Anyone Have Paralysis After/during A Flashback?

[Zef]

I haven't found anyone talking about this yet. I experience full body paralysis, I can't move any part of my body for a period of time. The last time it lasted almost an hour with the only thing I could move were my eyes. I'm pretty sure this isn't a physical thing, but part of the flashback.

Just wondering if someone has gone through something similar.

Thank You

 

[Anna]

I have only experienced this when sleeping and waking up from a dream. Not when being awake. Do you experience this when dreaming or does it happen when you are awake?

 

[Zef]

I'm fully awake when they happen.

 

[kimba]

I have also only experienced it while dreaming/waking up. My experience was accompanied by overwhelming feelings of panic, fear and dread. It has happened two or three times.

 

[Zef]

Just a quick follow-up in case anyone in the future searches on the topic. Asked my t about the paralysis thing (she's been a t for 35 years) and she said that this is a pretty unique symptom that is most probably related to some specific trauma I experienced. She also gently indicated that we probably aren't ready to talk about it yet. . .which I enthusiastically agreed with. :)

 

[simplekindofgirl]

There was a time once when I had a flashback in which I was paralyzed per se. I was in the cafeteria of a hospital a few weeks after having a bad car accident, someone had come to visit and I finally had the privileges to walk down to the cafeteria with them.

We were there, and someone dropped and broke a glass- and my mind immediately went to that place in the accident, when the glass in the car was breaking- I could see it in front of my eyes, as though it was actually happening in the present. I was told that I was standing there, completely still, frozen, for at least 2 minutes. The odd thing was, when the flashback was done, I did not realize if I had been moving or not. I could move once I found reality again.

In all of the other flashbacks in which I have had, I have been told that I am moving and doing things similar to that of what occurred in the actual trauma(s).

There have been some times when I dissociate and feel paralyzed as well. Just kind of stuck in one place for a time while it happens..

So I suppose my experience is a little different than the posts above.

 

[Zef]

They are a bit different, but it is still comforting to hear that someone else has experienced something like it.

 

[pinopan]

I can't move pretty often. That's part of the reason I am disabled, but I hadn't called it paralysis before. I also hadn't asked myself if it is flashback-related. Maybe it is. I know it is correlated with depression for me, but I think it happened during my anxiety stages too. It felt different then. Sometimes it feels like fear and other times it feels like my body is too heavy to move. Sometimes it is just me thinking about moving without being able to act on the thought.

I have called it losing time or being stuck.

Learned helplessness? Or...extreme dissociation?

 

[Zef]

Sometimes it is just me thinking about moving without being able to act on the thought.

That is exactly my experience.

I can try to will movement all I want, try all the mental tricks I can think of. . .and no response. My t suspects it is related to my specific trauma somehow, but just a theory at this stage. Some of my other flashback symptoms support that theory, but I'm kinda have a wait and see attitude about it.

When I've been depressive, though, I've also had periods of time when there simply hasn't been any reason to move and my will was not strong enough to make me move.

 

[pinopan]

It's hard for me to tell the difference. It can be obviously outside of my control, like when I am aware I should move and feel like being unable to move is hurting me. Other times my thoughts frame moving as submitting, because I should but am 'not compelled', like your experience with a lack of willpower. In that case I feel like it's self-destructive and/or my fault.

But, if we could, we would, right? Insufficient willpower or a fear of theoretically submitting isn't our fault.

I will adopt your wait-and-see attitude. I can justify it as a flashback symptom I guess, but with these things I have found that once I know something, it is really solid; a realization, not a logical connection.

 

[BenzoJess]

I started to become physically paralyzed quite often after The Multiple Bad Things That Happened. Now, all it takes is an emotional experience even if it's not related to the trauma. Excuse me if I'm repeating another post (just read the first one), but I've read about psychomotor retardation.

I'm on the "Dissociative Spectrum" and my therapist found an essay about it. Apparently, the essay describes the experience as negative dissociation. There's active dissociation (blank stare, memory loss) but the body freeze is a somatic response to whatever. I'm triggered very easily.

Sometimes loved ones help but I usually don't ask for help. I don't want to get get into the habit of getting help b/c what if I'm alone?

If anyone has suggestions or wants to brainstorm about how to move out of paralysis, please help.

Here's what I do.

1) Say "OH SH*T. NOT AGAIN" in my head
2) Feel the freeze sink in
3) Begin to focus on my legs, particularly the larger muscles
4) Do the psychological equivalent of gritting my teeth
5) Wait. Get stuck. Get upset. Refocus on my legs.
6) If someone's around or s/he tries to help, I say "Please give me a moment, I'd like to try on my own."
7) Focus on my legs until I can do one rapid movement, either moving a leg or a full stand.
8) Use the momentum from that sweeping motion to stand up or start walking.
9) Usually I walk very slowly after a freeze but I speed up after a while
(Sometimes, I use my hands to move my legs but I try not to do that.)

If my entire body is paralyzed, I start focusing on my hands- - just twitch my fingers a little and then move down to the legs.

This is just the system I came up with on my own. If anyone has a link to something, let me know.

I've had the paralysis for about 5 years. It really bites when people don't believe you. "Come on, stop being so dramatic." It's real. If you experience it, believe it and don't feel ashamed.

NO SHAME.

 

[LawPhotos]

Zef, I have experienced this type of severe total paralysis a number of times during my "worst" flashbacks. I desperately want to move, I know that moving would help me ground but I absolutely cannot will myself to move anything--even my eyes. It has sometimes taken more than half an hour to pass at which point I am still in the flashback and moving in slow motion.

I experience an inability to move during the more intense types of dissociation that I have.

I also have a freeze reaction when I am triggered by what I perceive as physical violence or being physically overcome--happens a lot when my well intentioned boys are trying to involve me in "horseplay" etc. or people start to play physically in the pool, tickle me, play wrestle etc. I instantly get so weak it is ridiculous--I often can't even speak to tell them to stop or to indicate in any way that I am overwhelmed--it is like paralysis.