Flashbacks

[Dana1010]

My PTSD symptoms began a few months after I got a big professional break and it seemed that my life was going in a better direction. So in that sense it seems like your mind-body does bide its time until you are resourced enough and then unloads the backlog of stuff you've thus far been too weak to handle. And that all sort of sucks because now I think, "What if I get a better job, move and make some friends? Am I going to be greeted with another avalanche of stuff from my past that I've been suppressing?"

Flashbacks specifically seem to wait for no one and nothing in my opinion. They can and do come at the most inopportune moments. I've been rendered cross-eyed and tongue-tied at job interviews, work related meetings and other horribly inappropriate times where I've zoned out so bad I just dropped out of the conversation and couldn't hear what the other person was saying. It seems they often flood in when you're triggered, i.e, in perceived danger, not when you're safe.

 

[Recovery4Me]

call bullshit on this

Offering an opinion, owning the backlash but I need to give voice to this thought. If I disown entitlement for healing or discount the possibility of optimal self- regulation than those f*cking perpetrators win. :spitdummy:

Because I have not 'yet' mastered a skill, does not exclude the skill from being obtainable. I can, I will continue and have further established a quasi-safe place. It is the voice that fights back the wrong done to me, rearing from deep inside. It is my rage that has fought to rescue a part of my being shattered within the confines of hell during my flashbacks. I will not leave me behind.

Take what you need and leave the rest. Peace~

 

[Gadgie]

My flash backs are triggered by, a smell, a sound or a vision. I was told by the therapist that I was seeing that they couldn't help me any more, as I had "too many issues, over too many years"

When the flash backs do come, they send me back to hell I went through at the time they happened, and it's really scary for me. It's even worse when they come through as night mares, I wake up totally confused , it takes my brain a while to sort out where I am.

As they are so vivid and real, I wake up believing that I'm back there again, reliving the whole bad experience. When I do wake up, I'm shivering with the cold, yet sweating at the same time. My whole body shakes really bad, and I have no control of it at all.

The whole experience is hard to describe, yet I know there will other people on here who go through the same thing, if they do, I would like to hear from them, just to make sure that I'm not the only person who suffers this?

 

[shimmerz]

I would like to hear from them, just to make sure that I'm not the only person who suffers this?

Hell no. It's the gold standard in PTSD behaviour Gadgie. :shifty:

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Safe? Uhm, no. I think you mean READY as in your mind has decided you are ready to deal with them.

 

[hodge]

I think I was lucky in that my PTSD symptoms, like flashbacks, really didn't start until I was in a relatively safe place. I was finally secure in my relationship with my husband and had resolved issues with my mother. There's never really a good time for this stuff to come on, though. I was in my last year of working and it was incredibly stressful. I couldn't even work full weeks, but I did manage to get done what they wanted me to do. By some miracle or just my last gasp of energy or maybe just pure sheer will. When I first got PTSD, I always felt like I finally ran out of "go juice." Because I was going and going, working like crazy all my life. And finally, I just ran out.

 

[Deleted member 29961]

The whole experience is hard to describe, yet I know there will other people on here who go through the same thing, if they do, I would like to hear from them, just to make sure that I'm not the only person who suffers this?

Nightmare?


In the dead of night,
my body bolts upright.
Sweat beads as I tremble with affright.
The darkness swallows the strands of light.
A distant scream slips past my lips
as I dig into the mattress with my fingertips.

But the dream has left,
I can only guess,
or was it really a dream
as it so vaguely seemed?
What is it that haunts my sleep,
striking into my soul so deep?

It's the fabric of dreams torn
and my reality is reborn!
My God! I fear it, terror struck!

But, who really gave a f*ck?

BDC 1994


Yes, there are others who experience this, I've been there. I was diagnosed with PTSD and Personality Fragmentation back in 1991 or so. I haven't had a flashback since 1998. During that time I was hospitalized twice. I also lost my therapist during all of this, I understand your concern there as well. If I could give you one piece of advice besides finding another therapist, strive to take away the fear. I think you will find this can help.

I wish you all the best.

 

[Meadowsweet]

@illusionist I guess some people do remember things when they are in a safer place. But we are all different. I began remembering childhood abuse when I was in an abusive relationship in my teens. I didn't believe them and put them down to the situation I was in. Then, in my 30's I experienced an attack and started experiencing some very real flashbacks to earlier times.

Whenever they come, it's horrible and I'm sorry you're going through that at the moment.

 

[Gadgie]

I liked you poem Jigsaw Puzzle, I posted one somewhere, but I can't remember where? I write poems and short stories when I feel low, as it keeps my brain occupied and takes my mind away from the low mood.

It's weird really, but it seems to work for me.

 

[Deleted member 29920]

I wasn't ready to deal with the things I remembered last April after a therapy session, they just came back after the psychologist telling me my mother was the norm for me, I wasn't ready for them, I didn't want to admit the truth but my friend said I should tell the psychologist. I did and I've never been the same since, I feel like the first 30 years of my life have been a lie, it's like-'who was that person? ' I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to deal with all that 'stuff'.:tdown:

 

[Gadgie]

Yea! I have big gaps in my childhood that I simply can't remember, yet I can recall some other events as clear as they happened yesterday?

The therapist, I used to see, said that they were bad times in my violent upbringing, that my brain had shut out, and filed way back of my mind, along with a lot of other stuff that I went through in the years since.

These were all safely tucked away, until a sudden event happened, that brought them all back to haunt me, my brain couldn't handle them, and thats when the nightmares and severe mood swings started.

Life for me has never been the same since?

 

[Deleted member 29920]

You hit the nail on the head there @Gadgie, huge chunks of my childhood just arent 'there'. I Sense I'll never be the same again, but I think it's okay. I don't want to go back to the person I thought I was, I'm gonna try my best to find and be the person I really am.