What Does Your Head Feel Like After A Flashback

[desiderata310]

I am beginning to understand that when I have a flashback: emotional or full out flashback, that I can FEEL it for hours after in my head.
That is to say, that I feel like I have a vice on the inside of my head and it stays there for hours. Sinus pressure X10 only no congestion and the pressure is more pronounced. Once the anxiety has a chance to wear off a bit and the emotions die back, It makes me feel thick and dull and..oh... geeze... dissociated. (yeah, I had one earlier today)

What are your expereinces?

 

[SeaQuel]

Floaty is what comes to mind.

 

[desiderata310]

and I don't think I am explaining this very well at the moment.

 

[Hope4Now]

I am just beginning to see the physical patterns of mine. Dull headache in the occipital area, mostly on the right. Lasts for hours. Sometimes if I realize it and can lie down and close my eyes and breathe, I can shift the energy down into my sacral area--which I think is what it feels like to be grounded...not sure, but it definitely feels better in my body and I can think more clearly. I always have sinus issues so not sure about that. I often am nauseous when in the middle of one and for a bit after, but that passes more quickly than the headache. Shaky. Body temperature screwed up...either freezing cold or roasting hot with little connection to the outside temperature. I am also starting to realize that one of three things happens mentally after...I either have racing thoughts...way too many things happening simultaneously...like brain exploding. Or, I am totally spacey and need to rest/sleep and am sort of disoriented. Or...the best outcome though not necessarily the healthiest...I click into some hyper-focused functional part and zoom in intensely on whatever I am doing. I think I've lived most of my life in this last thing, but I can't do this much anymore. Those parts are just over-exhausted and not up to it.

 

[shimmerz]

Like the earth is going to swallow me up and I don't want it to..... wait..... I do want it to.
Like around every corner there is a monster and I want to know it is there.... wait.... I don't want to know it is there
Like everything around me is screaming/blaring like a tv screen that take up the walls, ceilings and floors of every bit of a house and I can't get away from it....wait....I do want to get away from it but I can't see any doors

Like hell....it doesn't matter how much I have pictured hell, I have never been able to picture anything quite so bad as a flashback and how that feels.

 

[desiderata310]

Forgot the freezing stuff. It's hot here today and I'm wrapped up shivering.
Nausea is a sometimes but not all the time thing.
I don't konw what areas... sinus pressure is too general a term to use...
heart rate is all jacked too.. feels like I've been running for three hours.

 

[desiderata310]

Leads me to another question.
Do you tell your therapist every time you have a flashback?
Days later it feels pointless to say, "Saturday I had a flashback in the middle of Bed Bath and Beyond triggered by wooden spoons and ice cube trays"

 

[Kefira]

I feel raw and vulnerable for a long while after a flashback or other episode. I think part of it's that I can't be as aware as normal- the hypervigilance just can't be kept up after that much energy expenditure. I also am in the headache and body temperature regulation camp. Normally I have shivers for a while. Heart rate up, actively try to do breathing exercises to calm it or just the fast heart rate and the quick breathing can send me back in.

And then comes the exhaustion, the guilt, the self hatred. Especially if someone else was around.

 

[SeaQuel]

Oh, I thought this was about the head after the flashback... well as a whole, my breathing escalates, I feel shaky as sh*t which makes movements undesirable, muscles locked up like I'm assuming a defensive posture, body temperature freezing cold or sweating (usually the former).

 

[Friday]

I am beginning to understand that when I have a flashback: emotional or full out flashback, that I can FEEL it for hours after in my head.) //// What are your experiences?

Couple different ones... But yeah, these are really consistently the same. It's either head or body.

Head only
- Icepicks. In. My. Brain.
- Drowned in rubber cement. (Thinking is like trying to run in a dream you can't run in).
- Loud. My head is really, really loud right now.
- Blurry. Colorful. Indistinct. + Tunnel vision / world shrinks to about 18" around me.

Full Body
- Bright, clear, fiery, need.
- This is an emotion free zone (got my sociopath on)... Essentially I come back to in the same emotional state I was then.

ETA... And I'm realizing there's 1 or 2 I'm forgetting :p Which I'm sure I'll feel really stupid about later. But I take my cartography a little too seriously.

ETAx2... I don't have a therapist, so that's moot, to a degree. The only time I've ever been able to talk about my flashbacks, though has been laying in bed with someone. LOL...My pillow talk sucks!

 

[desiderata310]

It started out just talking about physically how does your head feel... it's ok.. I'm not in a place to split hairs...

 

[shimmerz]

This posting is actually helping me to understand just how much I don't feel my body. Thank you for this. I had no idea people felt body stuff. I truly shake my head at myself during these types of realizations. I will be watching this post.