Somatic implicit body memories

I’m cross posting this on the different sub forums that I read.

I hope that’s ok, if not forgive me.

I’m really looking for someone who has had experience with this, to help me understand better what I have experienced.

I’ve had 2 experiences in session with my counselor and I’d like to talk about it with someone/forum members who have also had this experience.

What happened is kind of detailed and I didn’t want to repeat it on all the sub forums.

If anyone would like to talk about their experience, I would like to share mine and maybe understand what’s going on.

Thank you!!

I have had all kinds of body memories. They are awful. I don't know how much I could discuss them though. They are still very triggering for me because they are not processed or integrated yet.

I’m so sorry that you are dealing with that!

Mine have found me and I wouldn’t considered them processed or integrated either. They are all in safe places. That’s a good thing.

Thank you for your reply.

I would not want to trigger you so I’m glad I didn’t describe what my experience has been.

I think I can add this, without it being triggering. If you are triggered by reading about memory recall and the experience, please take care.

****TRIGGER WARNING****

As I said, I have experienced the somatic body memory, I know, one of the two times that I am questioning now, “What the heck just happened?”

Two weeks ago, I was talking with my counselor about the dysfunction between my mom and myself. I was feeling a little out there and not 100% all me.

He made a suggestion of recording my mom’s voice and using it for CBT desensitizaion.
I was sitting in a chair and after he said that, the floor started looking weird and too far away.

Then, I noticed the top of my head had a low current electrical feeling going through it. I don’t know any other way to describe it then quiet electricity.

I told him about it and he asked me to see what I got from it. I felt/saw/knew that it was like someone had “popped” me on top of the head. It was like a corrective pop on the top of my head. A swat.

We talked about that as I was sitting, cross legged on the floor, I noticed that my legs were vibrating with the same quiet electricity feeling that I felt in my head earlier.

I shared it with my counselor and he helped me ground and relax and it stopped.

It startled and scared me, because of an experience I had had last September. I shared it here then too.

Meeting with my counselor, I was feeling tense and anxious, and couldn’t put a word to the emotion that I was feeling. We talked about it and I realized that I was angry.

I remember that, things get fragmented, then I remember a vibrating feeling in my sternum (like the quiet electricity) and I told him what I was feeling. That time it was stronger and I couldn’t think. I felt very confused and couldn’t put words to my thoughts.

He got a piece of paper and asked me to write what I was feeling. I was still confused and the vibration moved from my sternum to my hand. The pen would hold still. He asked me to write a word and I wrote “Shaky”.

After that, I became a passenger and sat and watched, through my eyes, a hand that didn’t look like mine scribble back and forth a picture of a very young little girl. I had no control over it and there was no way to stop it. When the picture was finished, I dropped the pen on the floor.

I don’t really remember what we talked about after that happened or any of the rest of the evening.

I guess my questions are,

“Was that a somatic implicit memory, or was that another part of me that stepped in?”

“What would have happened this past time if I had leaned into it, instead of backing away from it?” That makes me feel very vulnerable.

I think the swat/pop on my head was a SI memory, but I’m not sure about the picture being drawn, or the vibration in my legs this past time.

Maybe it’s two different things working together?

It’s really scary to think about leaning into something that takes you over. It feels like purposefully jumping into a black hole.

I wish I could explain the feeling of the vibration better. It’s like it comes from the very inside of my bones.

I frequently experience my fingers and feet having that feeling in a much milder form. They usually do that when I meet with my counselor and the intensity of it depends (I believe) on what I have been journaling about the week before, and what I want to talk about.

It would feel so good to know someone else has had experiences like this.

It would also feel good to sort out what “that” is.

Thanks for hearing me.

I would value any input or shared experiences.

I've had similar experiences. Feel free to pm me.

Have you read "Waking the Tiger"? It explains the somatic memories in a way that makes sense to me. Basically the author, Peter Levine, says that when animals have a traumatic experience, they flight/fight/freeze. The freeze only kicks in when fight or flight is not an option, and it numbs them. If they survive the traumatic experience, then they do a whole body involuntary shake, and then they go about their business. This shaking allows the body to get rid of the experience. Humans usually don't shake after trauma, and this means that the memory is stored in an unhelpful way, in the body. So those weird feelings like you describe can happen when something triggers them.

He suggests that you imagine yourself successfully dealing with the trauma; fleeing to safety or fighting it off, when you experience the physical symptoms.

I'm not a therapist, but I would say that your experiences all sound familiar to me, and I would say that they are somatic memories. I am not sure what the "implicit" part means-I guess I haven't read that book

I cant tell you whether this is a somatic explicit memory in you. but I can tell you how my own treatment providers describe this...

somatic means biological connections in the body... nerves cells, skin tissue.

explicit means to be able to understand and know what is going on and being able to express that in details, clearly stated.

Implicit (the word in your title) means implied, not clearly stated, like giving someone hints but not asking or telling.

memories are anything that I remember about what I went through today, yesterday or years ago. memories can be what I experience through each of my senses or emotions. memories are not always 100% factual. sometimes it is a mix of emotions and facts, or representative of how I felt but didnt actually happen.

a non triggering example of my having a somatic ....explicit... memory is while remembering last nights dinner party, I can now today remember how holding my glass in my hand felt emotionally and physically, what it looked like, what it sounded like when I set it on the table, what the drink in the glass smelled like... and fully remember the experience of someone walking behind me bumping into me and the chair. I can also talk about these things in detail every easily and with clarity.

using the same non triggering example of my having a somatic ......implicit ...... memory

instead of remembering the dinner party as a whole memory I may remember the feeling of someone bumping into me and my chair. because I dont have a clear description of what happened and where all I have is the emotion of being bumped, and the physical feeling on my back as my chair got jolted. when telling my treatment provider I hint to the fact that maybe I got bumped or hit or have fallen, I cant clearly state what happened because I dont know, in this little snippet of memory, I just know that my back now hurts and how emotionally and physically this memory makes me feel, there are many ways a back can get hurt. only time will tell as the memory becomes more clear whether I fell, got hit or got bumped. I can hint / make guesses on what happened but the reality is I wont know until the memory changes from implicit (unclear) to explicit (clearly detailed and my able to say what happened.)

another word my therapist uses for these memories is having flashbacks if I am reliving as if its happening now when it happened in the past.

only you and your own treatment providers can say what is what in you, but I can tell you is that yes I have had both implicit and explicit memories where I am reliving them as if happening today (flashbacks)

Trailrunner I understand the feeling of having "something" move in on you like a physical sensation or an emotion or a knowledge and feeling like if you leaned into it you would fall into a black hole. I have experienced exactly that kind of feeling with somatic memories and other parts of me. There are times when I am me but aware of something else (like you've described) and I have a choice to take flight from it (purposeful escape it numb it avoid it etc) or I can turn my attention to it and ... Well. Sometimes that ends up with coconscious sharing and sometimes it ends up with horrible flashbacks.
It can be a real struggle to understand where these snippets of emotion/sensation/knowing come from or what they relate to.

Most memories have implicit and explicit aspects, but very early memories, or memories from things experienced when not fully conscious or present may be more implicit than explicit. Implicit memory is also called non-declarative memory, it's memory that exists on a pre conscious, often pre verbal level (which is why some is from before you were able to give things you experienced names or conscious representations). Explicit memory is 'facts and figures' memory - 'knowing what' something is on a level that can be consciously accessed and processed. Implicit memory is 'knowing how' memory, eg how to ride a bike, how something feels, it includes sensory, embodied (somatic) and procedural memories and exists on a deeper less conscious level in the mind. So for example today I went for walk in the park. On an explicit memory level I can remember I went for that walk, the name of the park, how long I took, some people I met, some plants and birds I saw etc - all sorts of facts about it. On an implicit level I have impressions of feelings on my emotions, my senses and my muscles, my body can recall on a somatic level how it felt to walk through the woods, my senses can 'feel' the traces of wind through my hair and over my skin, the cold of the frost, and my emotions can feel how free I felt for a while. And to take me back there on an implicit level might involve something that taps into those memory traces, such as a sound or smell that evokes those memories. Putting them all together enables memory to not just have a factual element but also meaning and emotional/somatic context. But in the brain these elements of memory are stored in different places, some are easier to access than others or require different sorts of 'keys'.

Thank you.

Your reply really validates the uncertainty, hesitance and fear of leaning into something that you don’t know the outcome of.

Unless you have experienced a jump into a black hole, there really aren’t words to describe how it feel, viscerally, to you. There’s the after effect of it trying to recover from it.

“I” know it is in the past but my emotional self does not understand that. It’s really disturbing to experience those implicit emotions layer over my conscious self.

I guess I am struggling with the inability to control it. It happens whether I choose to lean into or not.

Like the first time it happened, I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t choose to go with it, I just didn’t know what was going on and then I wasn’t “me” anymore. I was a witness.

The second time I was feeling the vibration in my legs and quietly panicked. I didn’t want to take that ride again. It’s too hard.

Is there healing and restoration without it?

I don’t know.

Thank you!

My memories, most of them, shut off at a point, that I believe, that I dissociated in that moment.

I don’t have explicit memories to write the rest of the story/know what really happened.

I believe that the rest of the memory plays out in implicit form or if something triggers one of those times that “I” was not there, the implicit plays on its own without me understanding what it is. I can only feel what it’s replaying to me.

I still don’t understand how all of that fits together with the first time it happened and somehow a picture was drawn. I really don’t understand that and how it fits into the implicit and explicit memory things.

The analogy you used about walking in the woods makes sense to me as far as my body replaying the emotions and feelings.

I’m going to open my mind to it and see what comes.

Well we have all sorts of ways to transfer information between implicit and explicit memory, dreams for example are one way we do this naturally, creative activities are another.

Some types of psychotherapy such as embodied relational therapy and art, music or dance therapy can also tap more into the realm of the implicit and help make things more explicit (this also replicates how people learn to regulate affect in development, something that gets blocked when we experience trauma or disordered attachments)

Left and right brain things. Yes.

I’ve done EMDR with my counselor and we worked through one “thing” and it helped.

Another issue came up and we were doing EMDR and something stepped up and shut it down for me. I went totally blank.

It feels somehow that this, what I’m trying to understand, came from there.

It doesn’t make sense to me but somehow it does.

I don’t have words to explain.

I’ve woken up every morning knowing that I’ve dreamt something and I can feel it and almost see it, but it’s so elusive and haunts me through my day.

It sounds like your protectors do a good job of protecting you. It must not have felt safe enough for them to allow certain things to be revealed to you yet.

I like that as a initial way to help recording mom's voice for CBT desentizitation....

It is a good way a first to take the edge of a surprise trigger. It can be surprising to know what in is ur mind when first dealing with triggers as things become raw.

This topic struck something in me. For many years on and off I have had what I can only describe as "sexual discomfort" around a certain family member. So am I maybe just over reacting or could there be something to this?
BTW, TrailRunner14, I hate that these hurtful things have happened to you but, it sounds like your counselor is helping you to deal with it. Facing pain is never easy but, coming out victorious and learning to put it behind you will reinforce your resolve and strengthen you.