Dissociation/blocking/losing Track Of A Body Part

[Biz]

Has anyone else ever blocked/dissociated a body part?

I receive body work weekly (although currently my practitioner is out of town), and in my last appointment, I lost my right shoulder. She was working on my low back and I told her my shoulder was hurting, and then it literally just disappeared from my senses. I tried to scan and breathe in to it and I couldn't find it. I couldn't feel it resting on the table or feel any pain or pressure. It was bizarre. I never do this, but I actually made a request while receiving body work that she touch there so I would feel it. That worked somewhat (I was pretty deep in fear and it took a while to calm enough to recognize her touching).

That shoulder has been aching off and on for months and when my practitioner works on it, I often feel emotional. I talked with my practitioner about this dissociation of a body part after and she said that absolutely happens. She encouraged me to hold that as best I can and see if I can make space for whatever my body wants to tell me. I asked my therapist about it and she said it's not called dissociating, it's called blocking and that it can happen if the nervous system/body and mentality are completely cut off from each other. I believe the both of them, but my body has not 'said more' about this. I'm interested in if anyone else has felt this and what their body related to them.

 

[Chava]

This sounds somewhat familiar to me...I have lots of body stuff related to dysregulation (feel either numb or stabbing pain, comfortable middle ground is sometimes off limits). I have issues with my left arm in therapy. I doubt anything traumatic happened specifically to that arm (or more than my right arm). For me it is about my left arm "speaking" for my traumatized and non-verbal self. I've been oblivious to touch and hyper-reactive to it. Then what came out was a lot of shaking (not trauma-release sort for me, but freeze sort...or caught badly between two seemingly impossible impulses). My stuff with the arm is the really early trauma that I can't talk about (working on this in trauma-focused body psychotherapy, including Somatic Experiencing).

I get badly caught between wanting to protect myself and hurt myself, and wanting to protect myself and withdraw and wanting to connect with therapist or even a stuffed animal. My left hand used to "die" or go into a deep sleep in therapy. My right hand (my adult awareness or some part like this) could hold it and let it sleep. I forgot about that part. It seemed to die or go into this deep sleep when overwhelmed and unable to do anything. Now it's trying to do stuff, but confused. It gets very tired and needs breaks, but does not "die." Very seemingly strange, but it's good. My therapist is helping me navigate and separate impulses so they aren't all glued together (so practice tiny bit of connecting but then also lots of withdrawing and protection...not the shaking that happens when I feel like I can do neither.

I can't do bodywork (can't tolerate it because I need all this space to navigate other options) but it sounds like you have a pretty wise body worker. I've never heard the term "blocking" used this way. Separation of mental from sensory awareness is still a form of dissociation. But terms don't matter too much. Basically, your experience will be your own and might relate very little to anyone else's experience....so just helpful if your therapist and bodyworker let you follow your own process. It could be really arm-specific or it could be relating to (and communicating for) a shutdown or traumatized part of your self. Or something else. Just best to not force anything or ascribe verbal/cognitive meaning completely before letting the body just have its process.

 

[greenleaf]

@Biz and @Chava, both of your posts have parts in common with my experiences over the last couple of years. The first thing I noticed was that sections of my left shoulder's deep muscles didn't have feeling in them; only getting regular massages brought those to my awareness. Areas weren't "numb" like after novocaine at the dentist, it was more like someone expecting me to have feeling in a body part I just don't possess, like a tail. The skin never loses feeling for me. However I can really relate to the feeling that my internal "map" of my body has gaps in it sometimes.

Over time, many of these sections seem to "come back"... first I will experience some itching in there; then more itching... got really intense last week and my brain felt almost like the itching was creating static. Sometimes the itching seems like it is off in space somewhere, I cannot localize it. I've discovered that sometimes if I can find a certain muscle, it becomes clear that the floaty itching is from there.

My left side is the one with the most itching, numbness, etc. and it feels to me also like my right side is more directly controlled by my "adult self". Recently I've also realized that this part often just takes over the left side, which then is pretty tense and has less feeling; it seems to be when I feel I need to function. (I often seem to assume I really need to function but am trying to loosen this up a bit as I just go with old assumptions automatically; T pointed some of that out...)

Interesting, I wish we could send this stuff to some neuroscientists...

I can offer what helps me: for itching or "missing" muscles: a heating pad for a while, then rubbing the muscles (fascia?) with the heating pad. That felt amazing!!! Alternatively just a heating pad, or sometimes holding my left hand feels comforting to me. That sounds like what @Chava said a lot.

@Chava, I am really glad your left hand is maybe getting a bit more connected!!! That's excellent.

My posture seems to have had weird problems too -- lots of physical therapy is helping that slowly; many of the non-feeling muscles seem constantly tight, and some of this has probably been out of whack for decades -- I just always thought I was not flexible.

A lot seems tied into dissociation especially of emotions, for me. They do pop out when an area is sort of waking up. Sometimes whole contexts from childhood periods seem like the present for a while, though I never have totally lost touch with where I am. (I'm glad of that last part...) These contexts involve very different sets of emotions from my present adult life, hard to describe. I'm not getting flashbacks the way some people describe them, where they lose touch with the presence, it's more like co-consciousness.

This stuff is making some sense to me based upon what I remember doing. I spent years and years going to school while simultaneously aware of the latest home problems/dangers, thinking about what to do about what, and also trying hard to act "normal" so I'd be able to spend more time with those safer people I was meeting out there. I did talk to a few people some about the home stuff, but there was not the same understanding of trauma back then. Most of the abuse I experienced was physical with neglect (specifically of my reactions to being abused) tied into that probably due to the adults' inability to deal with various things... my brother, their own disorders, histories of abuse etc. My mother and grandmother also minimized his abusiveness on a regular, cyclical basis that I learned to predict. It would take a few days after each bad incident for everything to be "not very bad" again. He was always "better" until the next incident, though I learned not to believe that. The minimization of the incidents, pain, etc. could be tied into my not feeling my body sort of selectively.

I wonder if safety-related experiences are what start these "dissociative parts" separating, specific numbing, etc? Sort of like it takes a "Criterion A" event to start PTSD in the first place. I did really feel I had to do all that functioning in the very different environments to survive. Perhaps a deeper part of the brain is what decides where our consciousness sits amongst little functional networks..

I was fortunate to have some very capable though partly very dysfunctional people around me as a kid, too; I think some of my "parts" were able to develop some talents and I'm grateful to that. Skills to analyze this stuff in some ways has been extremely helpful to me (though my current T is helping me notice some problems with how I process some things). Well, more chocolate now.

 

[Chava]

I wonder if safety-related experiences are what start these "dissociative parts" separating, specific numbing, etc?

I don't notice this quite so much anymore, but very often the pain in my back used to connect to a weird feeling that it was not me. I could feel the pain, but it was a separate, disowned part or tightly contained, or some kind of pain I felt but did not belong to me. That whole area felt dissociated (as much as you can dissociate body parts). I don't know how to describe it really because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm getting better at tolerating the pain and responding to it. But it still feels somewhat separate. I know that makes the pain worse because I can't breathe through those muscles or feel the connection between those muscles and the rest of my body. They just lock up into their own little world and refuse help.

 

[greenleaf]

My left hand used to "die" or go into a deep sleep in therapy. My right hand (my adult awareness or some part like this) could hold it and let it sleep.

When feeling this kind of thing in my left hand, I also often notice my left eye drooping some, it blinks. I also sometimes feel a jolt after a while, usually the left foot, which jumps a bit. It feels sort of like related energy has focused for a second but mostly is not focused.

 

[greycrayon]

I've had problems with this...its rare that my internal map reaches beyond my head. Sometimes when triggered I have had the sense of losing everything from my hips downward. I also have an issue with my left breast/heart area. I feel like trapped pain, but its not mine, but I wish I could make it mine. Breathing through it is hard because when that happens my chest/windpipe area shuts down too.

 

[EarthMother]

Has anyone else ever blocked/dissociated a body part?

I receive body work weekly (although currently my p...

I studied holistic therapy and reflexology and learned that the right shoulder is associated with sex and relationships, if that helps. (Left shoulder is work and professional life).

 

[Biz]

That's really interesting and helpful. Is that something that's commonly known in Eastern/alternative medicine, @EarthMother ?