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This message has been edited. Last edited by: blackbird,

Blackbird:

We haven't officially met, so "hi"! I'm so sorry you're in such a bad place tonight. I feel for you...I can hear the aching in your heart.

quote:

I've been in an odd place all day today, as I often am- like I just don't know about the passage of time or where I am, what I should be doing, or what I have done all day. I feel bad for my kids, I just don't seem to be a real person for them, many, many days. How did I end like this? I don't think I really exist sometimes. I wish my P loved me, that's all I can think or live for

I feel like this most of the time myself, and it is a terrible way to feel. Now you know why I have to spill all my guts to my T on Friday. I can't go on living like this anymore. I don't know if it will help me to get it off my chest, but at this point, anything that might help feels like it's worth a try. I wish I had some words of wisdom and comfort, but I just wanted to let you know that you are not alone in your feelings. Hang in there!

(((((HUGS)))))

MTF

BB

Sorry to hear you are in such a difficult place just now. That feeling of not being connected with life after a session is truly awful and very confusing. I remember when my kids were smaller, feeling totally diconnected from them and everything in the real world for days. Funny thing was, they never ever seemed to notice - You might find that you, as I am sure you are, are so practised at being a brilliant mum that you will still be very much the same wonderful mum for them, even in these times. You will feel the pain and disconnect way more than anybody will ever know.

As for body memories - I know them very well. They are (one of) my huge stumbling blocks in thererapy. I don't know offically how to describe and I'm imagining it might be different for everybody.
For me it's like having a trauma memory of something terrible - some have words attached, some have pictures some have a bit or none of both, but a deep felt sense of what happened. So, and I'll try to think of something that won't trigger anybody as an example, if the trauma was say someone being stepped on by an elephant, then they might get an overwhelming sensation again of EXACTLY the same pain in their foot, feel the same hurt and even see the same injury even though of course now it's not actually happening again now. Head can sometimes know that but body carries on reliving. I don't know if that helps at all, maybe for others it's different but that's sort of what happens for me - over and over and it's truly horrid and makes me feel like I am truly mad. I try and try to rationalise it and think my way out of happening again, but nothing seems to work.

BB take care, I hope today might feel a little easier for you. Keep posting

starfish

Hi BB

Yes I think being in therapy can make the body memories worse, all the things we've been shutting away come bubbling up and need to be expressed somehow. I have too been there with the rib sensation and it took a lot of talking about but now has almost gone and I know WHY I had that sensation and have finally been able to talk about it and get it somehow out of me. Other things have risen up and replaced it but I have several achievements to look back on when the current ones feel unbearable.

I know it is scary to tell your P - I don't believe he will think for a moment you are 'getting ideas and making them true'. My T always believes what I say, she says people just don't make up stuff like that. And it's true - it's too awful to make up. So I hope you might tell him and get the suport you need

No doubting you are ever anything but a good mum
and with sweet kids (little Blackbird chicks lol)

Hug to you to keep for when things feel tough

starfish

Sorry to butt into the thread like this - sorry Blackbird I haven’t got any experience of strong feelings for a therapist so I’ve got zilch in the way of shared experiences to offer - and I’d really like to, you sound in so much pain I wish there were something I could say to reach you. :hug:

I’ve butted in to ask about body memories. My question is, when you have body memories, how do you end up knowing they are body memories? Is there a point at which something clicks and you suddenly remember consciously the connection between the body memory and how it came to exist? Is it necessary to make some kind of conscious connection or do you just somehow ‘know’ what it’s all about? I’ve no idea what it’s about, but it sounds perfectly logical to me that you can store memories in your body without your conscious mind remembering them.

Lamplighter

This forum is truly amazing. I never ever thought I would or could be sitting here reading and responding to a thread on body memories because I never realised that there might be a safe place for me to do it, outside of my Ts office and that anybody else would understand and not think I was mad.

So thank you BB for your question and for dragonfly's, CT's and MTF's responses. I am not the only one who has this happen to them For me the hardest part is getting rid of them permanently and I know the first thing I have to do is acknowledge them to myself, them to my T, talk about them, put them back in context and talk about that event so it no longer terrifies me. Dragonfly, I would be really interested to know how you and your T manage these memories. For me, you have described the process just as it is. How do you then deal with them?

My difficulty is the saying and describing bit. I get easily embarrassed and then ashamed of anything personal or intimate and totally clam up. I know what needs to be said but don't know how. This isn't helped by the child in me getting very confused when triggered as to what is going on and even knowing the words to say. Does this make sense for any of you? How do some of you say difficult stuff/words? Do any of you feel that you might taint your T with what you say? So I tend to keep quiet and wait for the pain to go, rather than find the vocab to describe where it is When I have managed to even say a little, my T has always been very encouraging and supportive, unshocked and accepting, it's me who can't deal with it. So then I think I might be stuck with them.

AG, if you are reading this, have you any of your wise thoughts? Cheeky to ask, but you are a bit of a guru

BB, when is your next session? Hope you are ok and feeling a bit more connected and stronger.

starfish

Ooops so sorry Lamplighter I forgot to include you when saying thankyou.

In answer to your question

quote:

How do you end up knowing they are body memories?

I don't really know, but the sensations are so powerful and so strong and always for me the same. They also feel familiar - sort of a deja vu, even though I might not be able to place them. I think somewhere inside I have always been able to place mine - I have just avoided doing so at all costs. Can't cope with facing the reality. Maybe that's why they won't go away

Don't know if this answers your question a tincy bit

starfish

Dragonfly, thank you so much for your honesty. Yes your post has helped enormously. Just to read your words was so strange for me - I could have written nearly every one myself. Sad too that you have to go through it but relief that what happens to me is not a unique experience because I am mad or bad - or both!

I love the count to three and blurt it out method! Am going to give that a go for sure. Those words sit on my tongue but will not come out, I am not a prude but for some reason the words sound so stark in the confines of that room. I tell myself 'just say it. She knows what you're going to say anyway'. (Why do they always know? It's very irritating )

quote:

When the BM;'s have kicked in , then i have to stop and sit quietly and acknowledge the pain and keep telling myself that it will go and not to panic.It does go after a minute or two, but not before its taken the wind out of me. Its very hard at these times to try and stay in my head, without wandering off with the fairies!

Oh so true. But I tend to dissociate as soon as I feel any BMs coming, so never have the chance to sit them out. I think I assume when I feel them that it's happened again and I need to escape fast. I shall think more about your method of getting to a manageable point and sticking there before they kick in.

Thanks for that and for your reply,

starfish

Hi everyone,

I just want to thank you all for sharing so much in your contributions to this thread. I know it's really hard to write about. I don't have this experience of body memories but it really helps me to understand, and it's important in my life that I do understand because it affects people I'm close to.

Dragonfly, I just want to say that I read the post you deleted. It and the other things you've written here are enormously courageous, important and beautiful in their honesty. It's so rare for people to write about these things the way that they are. And yet we learn so much from reading about it, understanding how abuse affects people, understanding in depth and detail how the healing process works from people who are going through it. I understand that you felt like you needed to take it down to get back some equilibrium and I'm glad you acted to feel safe. I just want you to know that I read it and I wasn't disgusted or contaminated or upset - just awed by your beautiful honesty and generosity.

You guys are all making an amazing resource here for other people who are going through the same thing, now and in the future.

OK first may I say how honored I am to know you all. The incredible courage and strength displayed daily here is just amazing to see.

Dragonfly, I read your post before you took it down and was very moved. It was very brave of you to talk so openly about what happened to you and may I tell you that I am so sorry for what you experienced and having to deal with the horror of that. I actually felt sick reading your post because it was so familiar so I completely understood when I came back and you said you had gotten sick and taken it down. But please know this, you have NOTHING to be ashamed of, this was an act of evil that was done to you, and your extraordinary reaction is to use the knowledge you have gained to help others, and bring good out of evil. The pain of what happened will never entirely go away, but it does get easier to handle and the memories become less intrusive with time.

(((Dragonfly))))

Blackbird,
I am concerned with the description of your therapist. The impatience and defensiveness tell me that too much of him is in the room. Your description of your interaction about the yawn sounds like a re-enactment, not therapy. You expressed your feelings, your Ts reaction was to be dismissive of your feelings, and to explain to you why he didn't do anything wrong. And in the end you "felt forced" into giving him an apology. In other words, you had to suppress you're feelings and a genuine expression of who you really are in order to retain the relationship. That is the pattern most of us experienced as children that led us to therapy.

Transference can cause us to see problems that don't exist in the here and now. I spent several years with my therapist convinced he was either angry, fed up or going to abandon me and he never came close to being any of those things. But he NEVER dismissed my feelings. He heard them, understood them and helped me put them into context and understand just why it made sense that I felt that way.

So your T is probably sincere in what he's saying about caring about you, but he's allowing too many of his own feelings and insecurities to surface in therapy. This relationship, just like in childhood, should be ALL about your needs. It is your T's ethical responsibility to get his own needs met outside of your therapy. Having him put his own needs not to feel like he's screwing up or failing you BEFORE how you're feeling is just too reminiscient of the behavior that sends us to therapy in the first place. I'm glad you're paying attention to how you're feeling. You did the right thing, you spoke up about how you were feeling, but I really don't like the reaction.

And of course you won't believe what he said. My father told me over and over that he loved me while abusing me and completely ignoring my needs. I learned early and hard not to trust what people say. That's why it's important for a T to maintain a steady presence. They have to BE trustworthy, and caring and compassionate over and over and over again until you can learn to trust it.

Starfish, not cheeky at all, I love feeling wanted. But we need to lose the word guru, at least about me. The guru would be my T.

Body memories are difficult to deal with usually for three main reasons.

Reason #1: You were very young when whatever happened, happened. Our frontal lobe doesn't come "online" until around the age of three. That means before that age we lack the capacity to use symbols and abstract reasoning and language so that we do not form "normal" memories of events. So it is only the memories of the emotions which are encoded somatically in our bodies that are retained. So there's literally nothing there to connect these feelings too. And trying to articulate the feelings is so difficult because you literally had NO WORDS to describe what you were feeling when it happened. Which as an adult feels crazy.

Reason #2: Trauma is overwhelming by definition. Traumatic memories are often stored differenty because you were not able to process the emotions at the time or make sense of what was happening. So the events, and more importantly, the overly intense emotions are put away completely raw. So when the memory comes back, you experience it as taking place NOW, not something that happened that you are recalling. So you feel it in your body.

Reason #3: A very common defense for children who experience long term trauma is disassociation. You take yourself and your mind as far away from what is happening as you can manage. This can involve covering your eyes, closing your ears, or diving so deep into yourself that you literally ignore all sensory input. So it may be that you are missing visuals or sounds or anything concrete. But again, the emotions and feelings in your body were encoded and retained without you having to be conscious of them.

This is a big part of what makes processing this type of stuff so difficult. But what really makes it so difficult is that these feelings literally felt life threatening and overwhelming when you experienced them the first time. So on some level, it feels like when you let them out you are either going to be annihilated or you're going to destroy the person with you or both. It's very common for long term trauma victims to be so scared of their own emotions that they believe that experiencing those emotions will destroy them or their relationships. I know I went through it, one of my earliest emails from my T was to reassure me that he wasn't scared and I wasn't going to destroy anything.

So of course when these memories start to come back they feel incredibly threatening. It's not so much you're memory of what happened as it is the memory of how you felt that is so overwhelming. Add into that the fact that if your abuser was your attachment figure then no one was teaching you how to regulate your emotions and deal with intense and overwhelming feelings. You literally don't know how to tolerate these feelings. You need someone, a limbic other, who can regulate your feelings to contain you so that you can let them out. and you have to do it a bit at a time so as not to be overwhelmed. John Briere, a leading trauma expert, (h/t to True North!) talks about the theraputic window. You have to be present enough to experience the feelings but not do so too quickly so that you're not overwhelmed. It can be a really delicate balance.

So all of the fears and difficulties everyone is talking about is part and parcel of the process. And it's very right brain that's why no one can quite put into words how to do this. You have to just tolerate the fear and confusion and do as much as you're capable of at any given time. But each success, each time you can feel and express a little piece and recieve acceptance and understanding makes it infintesimally easier the next time. And as you learn to be able to regulate your emotions, the more you can tolerate. So eventually, you desensitize yourself to the memories and feelings evoked so that they're no longer threatening.

So you do the terrifying work of letting the feelings come and you struggle to put words on it until you can make sense of it. And I can tell you from my experience that you can trust your body. But I really do understand how confusing this feels. I have often had physical sensations and even movements and it's almost like being possessed, I'm flinching and moving and feeling pain and have no idea why, but it was in articulating as well as I could what it felt like that allowed me to make some kind of sense of what happened. And I've had to learn to live with the frustration of only knowing bits and pieces and knowing I may never fill in the gaps. I hope some of that helps.

And I'm sorry I've been MIA. I've been having a very difficult time being triggered about leaving therapy and coping with all the feelings it's been bringing up, and it's been very difficult to post, both about how I'm feeling because it's difficult to put into words and I'm working through it and because it hasn't left me feeling like I have very much energy beyond just struggling through my days. If I can ever figure out how to say it I'll post about it.

OK I'm a little worried about hitting the post button. I have a feeling this could be the longest post I've ever written. Which is saying alot. Anyone still awake, anyone?

AG

I'm still awake AG! Thank you for articulating all of that. Some of it I know but it's good to read it again and especially in your wording. I know it's been really hard for you to address your termination but you are being brave just to acknowledge that and please remember we are all here to support and listen to you.

Thanks for giving me some things to think about.

((((AG))))

TN

Hey BB-

quote:

CT-I just wanted to ask- or if anyone can, maybe you could give me a bit more input on the transference thing.

I think my previous post wasn't very relevant to your situation... I apologize for that. I think I was reading too much into some things, -hopefully I didn't confuse you with my ramblings. I think AG wonderfully answered your above question though, and expressed some very real concerns about your P.

-CT

Dragonfly

I’m so sorry that putting up that post triggered you so badly - especially when you put yourself through so much pain to write it in the first place. But I completely understand the need to withdraw - I get that with quite insignificant stuff I put up, never mind something as profoundly painful and frightening as what you are talking about. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to read it, even though I was probably on the board at the time (I was reading through previous threads and didn’t get back to current ones until you’d already deleted it). I really hope that writing it out has actually helped you in some small way, and maybe when you’re feeling a LOT stronger you might feel like reposting it. I wish I had been able to read it.

But what you explained in your next posts makes a lot of sense, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about such painful things.

Blackbird

AG has echoed my thoughts when I read your description of how your P is with you, especially the yawning and then discounting your feelings about it. (If my T yawned I’d be all over the place, never mind that it might be perfectly valid and ‘human’ to yawn, I’d expect him to acknowledge at least how it would affect me and to allow me to express how it makes me feel without invalidating those feelings by putting the onus on me to simply like it or lump it.)

But it’s also your other comments about your unease with him and yes I get that you’re confused about whether it’s ‘really’ happening or whether you are projecting or interpreting it according to ‘faulty’ perceptions on your part - nevertheless you ought to feel safe enough to talk to him about it without his turning it back on you. (I feel like that all the time, is it me or is it something I’m picking up in him that is really there - only I’m lucky enough to have a T who allows me to talk about it anyway so it’s getting easier to confront him regardless of whether it’s something I’m ‘inventing’ or not.)

I guess in the end if you’re getting enough support and understanding from him to make the therapy effective then that’s what matters. I tend to be a bit black and white now about picking up on therapists who give me cause to distrust them because in the past I always blamed me for how I reacted and ended up putting up with a lot of bad therapy as a result. I hope you can reach a point where you do get the reassurance you need (and so you should!), it’s always a horrible situation to have to think about changing therapists.

BB
I was sad to read your distress about starting this thread and so sorry you might feel guilty for causing any upset to anybody. I really don't think you did. What you posed was a really sensible question that other people might not have thought of asking or not been able to.

I have found the answers so helpful and very affirming for me and am so glad I had the chance to try and say how it is for me. I have never ever been able to talk to anybody about BMs apart from my T until now (and even have more questions to ask ) so for me to post my reply was an enormous step. So thank you BB . There is always a risk in triggering someone with what we write, but everybody seems to be sensitive and as careful as they can be.I hope I did not write anything that caused any discomfort to anybody.

Draginfly I did not see your post (but so wish I had as I just feel sure it would ring out true with me), but cannot begin tell you the power of your other posts and descriptions. I sat there reading it thinking: OMG it's not just me. How many others are there experiencing this? How brave of someone to describe how they feel and make themselves vulnerable in order to help others so effectively. I was profoundly moved that you were sharing something that was so similar to what I experience and myself feel such shame about. Thank you.

AG thank you too for your wise reply, you clarify and normalise a lot like my T does, maybe that's why I find your responses helpful!
The reasons you gave were spot on for me, some memories though I would have had words for - was at a verbal age - but I think fear stopped me ever processing verbally. And yes I totally dissociated at the time so have very jumbled recall of other things.

Thank you for telling me I can trust my body, I needed to hear that because I don't. It keeps remembering when I don't want it to and I guess I like to feel always in control, so it seems in many ways it has let me down for quite a while (many times and in many ways )

Thank you also for

quote:

So you do the terrifying work of letting the feelings come and you struggle to put words on it until you can make sense of it.

..that bit gives me hope that they will go. This is what my T keeps telling me and some have gone, or faded to become manageable at least. It's the putting words on it that is so very hard. I have Dragonfly's count to three strategy ,for when I'm ashamed of the words,but often I don't know what the word is I need, even simple ones can fail me.

Thanks really to all of you

starfish