How often do you have flashbacks on an average day?

[meander]

How often do you have flashbacks on an average day?
Sometimes I feel like flashbacks are the safe place...is this unusual?

 

[Friday]

These days, at most, for a few hours a day. Oftentimes, though, not at all, or very fleetingly, for a few seconds here and there.

A few years ago it was something around 10-20 hours a day, mixed in very liberally with a lot of other symptoms (panic attacks, anxiety attacks, etc.), most days. A good day wouldn’t be a day without symptoms, but a day with a few hours of space where I could do things despite symptoms.

For roughly 10 years I didn’t have flashbacks, at all, excepting the occasional bad weekend every few years.

Prior to that was a lot of intermittent chaos for several years. Meaning a few months where things were bad, and a few months where things were locked away, a few months where I was fine. Rinse, lather, repeat.

 

[Hopeforlife]

In these days around 3-4 a day. Good days none. Same as @Friday said above up and down. When I was diagnosed almost 15 years ago everything rolled into one. Managed to manage my symptoms very well for almost 10 years but the last two years have been a struggle.

 

[Abstract]

I was in denial early days so who knows. But on more self awareness and in retrospect I spent most of every day there in some way. Sometimes what I describe as strobe and sometimes more of a subtle cascade. Now I go days without any flashback stuff at all. Maybe weeks but that may be down to interpretation as have body memory type flashbacks. Regardless my brain is not in there most of the day. The subtleties still confuse me. And I relate to the years, months week changes. Sometimes due to triggers and sometimes not. I am fairly knowledgeable in many areas but still trying to figure this stuff out.

 

[MyWillow]

Mine are all over the place with no regularity. Some I have at night - completely different from dreams and nightmares. I have them fairly regularly. Some are during the day. I’m getting better at identifying the trigger for the day ones.

Never knew what one was until I started T for pain management. A few digging questions about my childhood started triggering them. Most of them I dissociated through with no memory, just the feeling of being hit by a truck afterwards.

I’m only just realising that talking to my family has been triggering them for some years. But the visual flashes are so quick that it was only after I’d had the flashback whilst sleeping that I recognised it during the day. So yeah, avoiding family like the absolute plague.

My psydoc and (now equine) T are slowing things down as much as humanly possible so as not to trigger them. My psydoc is adamant that she will do her best to ensure I’m not re-traumatised. I make sure I tell them as much as possible although some content I can’t talk about yet. None of it makes sense. So even when I have them I know my team has got my back. And that really helps.

 

[Teasel]

Sometimes I feel like flashbacks are the safe place...

In what way?

As others have said, I have less now than I did. But to be fair I'm hardly out there living my life. I expect to have more when I try to get back in the land of the living.

 

[Abstract]

Sometimes I feel like flashbacks are the safe place...is this unusual?

Agreed with Berlinda that this is something I wanted to ask....

 

[MyWillow]

I expect to have more when I try to get back in the land of the living.

Interestingly I’m the opposite. Flat out busy, full on job and I’m fine. Slow down, give my brain time to think and I get smashed. Ugh. Keeping VERY busy and active at the moment.

 

[Abstract]

Maybe triggers versus distraction?! Both a factor for me.

 

[meander]

The safe place- perhaps this is because I dissociate so much? I think I mean it’s a familiarity/I’m there so much in my head that being in the present is quite hard work- it’s easier to go there or stay there in the memories/flashbacks (although the fb is way more intense esp if a longer scene rather than little random flashes)Maybe I’m not sure what I meant.

 

[Abstract]

Thats Ok. Do you want to explore it more? Wha does being there involve. What happens there. Who what. What is in the now who what. Is there reason to be there instead of here,

 

[meander]

There’s a lot of comfort - he was my safety and attachment in the absence of my parents. He made me feel wanted and special and needed and that’s where the flashbacks start, a place of comfort which then goes awry.
Distraction I do yes way more- keep busy but yes suddenly the triggers are everywhere in a way they never used to be. I’m digging into the attachment stuff for the first time ever in T.
Don’t know if this makes any sense- I’m just there in my head a lot.