A few questions arise from this. One is are you able to come to peace with not knowing? Another is when there is no story to go along with the body memory, is it still possible to release it so it isn't affecting you so much?
Still another is, is there a way of assessing the accuracy of the stories that go along with the body memories? Is it possible, specifically, to have strong reactions indicating severe trauma while working on a memory, while being inaccurate in how we explain that reaction to ourselves?
I see this post has taken quite a different turn, but I still would like to answer your original questions. Yes, it is not a problem for me of not knowing, when the narrative never comes. I always want to know, but it is just not always possible. The body memory is the most important, and to release that is entirely possible without anything but the body memory. To the brain it does not matter, what the story is, it is us who want to know. I have had discussions about this with my therapist otherwise I would not be so definite. It is the bodily processing that does the healing. I think we can be inaccurate in explaining certain reactions, but as long as we do the release work it does not matter. I would not see a way on how to assess the accuracy of the stories.
To illustrate with below story from the online article: "The limits of talk" about Bessel vd Kolk: (it is online as a pdf, I can not insert links):
"His own EMDR practice student during the training was another clinician, who refused to tell van der Kolk anything about what he wanted to work on, except that it was “some very tough stuff between me and my dad when I was little.” Overtly hostile and uncommunicative throughout the session, the clinician kept saying that he didn’t really want to share what he was upset about. As a result, van der Kolk was totally in the dark about what was going on inside the person he was trying to “help” with the EMDR.
At the end of the session, the man looked relieved of much of his distress. “How was that?” van der Kolk asked.
“I’d never refer a patient to you,” the man barked at him.
Van der Kolk replied, “Oh, why is that?”
The man replied, “I really hated the way you dropped your fingers at the end of each movement!” “But what about your original problem?” van der Kolk asked.
“Oh, I feel I completely resolved the issue with my dad.”
This episode engaged van der Kolk’s curiosity about the role of the therapeutic relationship. “This guy didn’t trust me. We didn’t have a warm relationship. I never knew anything about what was bothering him. Yet he seemed to have processed whatever it was he needed to take care of. It drove home to me the possibility that maybe people can do excellent therapeutic work, even if they don’t like and trust you (as happens, of course, in many victims of interpersonal trauma), as long as the therapist knows how to help them “digest” the imprint of the trauma.”
