Have you ever heard someone say, "Your body remembers"? Some people know exactly what that means, but the only way to fully understand, is to experience it. The part of your brain responsible for this is called your amygdala. Your amygdala is your primal brain and it has danger receptors that tell your body that you are in harms way. When that part of your brain senses danger it sends out stress signals, its a primal survival mechanisms. It is the reason your body may react to a person, place. or thing before the mind ever understands why. This happens as your brain attempts to protect us and keep us safe. The danger signal can bypass the prefrontal cortex and still quickly signal the body that it is in danger, triggering the fight or flight response. It can have you responding to trauma before your mind even recognizes what is going on. Your Body Remembers. Until last week, this was just a phrase I'd heard others say.
Last week, on the 1 year anniversary of my sons death, I had a breast exam at the cancer center, to check a lump I found. I had really been way too sad to even think about that appointment. So I wasn't really scared, at first. I was called into the exam room where they did a few tests, but when I was getting ready to leave the room, she told me they may ask me to go to ultrasound. That's when I started getting scared, because I thought the only reason for me to go to ultrasound, would be because she saw something.
They called me back to ultrasound. Now my fear kicked up to about a 7 as I lied on the bench and showed her where to look. Right away, i could see a dark circle in the center of the picture. When I saw her start marking the borders and measuring the distance to the other side, I felt tears streaming down my face. I think this may have been less stressful on a different day, but I was overwhelmed with several emotions. I waited less than ten minutes until they called my name again. This time she told me they got the results and it looked like a cyst. I star4ted crying, thankful, overwhelmed and thankful. I told the nurse about the anniversary, because she probably wondered why I cried after good results, and she gave me a long hug.
That was a lot of stress, I didn't hear anything after cyst. I imagine I was dissociating, I definitely shouldn't have been driving myself home like that. At the time, I thought I was fine, so I start driving home but before i had made it half way, I started having the worst panic attack in my life. I was even screaming, nonstop. I had been dissociating- unaware- thrown directly into fight or flight, screaming as I started to become aware. I was in a panic attack, I was screaming, I looked around and I realized where I was. I was approaching the place I saw my son dead. I normally go way out of my way to avoid going anywhere near there. I had been dissociating and was unaware of where I had driven to. But the body remembers.
When my panic attack started, my body started my fight or flight before my mind was even aware of where I was. That is what they were talking about, and it explains why I had a panic attack before I was aware of where I was.
