What do body memories feel like?

[The ANP]

My body memories are usually triggered by touch in the here and now. Rape survivor. My partner touches my necl, all of a sudden I am back there. My mind wants to disappear. I feel total body terror. That touch triggered a memory from another time. I was 17, so I remember in a troubling, fragmented, emotionally charged and alternately numb way.

 

[Ccla]

this is very similar to my experience - even to feeling like I have to apologise. I feel sensations inside me (when I say inside me I mean a particular place I don't Li,e to say the words for). It's a range of sensations from just a sensation to quite a strong pain. Sometime it a pain to the right, inside me, sometime it's like there's quite a large object in me. Quite often I also feel like I'm going to vomit.
On three or four occasions in therapy I've had fuller memories that seem to start with repeated images that are quite mundane - the fence at the end of the garden, details of furniture or carpet, sometimes there are surprising (shocking) images of the person or images of e.g him kneeling - then sometimes continuous sensations where my body also moves. Once it included a moving sensation inside me. A couple of times I felt like something was taking up space in my mouth, and once my mouth opened my. One time my body was suddenly jolted. Quite often I say 'ow' and then I have to explain to my analyst that it wasn't exactly painful, more like a distant sensation.
I don't hear or smell anything - it's just images and sensations that sometimes almost build into what seems like a whole event.
When it's happening, part of me wants it to stop but part of me wants it to go on because I want to know what bloody happened. But now I also want it to be over. There have been 3 separate events, and it feels like enough.
I don't exactly have corroborating evidence, but lots of bits and pieces - stories that got repeated over and over that never made sense, my mother's suspicions at the time, the fact that I hated him so much for no apparent reason... and all the things I didn't understand about my life that took me into therapy in the first place...
It's all still quite new and I can't quite understand that it might be a real thing that happened to me when I was four - I start feeling sorry for the little girl and then sometimes I break down because it's me. Sorry for saying all of this - it feels strange and I often feel like I'm making it up. When the images come, sometimes I feel like I've made them come.

 

[SnowRose890]

1. For me, it doesn't feel as if there is another person there with me touching me but it is rather an overall feeling of pressure and discomfort (said lightly). My body memories, when I have them, which usually only happens when I have gone too long without managing my symptoms, usually have me rocking back and forth and running water on the back of my neck (calms the nervous system) to stop them. The running water works.

2. Usually my body memories are mixed with an overwhelming general knowledge that I have been abused and that the body memories are very painful because of that abuse.

3. They can be excruciating depending on the type of abuse that is being physiologically remembered. (Refer to #1's answer.)

4. For me, usually powerful emotions like feeling agonized simultaneously occur. It is just a feeling of suffering. Also, perhaps a feeling of disbelief can occur as I can't believe I have been abused this much for the body memories to be this bad (just saying). I don't perceive the actual events to be so bad as I had disassociated from any and all feelings during them which results in a feeling of disbelief during the body memories = "Why are my body memories this bad if the actual abuse wasn't this bad?" (It really was that bad; my mind has just blocked those parts out and also did so during the events.)

5. It feels similar to another person being there but in a surreal type of way. It feels like having a nightmare when you are awake. It feels like knowing you are feeling all these sensations but knowing deep down that no one else is actually there who is doing them so they are from the past.

6. Body memories are not sensations that can be ignored. "Everyday sensations," which I'm assuming means "unabusive sensations," do not have the capacity to override our entire thought process like body memories do. When I have a full body memory experience, there is absolutely nothing I can do about my thinking processes. The body, mind, and emotions are all related and connected. Everyday sensations can be positive or negative; body memories from PTSD are negative and don't feel good.

7. For me, body memories only come when I have gone for a longer period of time not managing my symptoms. For example, today I had a busy day. I didn't have a chance to stop and check in with myself about how I was feeling. As a result, my flashbacks etc. were pushed back to my unconscious mind to feel at a later time. When I finally had the chance to wind down, at the end of the night, the body memory occurred. Body memories, for me, happen when I have gone too long of a time not allowing myself to have a flashback. For me, something as simple as walking a block down the street can cause a flashback. This is no problem as long as I can return home to feel the flashback and manage the symptoms. If I cannot, and I push it away because I am busy, my body will end up pushing back with full force.

 

[Maroon731]

For me, body memories mean the tremble, the fear manifested in a shake, or frozen, or my head gets dizzy. The reaction. If I were to think of the physical abuse, it would trigger this type of body memory. Most times I am not thinking of the trauma, I just have a physical anxiety reaction in my body. I used to think it was a "vibe" - maybe someone was doing a voodoo on me, or something like that (had a friend once that used to research black/white magic which I am not really in to - she is no longer a friend, narc story I would suppose). Anyway, I used to think someone or something was messing with me on a "vibe" level to make me shake. Now I realize it is probably some subconscious EF. I'm trying to figure it out more. But now I am not as freaked out when it or and episode comes on. Like I could kinda feel it now but I often feel a slight buzz, now I just am trying to not let it take me down the hole. Anyway - this has been my experience.

 

[Inside Ana]

Its called somatic memory.