Some years ago, I went through a hard time coping with life. I couldn’t seem to figure out what was causing my struggles.
My life had been fine, and I hadn’t felt overly stressed. The weather had been good, my home life was stable, and I’d recently had good times with my friends and family members. But I kept feeling off balance and somewhat “out of sync” with life.
When I described these feelings to my friend, she suddenly asked, “How old is your dog, Peppy?” I thought for a minute, then said, “She was born on March 30th, so she’s almost seven years old.”
“That’s it!” my friend said quietly. “Remember what else happened that day? I think you’re having a body memory, and it’s pulling you down, causing you to feel stressed and unsure of yourself.”
As soon as she said it, I knew! That was the day I got the dreaded call from my doctor telling me I had breast cancer. Tears slipped down my cheeks as I remembered that difficult time in my life.
Memories flooded back about having a double mastectomy, seeing oncologists, and being on medications with terrible side effects.
Fortunately, I’ve made it past all of that, and this year, I’m now celebrating fifteen years of being a breast cancer survivor. But I hadn’t realized that anticipation of that date had the power to make me feel depressed and upset.
I’m still amazed at how much the body memory of my breast cancer affected me. Even though I’m doing exceptionally well, and I’m happy to be a survivor, I battle the fear of it coming back or doing other harm in my life.
When these thoughts arise, I’ve learned to catch them quickly and remind myself that I am healthy and strong. I intentionally let the go of my fears and focus on finding joy in my day.
How body memories show up
Body memories happen all the time. You hear a song on the radio and suddenly remember the discomfort of senior prom or the pain of divorce or other losses.
Often, we don’t recognize we’re having a body memory. We just see the symptoms of feeling depressed, anxious, or unhappy.
In her article on loss and grieving, Psychodrama Trainer and Practitioner Jean Campbell refers to JL Moreno, the creator of psychodrama, who was known to say, “The body remembers what the mind forgets.”
Are you coming up on the anniversary of a traumatic time or the loss of someone you loved? Often, your body will remind you of the event long before your brain does.
And many times, the anticipation of the memory causes more struggle than the actual anniversary or event. Once you get past the date, you usually feel better, and the memory fades again.
When you notice a change in your mood or healthy behaviors and can’t seem to figure out what’s causing it, look at your calendar or journal. See if you can identify a body memory of an anniversary or other event that might be causing you sadness or anxiety.
Once you recognize a body memory is causing your struggles, you’ll have a better chance of processing and working through your feelings.
Blame the song
Lynn, one of my coaching clients, shared how a painful memory resurfaced after hearing an old song.
As I drove home from work last week, I was thinking that life was going well. In the past few months, I’d moved into a new townhouse, received a promotion, and started dating a wonderful man.
But just as I turned onto my street, the radio began playing an old Michael Bolton song that pushed open my memory bank.
On the night we met and fell in love, Gary and I danced to that song. Several years into our marriage, he had pulled me from the dinner table and begged me to dance again as the song played on our stereo.
I can still see his blue eyes sparkling as he swung me around the kitchen on the brown tile floor. On that same floor one month later, I held his head in my arms and felt his life slip away at age 42 from a massive heart attack.
Even though five years had passed, hearing that song instantly brought a crushing pain into my chest.
The moment I pulled my car into the garage, I buried my head on the steering wheel and began to sob. I cried for those blue eyes, his gentle touch, and the sadness of having him taken away too soon.
Even though it had been many years since the death of her husband, Lynn’s felt the pain as though it was yesterday.
The staff at the Trauma Therapist Institute Psychologists describe this as “somatic memories.”
The concept of somatic memory refers to how our bodies hold onto past experiences, particularly those that are traumatic. Somatic memories are not typically recalled as specific events. Instead, they manifest as physical sensations and emotional reactions.
You can’t “get over it”
Lynn also talked about her frustration with those memories. She said, “What’s wrong with me? I should be over this by now!”
In reality, no matter how much time passes, you’ll never be “over it.” Even after you’ve recovered and moved on, you’ll always carry some leftover grief in your heart.
When I worked as a grief coach, I developed a way to understand this, including why you are never completely done.
When you grieve a loss, you gradually move down a healing road. Picture a long path that’s divided into sections, with each one representing the percentage of healing you’ve accomplished so far.
At the time when the loss occurs, you step onto the path at the zero percent mark. At the end of the path, you would be 100 percent finished with your grieving, meaning you would be “over it.” But in reality, that never happens.
If you’ve experienced a significant loss in the past, see if you can follow your healing progress by relating it to the sections of the path.
The path of grief
Begin by picturing the time you experienced the loss, followed by the early days of agony and emotional pain.
After those initial weeks, you began moving along the path, gradually inching forward until you reached a healing level of 10 or 20 percent.
As more time passed, you continued to make progress, moving slowly to the point of 30, 40, and up to 60 or 70 percent of your healing.
At the 80-percent mark, you might feel like you’ve healed and that much of your grief is behind you. But this is where you stop, and no matter how hard you try, you never reach 100 percent.
Where love and memories live
Most people never move past the eighty percent point in their healing work because the remaining 20 percent is where you hold your memories.
It also represents the love and meaning you initially felt in the relationship or situation, even if it was years ago.
Grief scale, image by the author
It’s that last 20 percent that makes you choke up, even years later, because you see a forgotten photo or, like Lynn, hear a favorite song on the radio.
In my own life, it’s what causes me to cry on Mother’s Day or when I visit my father’s gravesite. In other words, love is the reason you never “get over it” completely.
When grief sneaks in
Every once in a while, body memories will remind us of grief. When that happens, look at the images that come to mind.
Allow a brief moment to acknowledge them and remember the love they represent. Then pick yourself up and move on again.
Don’t settle for just “existing” while you keep your grief buried deep inside. To see the sunshine, you have to stop holding on to the darkness. Even when a body memory sneaks in, you can still let the light shine through in your life.
Taking care of yourself during downtime is a critical aspect of managing body memories. Any time something jolts a painful reminder of a loss or disappointment, go back to the skills you’ve learned for ultimate self-care.
Put on some music, make a cup of tea, and read a few pages in a happy, uplifting book.
Look for the positive things around you. Find the windows in your life and throw them open, letting the sunshine in.
It takes effort to create joy. But if you keep the windows closed, you allow the darkness of anger and hopelessness to remain inside your soul.
Today, I feel great joy at being alive, and I know the best way to deal with past body memories is to stay committed to ultimate self-care, nurturing myself and living a healthy life!