Aloha!
deal a lot with flashbacks that make me angry.
I have to draw REALLY hard lines between Then & NOW.
One of the things that helps the most? Reverse my position. If SOMEONE ELSE came at me over chewing gum, celery, toothpaste, (or anything else one puts in their mouth) like I was about to rape them? Or pushed my kid into traffic, because he was laughing at something funny he heard, because they thought he was laughing at them (which, “of course”, means he’s about to beat them up & leave them for dead)? Or, or, or, or, 1,000 things?
It doesn’t matter how LEGIT MY PAST is, or how legit my responses WOULD HAVE BEEN in that past… when they’re projected onto the present as if they’re happening now??? They’re wrong.
Just because something FEELS like it’s happening now, doesn’t mean it’s actually happening.
Hard Line? = Commensurate to the provocation. In the now. Right here and now.
Flashbacks are f*cked up pieces of our past that intrude on our present as if they’re happening, now, instead of being filed away in memory, AS memories. Relived, instead of remembered. They’re not real. They’re a glitch. The glitch? Is my responsibility to manage. The FASTER I learn how to do that? (Because it takes praaaaaactice!) the better for everyone, me most of all.