I've had several body memories, and they aren't fun. Sometimes it's apparent right off the bat that you are having a reaction that doesn't fit what's going on, other times it has been a reaction that I've felt unsettled, bothered, but that I haven't been able to put my finger on without a few minutes of reflection; it's needed some thought, and thinking about the different feelings I had, putting words to them, that then has triggered a "Wait a minute, that does NOT fit, that is so . . . wrong for what was going on, what's the problem?"
It isn't that I WANT things to be a body memory. Let me explain what went on in the "think about it for a minute" example.
My husband came home from work and I was lying in bed (laying?). He sat down on the edge of the bed and stroked my arm, with his fingers together, palm side (but not the palm, just the fingers) against my arm, stroking downwards on my arm in what felt like a petting motion. It felt exactly like you would pet a dog or cat.
I instantly had a negative reaction, but kept it inside as I didn't want to make him feel bad. He'd hold my shoulder, then go back to this stroking of my arm. I can't even type it without emotionally & mentally shuddering; the reaction is visceral, which I think is key to confirming it's a body memory, after the few minutes of thought/investigation.
After a minute or three of lying there, I eventually told him it bothered me, and that I'd like him to not do it anymore. That it felt as if he were petting me like a pet, or that he was pawing (at) me. He immediately stiffened and went into his "hurt" mode. I hate that. I can understand it, though.
Soon thereafter he left the room, and I lay there feeling the after-echoes of the intense feelings his touching me in that way had caused. I started to think, "It makes me shudder, to think of it" and that made something "click" inside me; I then thought, "That is SO not what I feel his intention was; he was being loving, caring, affectionate; something is going on and I need to figure it out."
So, I spent a couple of minutes thinking about it, the shuddering thing having caused me to realize that the negative feelings I was having were so off-kilter with the actual event (which still makes me cringe, feel disgust and revulsion, etc.), with the actual intentions I feel my husband had. I realized with not too much more thought, investigation, etcetera that all the feelings and reactive thoughts I had above, from disgust, to cringing, to feeling pawed and petted, to other things like feeling it was creepy, very creepy, it was overtly possessive, even to the point of feeling that it was someone "owning" me, that the gesture meant I was owned by someone else, . . . well I realized relatively quickly that this felt like a body memory, and that's when everything settled into place.
This whole process maybe took 5 minutes, and only that long because I was trying to endure the touch, and wait for him to leave. I didn't rationalize what happened, that's not what I was doing either. I was looking for something to explain why I felt so . . . strongly, overwhelmingly so, to explain why it was so visceral, that the feelings were so sure, so . . . immediate . . . so . . . just THERE, as a visceral (sorry to use that so much, it fits though) reaction to the event.
Body memory is the only fit. It feels . . . right.
The other time that I remember most clearly, something physical was going on, in a way that was different than usual, and I remember feeling . . . strange . . . odd . . . and a sense of . . . body deja vu, like the position, and his position, and our relative positions and proximities to each other and various parts of each other, was something . . . that my body had experienced before. There was a sense of . . . the same sense of botheredness, of something being . . . off, that I had with the arm stroking today. Within a minute or two, I settled on body memory, even though I'd never heard of the concept before. It felt like my body was remembering something that my mind did not; I can't explain what else about it led me to that conclusion; it's been about 6 or 7 years now.
I've had one or two other things, but these two are the best representations of what happened.
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