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Do you ever have dissociative/flashback....days?

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Something would trigger me, and then I would start having these "frozen" moments, many times throughout the day. And it would linger on, sometimes for few days at a time.It hasn't happened to me in a while, but it's happening now and I really don't have time for it, but I don't really know how to change it...

What happens is after I'm triggered, I start feeling distant. Everything goes foggy and suddenly there are a lot of memories going through me, like watching a video montage...all of the moments connected to the trauma that got triggered, situated around the time when the person hurt me, though not all moments particularly of the worst of it. Some of it just random memories of that time, things I haven't thought of for years...moment in which I feel I should have known in which direction things were going, moments for which I feel guilty like I could have done better despite of what happened.

And all these things go through me in flashes. Like after the first trigger, I would have such moment, then eventually get out of it and calm down. Sometimes these moment also come with crying that I can't stop or throwing up and crying. Eventually I'm calm- I go on about my day- I'm doing something completely regular- and bam, there it is again, another set of memories. And suddenly everything is foggy and I know kind of that it's a memory and I need to get out of it and distract myself, but I can't make my body move at all so I just stay like that. And on and on, waves of memories for days at a time. And when they happen it feels like it's really fast, but I actually lose a lot of the day that way in that state. And there is a lot of crying and little sleep and I find it hard to concentrate much on other stuff...And since the other night it's happening again.

I keep trying to distract myself. Do housework. Work, call a friend, write. But it still happens for few days. And I manage to do things in between but I lose a lot of time for this. Like I'm sick or something. Is that just me??
 
Hell welcome to my life at the moment, I make a complaint about sexual harassment and it is covered up and then I tell them don't do that as it reminds me of my sexual abuse and experience with political violence (also a returned serviceman with a step daughter recently died of cancer) and I am the one stopped returning to work after taking leave
 
Yes this happens to me! Just caught in one of these horrible runs at the moment to be honest, although I don't tend to cry, but I get the same annoying visual stuff and spaciness and difficulty shaking it off.

I get foggy and distracted and feel like a show reel is playing out in my mind, sometimes also just mundane little fragments of memories from round the same time. On and bloody on, then I shake it off and then it comes back.

It has a "sucking me in" feeling and I have to fight to ground myself and get distracted. I can come out of it but will have this uneasy feeling in my gut and then within minutes or a couple of hours it will come back on again and I have to fight this for bloody days at a time if it's bad.

Then I will return to normal until something triggers it off again. I hate it. Trying to do trauma therapy makes it so much worse, so then I back off from therapy, but then nothing gets fixed and I get triggered in life anyway and same problem...

Wish I had a solution!
 
Flashbacks leading to adhd I just need to get somewhere else but have some safe places that I can go on my own and I just tune out until I start to notice things around me. We have a national park close by and I ground myself with nature - sounds corny but the peace and anonynimity of the bush calms the panic. The anxiety is always there but the flashbacks can fade with a magpie song interrupting them
 
Flashbacks leading to adhd

The opposite here, with the same combo of disorders. <grin>

Sensory overload / too many things to categorize leading to flashbacks and if that continues, derealization & feeling surreal, not balancey in other ways. The same needed treatment though, safety / shelter / getting somewhere I feel safe being on my own & not trapped, and minimizing the sensory input first.
 
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I know what you mean, for others it appears you have shut down but in reality the opposite is happening. My only defence is to get away. I am ocd with knowing where my car keys are lol
 
The opposite here, with the same combo of disorders. <grin>

Sensory overload / too many things to categor...
I think I'm like that.
Except nature doesn't work for me unless it's completely secluded (national park, like @Pjj said), but all I have nearby are regular parks. Urban parks with playgrounds and so. All these do is overwhelm me even more, as there are people laughing, children running, people passing through rushing to somewhere and in the triggered state I start being paranoid and trying to scan everything around me, all the poeple and sounds and noises so that would be even more overwhelming. Closest real nature is too far when I'm that triggered. So I prefer staying home all day, as at least I'm all on my own(as of recently) so I can feel safe and comfortable expressing it in whatever way because there's no one to judge or think I'm crazy if I can't stop crying.

I know what you mean, for others it appears you have shut down but in reality the opposite is happening. My...

I wish it was that way for me-with the car I mean, the rest is accurate! I'm too anxious and in those moments also my eyes tend to unfocus and so on, and I tend to get sensory overload very easily so driving is the last thing I need to do.
I'll probably work from bed half of the time today with laptop and I'm trying to cook now, which tends to be always somewhat calming. And in any case at least I would have done something useful. If I manage to exercise/do yoga/dance today that always helps as it gets rid of the physical tension, but I'm not sure I'll get to it.
I hate days like these.
 
I know what you mean but it is hard, it is about the only thing that I can do. Inversely, I wish I could steady myself to do yoga etc mindfulness you know. Luckily for me I don't get depression but anger and frustration I have had to manage since returning from active service overseas, so to keep my marriage I have learned to disengage and get away!! PTSD to me means living to survive some days and whether survival is a warm quilt or a quiet place we just do what we got to do. When I was overseas all I wanted was to be home and when I got back all I wanted was to be back overseas. Now ptsd is feeling like I want to feel something else most of the time and when you stop to try and solve this the flashbacks return
 
I know what you mean but it is hard, it is about the only thing that I can do. Inversely, I wish I could st...
I haven't done service, but I was assulted while working overseas on another continent as I mentioned. I was out of money and in risk of ending up on the street, I was in a bad place with people shooting people and addicts and deals under the table and so on, all happening in my neighbourhood. So I didn't feel safe out, and after what happened to me, I didn't feel safe in the house I was renting either. And a lot of it for me was the same way. While I was there I had to survive and I was in many ways keeping alive just to get back home.
But then while I was there obviously I couldn't process anything emotional because I had to survive and get home in one piece. And once I got back, it hit me like a ton of bricks how home was the same, but something in me had changed irrevocably. And then all the symptoms started hitting me the most.
I hope you don't feel any disrespect in me comparing what you and I went through, by all means! It's just the feeling of it is similar in some ways and I wanted to express that.
 
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I've been feeling like this for a couple days! I think alternating between this and heavy dissociative fog was my normal for a couple years...

I'd gotten a lot better, but my stress cup has been close to full for months, and now a stressor (new summer work) has put me into constant overflow.
 
I've been feeling like this for a couple days! I think alternating between this and heavy di...
I didn't think of that, but this actually makes sense- I've been under high stress from all directions for few months, between health and financial issues, unexpected breakup and having to move out on my own and on and on. I was dealing well for 5-6 months, but may be things have overflowed a bit at this point...The stress cup thing totally fits in this case.
 
..The stress cup thing totally fits in this case.
No my psych and I also use the cup analogy and rape is rape no matter when or where you experienced it. I hate the term child sexual abuse, I was raped many times between the ages of 5-10 and people just don't get it if they haven't been raped. In some ways I feel lucky as if it happened as an adult my mind wouldn't be pliable enough to cope, so I think you are brave. Reading some threads here the impact of multiple trauma is what is hard to cope with.

Righ now my supervisor (female) sexually harassed me and all of the memories came flooding back and the flashbacks have started again. They tried to cover it up but this reminded me of Police thinking they were doing me a favour shooting someone, the wrong guy or other police trying to extort money from my grandfather by sticking a shotgun under his 83 year old nose.

No my cup has always been full and I wished to hell it would empty
 
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