"body" Memory

[zeckster81]

Would someone please explain to me generally what happens during a body memory? My therapist said that's what I'm experiencing. I ended up in the ER because I felt like someone was whipping my back. He explained to me it could be that my body is remembering the physical sensation of what happened when I was with my ex. He did whip me in the location of the pain. Does this sound like a Body Memory?

 

[Healing Reins]

For me what happens is (because I was raped) it tends to hurt a lot down there. Body memories are just your body remembering what happened. Often times for me flashbacks and body memories go hand in hand. If I have a flashback I will most likely have a body memory. I think body memories can be scary, but at the same time I feel like we have so much control over how scary it is. For me what helps is to ground myself and know that I'm not really there. I like to do 4squared breathing..I think it's called that. you breathe in for four seconds, hold it for four seconds, let it out for four seconds, and do that four times. That is what grounded me.

and to answer your question, it sounds like either a really bad flashback or a body memory. It could be a little bit of both. I'm sorry you went through that. Going to the ER is never any fun. I hope you feel better soon.

 

[Deleted member 19804]

I'm sorry you went through that. It does sound like a body memory to me.
I get something similar when my boyfriend touches me in a certain way. Then I always get flashbacks to the time I was raped.

Yours does sound more extreme, though. I guess body memories show how strongly body and mind are connected.

If you experience something like this again, breathing and grounding exercises can help you calm down and get back to the here and now. Perhaps your therapist can give you some pointers as to how you can most effectively calm yourself in such a situation.

I hope you feel better soon. Wish you the best

 

[Hashi]

Yes, it can happen like this. I've had body memories like someone pushing me forward with their hand on my back, or moving me around, or feeling the vibration of something being thrown onto the floor behind me.

I've also had pain and inability to move as a body memory (at the time, this was from being drugged). I've had how it felt when someone was giving me cardiopulmonary resuscitation. I've had every kind of body memory, even bruising and bleeding.

At first I couldn't tell what was happening in the present and what was a body memory. I became able to tell the difference eventually.

It can be really disturbing and upsetting, but I see it as necessary processing. For me it's been a sign that I need to work on that aspect - maybe directly like journaling or talking in therapy, maybe indirectly like doing a collage to represent healing for it. I also had a somatic therapy (craniosacral therapy) to help release the trauma memory held in my body.

 

[laurelheorot]

It can be really disturbing and upsetting, but I see it as necessary processing

I hadn't seen body memories like that before. But you're right - like other trauma responses, they tell us something. Thanks for getting me to think differently about that!

I get them daily, and I hate them. I feel like things are in my mouth and often can't eat because of it, feel like there are huge weights on me (i.e. the body of my abuser), or that I am being strangled, or hit (or about to be hit - I'll flinch and be terrified for a second or two and wait for the hit to come - sometimes I feel like it does, sometimes I don't). I find them confusing and annoying, and terrifying - they're the thing I hate least about PTSD.

But as @Hashi points out, body memories tell me a lot about what happened to me, and what my brain is doing about it. When I think about it rationally, it's actually an amazing mechanism that can be really interesting.

As other people have said, grounding techniques are really helpful. I also jot down body memories so that I can group them according to memory and form a better understanding of what happened and talk it through with my therapist (I do this with flashbacks, too; I find it helpful to be able to write down "stories" about my experiences so I feel like I have a handle on what happened).

 

[shimmerz]

These body memories helped me to nail down my story which were dead on 4 years later when I got documented confirmation that my body was telling me exactly what had happened.

As an brief background is needed here I was terrorized, had NDEs etc before the age of two when I was adopted. I was told my birth parents 'really loved me and made the supreme sacrifice in giving me up for adoption. I met my birth parents when I was 19 and they did not negate this idea. The event that rekindled my PTSD had to do with stairs and my ex husband. He nearly killed my children as he physically fought with them as he tried to throw me over the staircase to a drop of 18 feet. I watched in slow motion as my children almost went over as they tried to protect me. It was my youngest son who almost dropped to his death over the stairs while my middle son almost went over the railing to the ground beneath. I had suffered abuse for a few years at the hands of my ex but was very strong up until this point. It was after this event that I broke.

After that I kept falling down staircases. To the point that I would not go upstairs anymore. I was terrified of them. I had nightmares about them and if I was forced to walk up or down stairs friends literally supported me as I walked down them. It was always down the stairs that was the problem. Not up the stairs. There are many more childhood stories but I won't bore you with those.

After reliving and not realizing what the problem was with me and stairs it all came together when I received the Children's Aid (CAS) account of my tenure with them in my foster homes and the details of my birth parents at that time. I almost dropped to the floor when I found that one of the few decent foster homes I went to recognized and CAS documented that I was 'a very well adjusted and fearless little girl' whose only real issue was an apparent terror of walking down stairs. They apparently had to pick me up and I would scream and cry and hold onto them for dear life if I went anywhere near stairs. They even detailed that it didn't matter how large the staircase was. At the time this was documented I was 10 months old.

So my falling down stairs and my constant flashbacks to my youngest son almost going over the railing at the top of the stairs (45 years later and with no conscious knowledge of what had happened back before I was 1 year old) was my body's way of telling me that my body remembered and my mind was attempting to let me know.

Sorry this is so wordy and hope that it helps. I could tell many more stories of how listening to these signs help tremendously but I won't bore you.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am so sorry you are experiencing this! It must have been very severe and frightening for you to have ended up in the ER. Are you getting the support you need, and the education about this stuff that you need?

I have all sorts of "body memories" but they're not attached to any semantic/episodic memories (yet). My shoulders jerk around, my torso twist violently, I get severe pain in my left side near my ribs, my face move in funny ways. I get chronic itching and pins and needles in my right arm. And I have disabling chronic pain in sacrum, hip, and legs. I am learning to accept that "body memories" are real...just stored differently than the memory we usually think about.

 

[zeckster81]

Thank you everyone for sharing. I am doing a lot better. I just wanted to be reassured that I'm not alone and what I am experiencing is indeed a body memory. My therapist was right, but I figured confirmation from the "real" pros would make me feel more normal.

 

[nicole1978]

I have body memories to of being raped n abused n yes it hurts and is scary extremely I've tried to commit suicide 7 times from the fear so i understand what it's like to feel like someone is touching you and there's no one thrre

 

[Wounded Scribe]

Thank You for bringing this up. New Here. I've been trying to start an intro topic but I've deleted it several times.

I didn't know there was such a thing as body memory...

The event/events transpired from the age of 4 until the night I fired a rifle into my chest in the woods 2 decades ago.

The shooting drama transpired over a 3 hour period. I remember the first hour from the time I got off the school bus, the walk into the woods and sitting with the rifle for nearly an hour. The moments leading up to that resolute moment. The next 2 hours, from the shot until I was under the care of a surgeon was about 2 hours. Of that 2 hours I can recall about 40 minutes maybe.

My personal life has imploded over the past 2 years and I'm seeking a disability. I was in sales. However, before that I was in healthcare and I never felt comfortable doing CPR. I can't watch it on television. My wife likes to watch those real stories from the ER/Trauma Room and invariably there's a story where someone codes and CPR is performed.

Over the 20 years my skin would crawl as if there were hands inside my thoracic cavity grabbing forcefully. I could always feel the sensation of tools scraping, prodding and this god awful violent pressure in the center of my chest, just over my sternum. I've often chalked this up to the effects of the kinetic energy from the muzzle.

3 years ago I started counseling. Individual counseling, marriage was in hard spot and I wanted to save it. The therapist brought up the issue of PTSD and I shrugged it off. I remember telling her, "No. The child abuse that led to the shooting, and shooting were over 20 years ago. I'm fine."

She wanted to dig and so I let her dig. One day I was driving my car and I nearly crashed because the flashback was foreign to my body but it was also my body. I saw and felt hands working to save my life in a most violent manner. One of the final memories I have before going under was the trauma team preparing to work on me in the trauma room. I could hear the tools being laid out. I remember looking around the room though I was intubated. Perhaps this is evidence of an NDE....

Thank you so much for bringing up the issue of body memory because I want to scream at the top of my lungs to the world, for every person that ever asked me, "Hey. What the h#ll is wrong with you?!?!" Now I understand. A lesser person would not have survived the things so many here have survived. The scars, physical, emotional, and spiritual meant we were stronger than the event/events that nearly took our life.

I started compiling my records for the disability and yesterday I got a copy of my chest x-ray report findings after one of many trips to the ER last year. I had chest pains and so they wanted to rule things out. The report said it all. The report supported why I would have body memories. Shrapnel, surgical clips remain inside of me from that ordeal. Those things are foreign, or perhaps, once they were foreign to my body but over the years my body had to resign itself that they would forever be a part of me and it had to come to terms with that. It had to come to terms with the fact I indeed shot and killed myself for a few moments in time and if not for a determined surgeon and his team I would not be alive today to know the life I have. It's not perfect but, it's riddled with anxiety, flashbacks, emotional detached issues, etc etc...but it's my life, and I'm alive.