Weird Symptom, Needing To Protect Hands?

[sun seeker]

I don't know if I can describe this adequately but here goes my best shot.

This is only the second time I've had this symptom, the other time was around a year ago when I was having flashbacks and actively searching for knowledge of what happened to me, which I am still hazy on. At that time I thought it was connected to some memories I was having, and I had it on and off for several days and then it stopped until now.

It's a sense of needing to keep my hands covered and pulled in towards my body to keep them safe, and that if I don't, something/someone will grab them. In bed I have to keep them under the covers. It's hard even sitting here typing, they feel so exposed. Curling up in a fetal position under the covers would feel safest, though obviously I am resisting that or I wouldn't be here typing. At the same time there is this energy in them that I don't know how to describe, that keeps making me want to shake them to get something off. Imagine a small child hysterically shaking and screaming because of something disgusting on their hands.

When this first happened, it was connected to something that made sense as a reason. I know it isn't helpful that I'm not going into detail about that. There are things I still don't feel safe putting in writing. I was with a friend at the time I was remembering this, even though I still don't know if I believe the memory, and she said my voice changed to a small child's voice and I was shaking my hands like a child would. The feeling stuck with me for a while after that, especially when I was reading a book that triggered me and kept wanting to pull my hands inside my sleeves.

I'm not sure why I started having this feeling again. I haven't been having flashbacks or even thinking about that incident. I'm not even as anxious as usual lately, more depressed. It's like I'm having the physical part of the flashback, out of the blue, but with no images or story line to go with it. Weird. Compared to some symptoms it doesn't bother me all that much, it's just perplexing. Does anyone get anything like this?

 

[KwanYingirl]

Well, I have the feeling of acid flowing through my body and I try to rip off my skin to release it. I also place my right hand over my throat in a protective way. I was smothered and strangled (one in childhood the other in my 20's). When I was first working on trauma, i trembled excessively then would faint and come to into a strange world. I'm sure it's reliving traumas, instead of triggering a nightmare or flashback, the images are intrusive memories for which I cannot put into words.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am a bundle of weird symptoms like this. The hand thing you describe is almost exactly like one of the things that happens to me. It kind of stunned me to read the part about shaking off something disgusting because that's what it feels like to me. I have a lot of body memory stuff that comes out like what you describe--without any storyline to go with it. Nothing is attached to the hand stuff for me.

Some of the other body stuff that started over a year ago with me eventually articulated into something specific--a kind of memory that I'm still having trouble accepting and am working on in therapy. I think it happened because I was doing a lot of daily work with a kind of free-form "meditation" for lack of a better word. I would just lie on the floor and try to free up my body and let it move however it wanted to. It took nine months of this before the body movements became something recognizable to me, and another few months before bits and pieces of other memory became attached to it.

I have learned that exiled parts of ourselves from the past--parts that are holding memories we can't consciously get hold of--communicate to us in odd ways like this. If we can stay open to it, listen without fear or judgment, eventually it will all link up. For me it is an excruciatingly slow process and a daily struggle to try to stay open to it and accepting of it rather than thinking it is really weird and crazy and shutting it down as best I can.

 

[sun seeker]

Thanks, both of you. @KwanYingirl, I am sorry that happened to you, and the sensation you describe sounds very uncomfortable!

@Hope4Now, thanks so much, it's interesting to read the creative way you handled body memories. I might try something like that. The strongest urge I have along with this sensation (and at a lot of other times) is to scream frantically. I've tried it a few times, in places no one would hear me, but all I get is a sore throat and still have the urge. I think I can engage the muscles and pretend without actually making any noise. It's this curiosity to know what I want to scream about so much that is bugging me. Maybe I need to just go with it. Like you, I do have a memory to link it all to but struggle to believe it could be real.