My friend just went through a flashback episode with me in the car with her. I was driving her home, when she asked me "Are we going home" in an inquisitive way even though she already knew where we were going. I could tell she was having a brain moment of some kind. She started fidgeting which she does when a flashback is about to start. Either fidgeting with no purpose or rocking motion back and forth. She asked again in that same unusually timid voice "Are we going home?" Then the flashback started. She verbalized during this one, saying over and over again, I have to make lunches, lots of lunches, a lot of lunches, I have to make lunches, she kept saying over an over again. I of course told her she didn't , she only had to make her own lunch, I tried to get her out of her trance like state, but she could only repeat the phrase about lunches. Then she switched to saying , "She is in trouble" I asked why, she said she didn't know, but she was in trouble, and then repeated about being in trouble. I kept talking to her, and she was able to tell me "She was stuck" I was trying to say things about what we were doing and what we were going to do, until she finally had to say to me....."Stop Talking, I have to work it out". She verbalized thinking that she was in trouble because of dirty windows, had to clean the windows, she was in trouble. This occured for about 10 minutes, and ended when she verbalized to me that all the windows had been taken out, and cleaned and been put back in, and they all fit back in perfectly. And as soon as she said that , and started talking again she was out of it, and I could tell because she was talking in her regular voice. She had some wicked type headache right afterwards. We talked about it, and she asked me to try and find out if there is anything she can do to help herself get out of the flashback when it starts, or if there is anything that I could do to help her through it. Obviously , I was interfering in her flashback by talking , and I wasn't saying the right things , when she told me to stop talking. I have witnessed two or three flashbacks, such as this, but I can always tell by her fidgeting, or rocking back and forth, that something is about to take place, or she is starting to feel upset about something that happened in her past. A flashback does not always occur when she is rocking, but it's more that she is thinking about past things and it bothers her. It seems to help when she is rocking, that I bring her back to reality by saying something, even saying her name and what is wrong helps. Once the flashback starts , this no longer works. As she says, she gets stuck, or her brain and thought process is stuck, like waking up from a dream and trying to figure out what was happening to you, before you realize it was only a dream.
