Explaining A Flashback Yields Confusion

[saoirserylyn]

The other night, I experienced a short-lived flashback episode. It was visible and audible. My boyfriend was in the same room with me while it was occurring (as we were getting ready for bed), he asked during the episode "What is going on?" I told him it was nothing and that I would be fine once it passed. I started crying, sobbing at one point and naturally he became concerned. Afterwards, I made an attempt at being open with him about the flashback itself. I resorted to an intelligent response: explaining to him what a flashback is, what I saw and heard.

In that moment, I was cheering inside my head. Happy that I was able to share something immensely personal with him. The response that he met me with was not mutual in any regard. He said my explanation was lacking in emotion and hard for him to comprehend or relate to. He doesn't understand why I get so scared or nervous when these things happen, yet I talk about them like they're Sunday brunch with the girls.

In therapy, I have worked on integrating my trauma as I tend to have a hard time attaching the proper emotions to the situation. As a result of him saying this, I became angry and insulted. I KNOW I have difficulty expressing emotions, but I just wish that sometimes others would fill in the blanks. How would they feel if that were happening? I don't feel that it is always my place to constantly feel these horrible emotions. Sometimes I do enjoy being emotionally detached as it allows me breathing space to put it out there without overreacting.

Is there any thing I should be communicating not only to my boyfriend, but other close people in my life to better help them understand things such as flashbacks and being emotionally disconnected?

 

[TLight]

You have to be dissociated to talk about it. Explain to him dissociation. Have him read everything he can.
My husband never bothered to read about it and as a 'man's man' he couldn't 'get it' either.

Sometimes I think he thought it was just some sort of manipulation or attention getting or just something I did cause I was 'mentally ill.' It and other things eventually led to us divorcing, as he had no tolerance for it and did not even want to understand. Plus he did things that triggered me and refused to change his behavior in the slightest.
I hope that doesn't happen to you, perhaps you have a guy who makes you a priority. That's my wish for you.

 

[saoirserylyn]

@TLight Thank you for your response. I am so sorry to hear about what happened with your marriage as that is one of my greatest fears. My boyfriend is an amazing guy involving everything except my ptsd. He reads everything I send him, but rarely shows me research he has done on his own. Nor does he start discussions about my ptsd. At first I thought he was walking on eggshells around me, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. He triggers me occasionally too, but that generally leads to arguments where I'm the bad guy. I'm the bad guy because I get upset and start accusing him of everything under the sun because I'm in a state of sheer panic. Then again I take a lot out on him and he's still here. Ugh, that's a whole separate issue altogether. We're working together a little at a time. Just wish he'd show more interest. I always feel like I'm piling my drama on him so to speak.

 

[Vickki1000]

The long nights,

The long lonely nights,

Creating pathways for the bitter, cold, frigid, night air,

Watching tears of ice crystals cascading across your hair,

Hearing the blood screaming as it runs through your veins,

Doubled over clutching your heart, feeling every twinge of pain, pounding, pumping, racing, aching,

Knowing you are sufficating in a envelope of terror,

Swimming through a tunnel vision of dreams, trapped, blinded, scratching for your very life, but able to breath only fear.

By Vickki 3-24-2014

#PTSDmoment. #panic_attack

 

[Vickki1000]

I don't know how to forward posts yet. This post by Shiraz premium member helped me allot. V

Hi Trapped,

I have been doing a bit of reading and I can't seem to find if you have had a diagnosis yet? PTSD or CPTSD? Either way, the following really helped me figure out flashbacks. It is written by a Psychologist who has CPTSD and it is the most useful and helpful explanation I have found anywhere.


The East Bay Therapist, Sept/Oct 2005 (publication)
Pete Walker

"A significant percentage of adults who suffered ongoing abuse or neglect in childhood suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. One of the most difficult features of this type of PTSD is extreme susceptibility to painful emotional flashbacks. Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions ('amygdala hijackings') to the frightening circumstances of childhood. They are typically experienced as intense and confusing episodes of fear and/or despair - or as sorrowful and/or enraged reactions to this fear and despair. Emotional flashbacks are especially painful because the inner critic typically overlays them with toxic shame, inhibiting the individual from seeking comfort and support, isolating him in an overwhelming and humiliating sense of defectiveness.

Because most emotional flashbacks do not have a visual or memory component to them, the triggered individual rarely realizes that she is re-experiencing a traumatic time from childhood. Psychoeducation is therefore a fundamental first step in the process of helping clients understand and manage their flashbacks. Most of my clients experience noticeable relief when I explain PTSD to them. The diagnosis seems to reverberate deeply with their intuitive understanding of their suffering. When they understand that their sense of overwhelm initially arose as an instinctual response to truly traumatic circumstances, they begin to shed the awful belief that they are crazy, hopelessly oversensitive, and/or incurably defective.

Flashbacks strand clients in the feelings of danger, helplessness and hopelessness of their original abandonment, when there was no safe parental figure to go to for comfort and support. Hence, Complex PTSD is now accurately being identified by many as an attachment disorder. Flashback management therefore needs to be taught in the context of a safe relationship. Clients need to feel safe enough with the therapist to describe their humiliating experiences of a flashback, so that the therapist can help them respond more constructively to their overwhelm in the moment.

Without help in the moment, the client typically remains lost in the flashback and has no recourse but to once again fruitlessly reenact his own particular array of primitive, self-injuring defenses to what feel like unmanageable feelings. I find that most clients can be guided to see the harmfulness of these previously necessary, but now outmoded, defenses as misfirings of their fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses....... "

​

If you find this helpful, I have posted some more of his stuff on my profile ... the flashback management has been HUGELY helpful to me and I am beginning to understand the process of flashbacks a bit better because of it.

He also has a lot of useful articles on his site ... google him.

I hope this helps ... flashbacks are scary and overwhelming and can't be trivialized into 'movies' that you can choose to avoid. Read some more and decide if you really want any more input from your T ... PTSD is difficult enough to deal with without getting the wrong type of guidance.

hugs
Shiraz

 

[saoirserylyn]

@Vickki1000 Wow that post was incredibly information, so thank you so much for sharing that with me!

 

[TLight]

Try to figure out what's triggering you and when you are centered, have a very serious conversation with him and see is he's willing to change.

For me, I was beaten horribly to do housework. I always go into 'perfect partner mode' and help my partner with absolutely everything I can. So I helped when he worked on repairing fences, helped when he was building stuff in the garage, etc. etc. But when it came to housework, he just kept saying..........no, I'm really bad at that and if I am gonna help, you are gonna have to rinse the dishes, etc. or else I won't put my hands on them.

In five years I think I saw him do the dishes twice and take out the garbage 3 times. I literally begged for my life and told him exactly what was happening. He said he can't change and he's just not good at it and he'd just hurt me again and again.

I put up with 5 years of horrific flashbacks and terrible fights......ending in him telling me what cleaning products to use. I was devastated.
Finally figured out he didn't love me and left barely with my life and my health destroyed.

It's not your fault. For me, if you tell someone what's triggering you and they refuse to be aware and try to make changes, and then you are triggered and you lash out with rages........it's really not your fault. It's part of your injury.

 

[Echo]

@TLight - that's just awful. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

 

[joeylittle]

Is there any thing I should be communicating not only to my boyfriend, but other close people in my life to better help them understand things such as flashbacks and being emotionally disconnected?

This is going to sound like the worst metaphor in the world...but you can ask them if they need to actually vomit in order to describe what vomiting is, or what it was like when last you did it.

I think that people easily forget that the emotional side of PTSD is a result of something physiological. (One could argue that all emotions are, but lets not get derailed ;)). Compare the traumatic event to the time that bad egg salad came back to get you, triggers as the way in which you may never be able to even smell egg salad again without feeling nauseous, and flashbacks themselves as that really visceral memory of the actual physical illness.

Sometimes people can understand this analogy better with alcohol, as (for some reason) there is a fairly common experience of "the first time I got so drunk I threw up". More often than not, the individual will express they cannot drink that particular alcohol ever again, or that it was a long time before they could.

Traumatic event imprints the brain with the whole of the experience. Now, in the puking analogy, wouldn't you be really proud of yourself the day you could finally start to at least smell your old favorite food (egg salad) again? That's how we can actually be joyful about our progress while the event itself is the opposite.

I know its a bit on the silly side, but I find people learn about this best through parallels they can physically relate to.