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Cptsd and emotional flashbacks

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So my last t never spoke much about CPTSD so I really know only what I’ve read in articles and such but curious to learn more about emotional flashbacks and if anyone here has experienced them. I’ve been thinking tonight of all the things that could qualify and wondering if just the massive amount of fear I have is rooted to the past and thinking about how my neighbor last year needed help and was screaming for someone to call 911 and how I froze in sheer panic and couldn’t move and it took me a really long time to get it together enough to call and remembering how my mom needed help years ago and how I felt then although the warm wash of numbness went over me with her back then as per usual. Anyway, just thinking and trying to figure things out like we do here. Anyone have any experience with emotional flashbacks they’d care to share?
 
I have experience with emotional flashbacks- I dont have flashbacks anymore but, when I did they were emotional. I will try my best to explain them. I'll explain one specific example in my head- one time my cousin was talking about cuddling with her husband in the morning and bang the flashback hit me- it comes all at once all of the emotions from the memory of how my mornings with my husband were me following the rule where I had to sleep with him- part of the sexual abuse I endured during that time. So unlike a visual flashback I wasn't all of a sudden seeing myself back in the situation but, instead I was suddenly flooded with the same emotions. It's almost like past and present meet for a split second with a flood of emotions...
 
I think a good one with me was when people knock on doors in my building and I freak out and want to hide. It brings back how I felt when my mom would come home from the bars and would come into my room. She wouldn’t knock or anything but it’s the same panic. And she wasn’t abusive or anything she would just cry on me for hours and make me make her dinner and comfort her and make me hug her and tell her good things. Then she’d never believe me and tell me repeatedly I didn’t love her. Geez so many nights of that. I was always so tired for school. But that really explains that weird fear o intrusion!
 
thinking about how my neighbor last year needed help and was screaming for someone to call 911 and how I froze in sheer panic
That sounds more like a freeze response to something that has frightened you in the here and now - it's not unusual for people to freeze when they are frightened, and not at all unusual for someone to panic when someone else is screaming for help.

I think a good one with me was when people knock on doors in my building and I freak out and want to hide. I
That sounds more like an emotional flashback because it's an irrational response to something where the response is rooted in the past.

To give you an example of my own, it was very very important that as a child I didn't ever tell anyone what was happening at home. I was warned within an inch of my life to not talk to people. So as an adult in a situation where I needed to talk about myself I'd be absolutely terrified - I mean tears, shaking, throwing up type of terrified - all the emotions I had at the thought of telling someone about my home life as a child.
 
The thing that made me decide to see a psychologist was an incident during a doctor appt. This doc told me he wanted to inject my shoulder (again) and instantly, without thought, I threw my arms into the air, criss-crossed, in front of my face and started saying, "No!" No!" No!"...you can't do that. And then I discovered I was trying to push him away from me, even though he was across the exam room from me. I had no conscious control of my reaction. I just knew I was terrified of being hurt again and didn't want him to touch me. The reaction only took a minute or two but it was an eternity for me. When I came back to my senses, I profusely apologized for my childish actions and was extremely embarrassed to have acted out like a little girl. He was caught off guard, too and didn't know what quite to say. After the appt. was over and I was out of the office, I was still shaken to the core with no understanding of what had just taken place. Later that afternoon, I decided to seek help. This was my first flashback to beatings and assaults of which I have had throughout childhood and into pre-married adulthood. It was a tough day.

After I was diagnosed with PTSD and getting frustrated that I do not match the military scenarios for this disorder, I started researching, trying to find information that more matched my symptoms. That is when I found a site that blew the socks off me!!! It talked about "me". It was an article titled, "Adult Traumatic Stress Disorder of Child Abuse. It is on the NAASCA.org site. This is the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse. I highly recommend reading this article. It helped me know that I am not totally weird or on my own in this PTSD diagnosis.

As for a C-PTSD diagnosis, I have read that it is to be made 'official' this year, in the mental health field. Until then only the PTSD is recognized as a bona-fide disability, though most of the mental health field, recognizes the need to include C-PTSD, too.
 
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