Looking For Feedback On Body Memories

[Clc122]

Hi. After two years of simply stabilizing with my T, we are starting to do some of the more heavy trauma work. My T's style is very much somatic therapy--we use movement all the time. At first, it was a little strange just because I wasn't used to moving around so much in therapy. But now, it has become really useful and has allowed me to process my traumas much, much faster than just regular talk therapy. However, it has also brought up a lot of body memories that I am unfamiliar with, such as sore and aching hips, temperature changes, and the freezing up of my hands and arms. The sensations have stayed with me and while not debilitating, they do feel both strange and familiar at the same time. I am just wondering if anyone else has tried this type of therapy, if you had body memories and how you best dealt with shaking those feelings outside of therapy so you can just live your life? Also, how do you differentiate a body memory from something physical like muscle strain or menstrual cramps? Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

[One step at a time]

I'm pretty new to this sort of thing, so insert a great, big, I-may-be-totally-wrong disclaimer here.

Shaking the body memories off outside of therapy doesn't work for me - I end up suppressing or denying them, which leads to becoming more symptomatic in other ways. I have been learning to stay aware of them and continue through them, or if they are too intense, to slow down the other parts of my life to make room.
As I process, they fade. Some take weeks to fade from (1) something pressing and distracting and like-it's happening-now to (2) something in the background to (3) not there unless I am stressed or triggered, and then (4) they can still pop up from time to time (more and more rarely).

For differentiating, I'm very curious about what other people will say.
There is a whole set of sensations for me that are usually triggered by stuff, and are accompanied by intense fear and impulse to dissociate. I call most of these body memories. I still don't have confidence in some of them, especially the ones that are only body memories without context - an accompanying flashback/memory - which makes me feel more sure it was real.

Also I think that the body reacting to emotion is different from body memories. So for me, my body feeling cold is a reaction to feeling emotions, not something that actually happened when I was hurt, while other sensations are "memories" - things that actually happened and that I end up re-experiencing.