to cope along with your grief – was it only a distraction or has it been healing as well?

Freya Bromley: It was only a distraction at first. Not only sex, but dating created a lot drama in my life. People have no idea learn how to speak about death, they didn’t need to check with me about death. But when I said, ‘this guy I’ve been on three dates with who I believed really liked me has ghosted me’, people know what to do. It’s like, ‘Oh, come over tonight. We’ll reread the text together and I’ll bring a bottle of wine’. So I almost used it as an excuse to cry with my friends. I’d get hysterical over dating stuff going improper. 

But now sex has develop into a bit more healing since it’s a solution to express intense, ugly emotions. Sex is a way for me to get my anger out, which sounds weird, however it’s so intense to be overcome by your body or to make noise if you orgasm. It’s almost similar to screaming and getting that anger out. I believed that if I expressed my anger, I’d never come back from it. If I went to where my grief wanted me to go, I believed I’d never return from that place. And now I find if I do express how I feel, I often feel higher afterwards.