A Definition of Body Memories
The spontaneous feelings or sensations experienced within or on one's body which cannot be explained by medical evaluation and which can be understood as a dissociated component of a traumatic event that occurred in a person's past (Mayran, 1993). Examples of body memories are pelvic pain, irritable bowel, abdominal pain, headaches, anal pain, oral sensations, paralysis and seizures. Headaches occur in 78.7% of DID patients (Rosss, 1989). Patients may also complain of sensations of being touched by unseen hands. Pain may run the full continuum of intensity and be described in various ways such as burning, aching, stabbing, or throbbing.
Why do Body Memories Occur?
According to Putnam (1989) unexplained pain syndromes are often due to the "recall and re-experiencence of prior trauma." Body memories are spontaneous, parial abreaction of previously experienced trauma. Although we generally think of spontaneous abreaction (flashbacks) as being visual in nature, spontaneous abreaction may occur in any of the dissociated aspects of memory, including knowledge, sensation, emotion, and behavoir. Body memories are sensory flashbacks
How To Help
If a survivor is complaining of somatic symptoms it is important to ask some questions. Your therapist can ask you, "What is the color of your pain?" Visualize it. The color, when visualized, is changing. Close your eyes an focus again for the size and color of the pain. On reexamination the pain should have reduced in size and should be a lighter or cooler color. With time the pain might become, for example, "the size of a shoe box that is now gray," instead of the size of a small room and dark red. Continue with this excersize with your therapist until the pain is significantly reduced or eliminated.
Counting Technique:
This technique is actually a fractionated, guided abreaction experience. Ask the part that is experiencing the painif it would be okay to use a counting technique to relieve his or her pain. Asking permission for all procedures is important because it helps you stay in control of your treatment with your therapist. In order to help you achieve a relaxed state count from 1 to 5, with your therapist there to encourage you to "go with the pain" allowing it to build to the greatest intensity that you have experienced it in the past. Then, with your therapists guidance, count back down from 5 to 1 and allow yourself to then let go of the pain, with your therapists reassurance that you do not have to hold onto it anymore. Visual cues of pain flowing away like a stream or warm rain can be helpful. While internalizing the pain may have been helpful and necessary in the past to protect yourself from further abuse, but now you're in a safe place where it is no longer necessary. In fact, the internalized pain is adversly affecting you presently. Dissociated pain that flashes back to the present causes increased levels of anxiety, fear, and dissociation (Mayran, 1993).
Internal Container Technique:
Your therapist is trained to help you achieve a relaxed state. Visually, they can help you to create an internal container in which the pain can be stored temporarily until it can be worked on in therapy. You'll need to describe the internal container in which you want to store the pain. It can be an unbreakable balloon, a strong box, a VCR tape, or locked room. Visualize the pain flowing into the container or being placed there. Although this is usually thought of as a temporary solution, I have known of cases where the effect was long lasting if not permanent. One client I worked with said that she had visualized putting her pain in a box and then keeping the box in the desk drawer of her therapists office. She had done this two years before, and that specific pain had not returned. We laughed about whether her therapist would get stuck with the pain if she opened the drawer!
Journaling:
If the pain is purposely being projected by another part in the system, then you can as this alter/part (the one projecting the pain) if he/she could agree to write out what she/he is wanting you to know instead of a memory, or the sensation of a memory, as a manipulative device.
Overall the only lasting technique I know to help discharge body memories is full processing of the memory (Mayran, 1993).
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT BODY MEMORIES MAY ACTUALLY BE MEDICAL SYMPTOMS. MEDICAL CONDITIONS CAN SOMETIMES BE MISTAKEN FOR BODY MEMORIES.
References
1. Putnam, F. W., (1989). Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality. New York: Guilford.
2. Rose, C. A., 1989). Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment. New York: Jon Wiley and Son, Inc.
3. Mayran, L. W., (1993) Unpublished Manuscript.
Copyright 1996, Gay M. Fite, M.Ed.