Trying To Understand Something.

[7Cs]

Is this an emotional flashback?

I would definitely consider that an emotional flashback. I've experience them as well.

Or of connecting to the young person whose grief it was?

Yes, to your grief.

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I'm lucky to have this happen to me only privately for the most part as well. It is like being completely lost and engulfed by it. It is all consuming and feels like someone has just died. I lose touch with the current here and now. Oddly, I don't remember feeling it when I was little but I know that's where it comes from.

 

[Teasel]

Thanks @LadyZane & @7Cs ts happening so often now, more and more and more. I think I have been trying to cope by carrying on as if everything's fine for a long time. And things aren't fine..

I hope I can learn to be more authentically mysrlf without frightening everyone away.

I don't think in the example I gave that I do lose touch with the hear and now. My focus is totally taken up with it but it's not like I feel that I am a child again. More like I feel like the child I was.

So I guess rather than reliving the traumatic experience which would be a flashback, I guess this is something different?

 

[Teasel]

Hmm still thinking. I've heard many people say they recognise it as an emotional flashback when the reaction is disproportionate to the situation.
That feels like what happens with me - a small uncertainty with another person could be enough to trigger this reaction.

 

[The Albatross]

What skill can you perhaps learn and acquire to minimize your reactivity?

 

[shimmerz]

So I could think of it being a few moments of connecting to the well of grief within.

Or of releasing some of the grief?

Or of connecting to the young person whose grief it was?

Yes. I had acupuncture done, which actually started all of this PTSD stuff for me. The first feeling I felt (although I didn't understand it at the time), as my shoulder was being unfrozen by the acupuncturist was an incredible amount of grief. It was overwhelming. That is when I started to have panic attacks (first time that I recall in my life having them).

I like the idea of connecting to the young person whose grief it is as the first step. Being kind to her, soothing her. I think this is the initial step before there can be a release.

Have you a t and skills in grounding?

 

[Teasel]

What skill can you perhaps learn and acquire to minimize your reactivity?

Hi @The Albatross
So I have been learning many things which help.
~ CBT helps greatly with thinking.
~ Deep breathing helps greatly for anxiety or overwhelm,
~ Meditation is helping lots in having positive feelings of relaxation and joy, giving me some headspace for reflection and re connecting to myself ,also daily practise at stepping back from thoughts and feelings and being present in the moment.
~ Practising Metta (loving kindness towards self and others) helps greatly in emphasising to myself daily that I am worth looking after.
~ But my favourite and most effective is as Pema Chödrön says "Drop the story, go to the body" works in moments and quite thoroughly.

Is this what you mean?

 

[Teasel]

Yes. I had acupuncture done, which actually started all of this PTSD stuff for me. The first feeling...

When i had Acupuncture it felt like it decompacted a lot of the fear and bewilderment and grief I had been repressing in order to be able to cope in my abusive relationship. I remember it felt too much, too overwhelming at tge time.
But I think I might like to more Acupuncture in the future when I am in a much ether safer place.

Perhaps I could create some regular time to soothe the inner child

I have grounding techniques yes and have had many T's. Currently between T's.

 

[The Albatross]

Yup, what I meant. You are really doing some solid things. Have you tracked your episodes on a calendar? I did that for a few years... to look at when they occurred but also to look for patterns, and to see the time in between episodes. Rather than focus on each episode, I focused on shortening the cycling with coping/management/stress reduction tools and activities and slowly but gradually I began to realize that the time between cycling or episodes was getting longer and longer.

I used a zero for a neutral day, a minus for a negative or down or reactive day and a plus for a better than neutral day. What I found was what a liar my brain was... initially. I found that when I had to process days, each day and select a symbol, pausing to review each day and what had actually occurred there was a perceptual bias and I perceived more and more severe negative days than I actually had.

Not always the case, but it helped me... might be worth a try?

 

[Teasel]

For a couple years I've been keeping a private journal. I don't use it extensively but I do use it daily or more often. Each is titled with a mark out of 10 for mood and a word or two about what may have contributed to that good bad or neutral mood.

I think the daily meditation practise has been particularly helpful in enabling me to see that there are good things in my life too. Before meditating daily I'm sure I would have felt that things were worse than they are and more comprehensively so.