[possum220]

What are body Memories??

I find that when I am emotionally numb my neck often goes into spasms. It seems that it is usual that I may be under stress or some-one inside is uncomfortable. The spasms can be small and range to really painful/hard ones when I am talking to my Therapist.

Are body Memories attached to alters?? If not - what sets the spasms off ?.

Possum

[multipixie9]

When a child is overwhelmed with fear, pain or other strong emotions which the child can not handle - they often blank those feelings and the memories of what caused them out, forgetting them completely.

For reasons I've never heard mentioned the body retains the incidents somehow stored in the tissue, at a cellular level. At some point later in life the body begins to ask and then yell and then scream for release from the past and the person will find their body has strange aches, pains, spasms, or rashes or other psychosomatic symptoms manifesting. When the person is able to regain their memory and deal with it the body's need for the pain is over and it disappears - unless it has permanently damaged the body due to long term stress. It can leave the person with certain weaknesses of body and mind and emotion.

One good example I heard once - just an example - was of someone who began to have headaches most nights around bedtime, 11:00pm. Eventually she was able to remember that a relative who sexually abused her regularly visited her bedroom around 11:00 pm each time. She began to deal with the real trauma and her body stopped sending headaches as a signal of the pain and stress she had felt being forced to keep such pain secret due to the threats of her abuser.

In my own life, the first time I seriously dated someone I "suddenly" began to have severe colitis symptoms. Even the possibility of me getting physical with this man freaked my body and possibly my alts and the problems I began to have were a real romance killer. He even figured it out before I did - since all my childhood sexual and other abuse was still blocked - He told me he believed that I was getting sick because we were getting serious. It would be 9 more years and after i was married before I began to discover what my body was screaming about.

Having body memories is very normal for people with trauma and / or abuse. Hope your's are not too bad; therapy can really help with that.

[possum220]

Thanks Multipixie

So a child is screaming for release? I feel like I am so new at understanding my way in all of this. How do I release a scream from a muscle spasm in my throat? Some-times my neck is forced straight up and sometimes it goes down? Damn this is hard stuff.

Possum

[Hunny]

"So a child is screaming for release? I feel like I am so new at understanding my way in all of this. How do I release a scream from a muscle spasm in my throat? Some-times my neck is forced straight up and sometimes it goes down?"

Oh, my, I can so relate to this inner scream...my heart goes out to you.

I do think there is some help. My therapist uses 'release points' when this kind of intensity occurs. There are jaw, chest, throat, tummy (nausea) and other release points!

How it has been explained to me, is that the body holds tension from the trauma/abuse. There is a place in the brain where that specific trauma can be released with the use of the release points. It may take several times of doing this in a session but eventually the intensity is diminished/released completely and the body can carry on with the cognitive or other therapy. Where I have received this help is in conjunction with OEI therapy.

Perhaps your T could adapt some of these release techniques into your t or you could try it when you learn how. I use it anywhere when I begin to feel these issues!

Hope this helps, somewhat.

[possum220]

Dear IceStatue,

Thanks for your response. I will just need to find the release points for my neck. I also get frustrated that my country seems to be years behind other countries when is comes to therapy.

My T does CBT but what is OEI therapy please?

Any help is appreciated.

Possum

Ummm...hey guys, I just noticed this thread.

I was just wondering if this would count as a body memory:

(****trigger warning just in case because I don't know what triggers you guys and I don't want you to get hurt****)

I don't know when it started, but for years and years now at what seems like completely random times my neck will tingle. Not like the pins and needles kind but more like a fuzzy tickle sensation, and the only way to cure it for the longest of times was to pull my shirt collar onto my chin. Yeah, it's kinda strange and I've looked it up and there is no medical explanation

More recently though I've also gotten the same sensation + warmth in my right palm whenever a certain little alt comes out and the only real thing that makes it go away is hurting the hand (or maybe that just distracts me until it does away?) I hate hate hate that sensation.

I asked my former counselor about it and she said that she has no idea, and that it could be. (she was a nice lady but more often then not she wasn't helpful)

Originally Posted by multipixie9

For reasons I've never heard mentioned the body retains the incidents somehow stored in the tissue, at a cellular level.

Have you ever read The Body Keeps The Score? (van der Kolk) Prolonged, severe abuse and trauma can actually change the way we store the memories that we work so hard to forget. Clench your fist and hold it. That's sort of what our bodies do with the memory of trauma. The "fist" can only stay like that for so long without needing to "let go." If our minds aren't ready to look at it, the release (traumatic memory) has to come out somewhere.

Here's a better, more intellectual explanation.

Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.

Intense emotions at the time of the trauma initiate the long-term conditional responses to reminders of the event, which are associated both with chronic alterations in the physiological stress response and with the amnesias and hypermnesias characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Continued physiological hyperarousal and altered stress hormone secretion affect the ongoing evaluation of sensory stimuli as well.

Although memory is ordinarily an active and constructive process, in PTSD failure of declarative memory may lead to organization of the trauma on a somatosensory level (as visual images or physical sensations) that is relatively impervious to change.

The inability of people with PTSD to integrate traumatic experiences and their tendency, instead, to continuously relieve the past are mirrored physiologically and hormonally in the misinterpretation of innocuous stimuli as potential threats.

Animal research suggests that intense emotional memories are processed outside of the hippocampally mediated memory system and are difficult to extinguish.

[Hunny]

Possum,

I know! This process sometimes feels like it takes sooo long. I get frustrated too.

I found these release points really very helpful, though. I understand the reasons behind them working too, even though I have a little difficulty being clear about it here.

When I get released and relieved I can carry on with the inner therapy process. I used to have such a build up of tension before I tried this. It was like, before trying these release points, I needed another session just to get rid of the built up body pain, ahhhh! Too, too much.

Here is a bit of a quote from the website. Although there is no mention of neck pain I know that there are release points for more than mentioned here:

"the three main OEI techniques of “Switching”, “Sweeping”, and “Glitch Massaging”...great additions to...“release points” for relief from chest compression (hyperventilation & cessation of breathing), throat constriction (often associated with panic attacks) and nausea."

I think there is someone in Australia practising this. I'll see if I can find out where, and a name for you, and get back to you. You could try the email as well. Maybe your T should check it out too.

http://oneeyeintegration.com/about_t...evelopment.htm

I sometimes have to work long days so I may be a little slow getting back but hang on and I will get back. Keep me posted if you find out more before I do (if you want to)

[possum220]

Dear Kaika - The symptoms that you refer to appear in the document that IceStatue has posted. It sounds like you have body memory but please don't quote me as I am just beginning to learn about this.

Dear Orange Blossom - Thanks for your input. My body may have broken down in other areas but it is excellent at retaining garbage that I have no memory of.

Dear IceStatue - Thank you for your post and the link to the article. I read it. I kind of understood parts of it. I have sent an email to the person listed as a contact point. I will wait to see what happens. As for my T he has taken up dealing with eating disorders as a speciality, so I dont know how keen he will be to add to his already overloaded working days.

Thanks

Possum

[possum220]

Dear IceStatue,

Thanks for the name of Audrey Jones in Australia. She is a fair distance from me. But I will check it out.

Cheers

Possum

[Hunny]

Possum,

You are welcome. How many miles away? Perhaps she could come your way?

Ice

[possum220]

Dear IceStatue,

She is in another state all together. 24hours drive away. At least now I have her phone number and email address.

I really need to talk to my psychiatrist about it all.

Possum

[iamtwilight]

thank you possum for this thread and everyone for their replies!

i've been dealing with this stuff for a while now, and got a new set of symptoms and thought it was multiple sclerosis setting in.

talk about hypochondria.

safe hugs to all who want them from
twilight

[Hunny]

All the best. I am hopin' whatever you choose to do that you receive some relief.

Take care.

Ice

[EbonyJW]

WOw your situation is alot like mine. Except in the beginning of our relationship we had no problem with sex just me approaching with it I coulsn't do. After I had my daughter, I would freak out when my husband would touch me. I still haven't got complete memories of my abuse, mostly feeelings. In a way I want to know exactly what happened, but seems like survivors who reemmber, struggle more.

[Can't Remember]

I've been wondering about this myself. I get migraines in the afternoons and then wake up every morning at 3:30 on the dot. Must mean something. Sometimes I don't want to remember. I'm afraid.

[possum220]

Dear Ebony - Maybe this is something you can bring up with your therapist about. If they don't know anything about body memories google it, print it, and take it to your Therapist. Survivors of abuse who remember may struggle more but at least they have the ability, if they want to, to talk about it. Its not so buried.

Dear Can't Remember - I sometimes get migraines in the afternoons from not eating. So I need to have a snack. Or you could have a food allergy. I am sensitive to acidic foods as they bring on migraines. Oranges bring on migraines for me. Or it could be a body memory. Talk to your therapist. Waking up in the night at the same times might be a Body Memory. Either way try not to be too afraid as a body memory is only the body trying to protect you from something. (even though they can be really stressing - stressing might make your migraines worse).

Possum