I even associate the feeling with a sort of shameful self-pity, probably because I cried and whined a lot (too much, my parents say) as a little girl and was usually told that I was making a fuss over nothing.
[As an interesting aside, the same thing happened, I'm told, when I broke my wrist initially. I fell off a piece of playground equipment, landed on my wrist, and wailed and carried on for minutes afterwards. My older brother and I were in a summer play group, and even when he told the leaders with all sincerity that even his whiny baby sister didn't usually cry this much, the leaders in their wisdom told us both that I was fine and I should stop crying. Eventually, I guess I did. It wasn't until hours later, playing out in the back yard, that I took a second tumble – whiny and clumsy, I guess – and hit the same place on my wrist and screamed an unholy scream. My mom came to take a look and found that my wrist was purple-black around the place it had been fractured. Vindication!]
I don't think I've ever told anyone that before, but that's where I feel pain physically when I'm hurting emotionally. Isn't it weird, the places our bodies choose to carry trauma?
Anyone have a weird thing they've never told to anyone before? Anonymous comments turned on and IP logging off, if anyone wants to share without sharing their identity too.
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In 2005 and 2006 I sought help for the debilitating cramps I had every time I had a period. I'd been prescribed percocet for the pain - whether I took it or not, I had to miss work every time I had a period because I couldn't move or function when a cramp came. I had every test imaginable; I had ultrasounds internally and externally, with saline solution in my uterus and without; I had lap. surgery to explore for endometriosis. The doctors found nothing.
Since beginning EMDR I've noticed that when I have a flashback or a bad dream, I get cramps. The cramps aren't linked to a period - I've been on hormones to suppress my cycle since 2006. They're pains linked to a memory I don't even consciously have. I don't know what my body has stored in that pain - rather, it's that I've come to understand and trust that my body bore witness when my mind shut down. I may never know what happened; all I can do is care for this body when it steps out of time and experiences an old hurt as if it's new.
*hugs*
Weird memories I can come up with - the above doesn't even count; pain memory as such is well-documented - but I honestly think I probably told most of them. *g*
Edited 2010-10-17 09:48 pm (UTC)
At night, I saw horrible, demonic faces hovering over my bed. I hallucinated that the doorway was shrinking in on itself and blue light was streaking along the crown molding. When I crawled out of bed and walked down the hall to the bathroom, I would stare up at the weird light.
When I was a teenager, I read, somewhere, the early signs of schizophrenia and totally freaked out, expecting to have a psychotic break any day. Never happened. The voice phenomenon became less and less frequent and is now an extremely rare occurrence. The nighttime hallucinations stopped by the time I was six, or so. My dad was furious that I was waking them up every night and eventually locked me in with the nightmares. I guess it worked.
When I was a teenager I finally told my dad, and he told me that I may have staved off schizophrenia.
Neurologically speaking, our brains take a long time to sort out sensory pathways so I suppose as children we're much more susceptible to a nerve impulse firing down the wrong pathway and triggering a hallucinatory event. I've read that babies under about 6 months literally can't differentiate sensory input - touch, smell, taste, sound, sight all use the same pathways in the brain, so listening to music or watching a picture is literally a psychedelic experience for infants that young. Cool.
The dots finally stopped after I realized I could control them -- I used to form them into the shapes of roller coasters and Ferris wheels -- and the bed-flippies happened less and less often and eventually stopped when I grew up (I was kind of enjoying them by the time they stopped.) Apparently the sensation of flipping over was caused by my inner-ear growing as I got older, and I found out later that very near-sighted people like myself can have "visual migraines" when they are young, also probably caused by the eye growing, and the brain trying to make sense of what it's seeing.
I am really glad I never told anybody about the dots -- schizophrenia runs in my family (grandmother & uncle) and I think I might have been falsely diagnosed if I'd shared!
Oh, weird! I was (up until my Lasik surgery a year ago) very nearsighted too, though not terribly so, but I guess I missed that particular experience. I so remember the falling/flipping feeling though.
My little niece was here for a sleepover a few days ago, and I was quite surprised to discover that (aged 2.5) she's suddenly entered the phase of childhood where she gets spooked at night. She's one tough little cookie most of the time but she called me into the room insisting that she was hearing noises and there was someone in the room. *shivers* Why does it sound more credible coming from such a little one? It's baffling.
I loved a talk given on the TED site by Oliver Sachs where he talked about perfectly normal, very vivid hallucinations that people who start losing their eyesight have... then he revealed that he, himself, suffered from them. Most people don't share because they're afraid they're going crazy, but apparently it happens to a ton of people.
So jealous of your LASIK! I went to see if I could get LASIK and was told I was a poor candidate.
I'll be someone told your niece, either teasing or in jest, that the monsters were coming, or she saw a cartoon that stuck in her head. Something definitely precipitated that reaction!
Huh, I've heard of that. A blind friend of mine who lost his eyesight gradually since childhood and has no vision now was telling me that he is constantly having "light shows" like flashes of colour and light even though his eyes aren't capable of seeing light anymore. Crazy!
http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/17/qa_with_oliver/