Personally I think the question isn't how do you keep this body memory away, but how do you radically increase your ability to stay present and safe.
I think this is my T's goal, and until that time to try and minimize me being overwhelmed by memories so that I can focus on staying present and safe.
If the skills your therapist has taught you work up to a point and no farther, then I think you need to be working on more skills, or working more on the skills you've got, or both. How much do you practise your skills outside therapy?
They work great when I remember to do them. I think part of my problem is I don't notice what is happening inside me, I'm unaware of when I start to get overwhelmed until it is too late and then everything I know how to do goes out the window. I don't think it is from the skills not working well enough.
I'm going to use your fire analogy here. It's like if you are burning a candle, it is easy to blow out when it is just the candle that is lit. But if that flame catches something else on fire then simply blowing it out no longer works, soon enough many things surrounding the candle are engulfed in flames and now you need the fire department to come and put it out.
My T gives me new skills to work on at home each week typically, I practice those and usually we will talk about it. I started practicing the safe place visualization a lot more at home recently. And I have a few others that I use on a frequent basis. Basically as she adds them I start practicing them. Not all are meant to be used in her office, some are meant purely for home (shower exercise).
I'd suggest also looking generally at different ways of processing things. You don't have to go from zero to talking with your therapist about something specific. There are things that you can do inbetween. I never talk about anything in therapy without a lot of preparation, both on my own and with my therapist. Otherwise, it would be overwhelming.
That's the thing. I've done the in-between at this point regarding this specific body memory.
You can start to talk around the memory in order to get closer to talking about the memory. For example, making a list of the things you're afraid will happen when you talk about it then discussing the list with your therapist without actually talking about the memory yet - doing that as a way to address your concerns and find strategies to deal with them. That means looking at more than "I think I'll dissociate". We dissociate when we don't feel safe. Why wouldn't you feel safe? What are you specifically afraid of? What would make you feel safer?
I've expressed my fears surrounding talking about the memory. Told her what I think will happen, why that scares me. The trouble I have is knowing what I need, I don't know what I need to make me feel safer because I've never been asked, I've never had a T take this kind of time with me to establish a safe environment, or build trust. It's new territory, so often it is a trial and error thing with my T. She does what she feels is appropriate at the time and I give her feedback as to whether or not it helped or not. Like last session she decided to turn on music she uses for hypnotherapy and have it play quietly in the background, that was a huge help, it calmed me and I had a really good session with her.
