Kinds Of Flashbacks?

[hollyberrytea]

As a sufferer.. I feel like I should experience flashbacks. But I don't think I do?

I don't experience anything visual. At most seeing something (like when I scroll on tumblr and see sexually graphic images) might make me really anxious and possibly throw me into an anxiety attack.

Sometimes my boyfriend might joke sexually and it makes me uncomfortable, when usually it doesn't. But it sometimes happens.

Both of these things don't always happen. I don't always get really anxious when I see graphic images. Sometimes it's not as bad as other times and I just get uncomfortable.

I don't know if these are considered flashbacks? I don't really think about what happened to me much. I'm pretty whatever about it. And I've accepted it. I don't think it really haunts me anymore.

My therapist and I talked about the grounding technique which was designed to bring people who have flashbacks or attacks back to reality. But I use grounding because I MAJORLY space out and lose all contact with the world. I can't go out places without being really spacey. Like being at a restaurant with my boyfriend. He'd talk and I'd space out looking at something and he got a lil upset that I wasn't listening. Or being at the mall, I just couldn't talk to him. Or with friends in general, I just don't talk much. I'm always spacing out...

I'm just looking for some general insight about flashbacks and my situation and what you all think. Thanks!

 

[LittleGirlLost]

Personally, I don't experience flashbacks. I do, however, experience intrusive memories. It's better now that I know that's what's happening -- instead I get emotional or anxious and then I can either talk myself down or I'm apartment-bound for a few days -- but before I was diagnosed as having PTSD, I would see or smell or hear or touch something that reminded me of a traumatic memory and I would either remember vividly that part of the event or else do what I call "freaking my beans".

I always know where I am and when I am, but in the first instance, I would get caught in an obsessive feedback loop of memories connected with the memory that barged in on me when I encountered the trigger and just think about it and think about it until I became a completely useless mess. In the second instance, "freaking my beans" usually means an immediate and extreme emotional response that lasts for hours at least.

Some examples of "freaking my beans":

In high school shortly after my father attempted suicide (by gun), a friend of mine who knew nothing about it was dared by other friends to jump out at me and scare me. He decided to do this by putting a finger gun to his temple. I ran out of the room terrified and raging.

Elijah Wood in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind bears an uncanny resemblance to my big brother as he was at his death. It also came out the year after he died. When I saw it at the theater, I cried through the entire movie and well into the rest of the night.

At acting school, some stupid classmates decided that in order to portray Masha in The Seagull snorting snuff, they would have to try it (for the record, that's not acting). They did this in the lobby where we all waited in between classes and ate lunch and hung out and I happened to turn around and see them right as they did so. Now I never saw my brothers do drugs and I don't even know that they ever snorted anything, but it triggered me. I spent the rest of the day in a fetal position in the lobby sobbing so hard I could barely breathe.


Now that I know what I'm experiencing, when one of my triggers shows itself, I use a variety of methods to calm myself down, but just being aware of what's going on at a biological and psychological level is hugely helpful. I do grounding and breathing techniques. I use acting exercises that remind me there are other emotions; this feeling is not the only thing in the world. I tell myself on loop that I'm safe, that it's a memory and it can't hurt me, that what I'm seeing or smelling or hearing is not the thing I think it is.

And I have to be very careful not to chase the feeling away or ignore it because it leaves me, as I said, depressed and apartment-bound the next few days. So instead I'm trying to calm down enough to acknowledge the feeling, reminding myself that things like joy also live within me, and let myself be sad or angry if that's what I need.

I do have a history of dissociation as a child, but I somehow managed to grow out of it and I haven't done it in a very long time. But what might help with spacing out is grounding yourself and then being aware of each part of your body and its distance from the ceiling and the floor and the walls around you and anything between you and those things. This is, in fact, an exercise developed for actors to be fully present and available and it does wonders for me. Or imagining roots growing down from your feet into the ground is also a helpful acting exercise for that. I also like to imagine that I'm breathing into my feet or that I'm the whole world and breathing into the planet itself.


I have no idea if that helped you at all or if that's what you were looking for, but that's what I've got.

 

[hollyberrytea]

@LittleGirlLost; Hey thanks for the response! It was pretty helpful. I like to hear how other people experience things. Good to know I'm not a weirdo about it. Haha.

Thank you for talking about your experiences with me! I should try acting a little more. I feel like it'll help. I'm in a theatre class right now that I enjoy quite a bit. (: Thanks for the insight, helpful! :3

 

[LittleGirlLost]

One of the things an acting teacher of mine (who, by the way, studied in grad school with the man who pioneered drama therapy) says all the time is that while acting is not therapy, it is therapeutic.

Be careful, though; a lot of acting teachers don't actually know what they're doing when it comes to people with traumatic experiences. I got very, very lucky with that teacher. You might ask your therapist about drama therapy, though. A lot of the techniques overlap considerably with trauma therapy techniques. My therapist is always giving me something she calls a "resource" to help me stay functioning and within the window of tolerance stimulation-wise that I'll inevitably have learned in acting school with slightly different terminology.

 

[hollyberrytea]

Yeah, I think my theatre professor is kind of silly anyway. Kinda gullible; not to be rude in any matter towards her, she's a fun lady.

But thank you for the advice! I'll have to ask my therapist about it!

 

[Loner]

Google 'emotional flashbacks' you get all the feelings of being back in the memory without any auditory or visual hallucinations. I know them well.

You might not have those though, you might just have a lot of grief and pain that gets brought out by things that remind you of it. Once you read more about emotional flashbacks you'll probably be able to decide which for yourself.

 

[LittleGirlLost]

So I've been Googling 'emotional flashbacks' myself and it seems more and more likely that when I "freak my beans" that's what's going on. So thanks! Good to know.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Google "Pete Walker Emotional Flashbacks".

He understands them more than anyone else I know and gives you steps for dealing with them.

 

[Away From The Sun]

I totally relate. I don't have have visual types of flashbacks. It's usually emotionally based like feeling "hopeless", "helpless", or "trapped" that will have me reverting back to acting like a "needy little child". I didn't realize this until a week ago.

I space a lot too. People always joked that I had no "situational awareness" (I honestly do but I would zone out without always realizing it). I just thought it was relatively normal and didn't really know about dissociation because I thought of it as part of as having DID or some sort of dissociative disorder.

 

[MoodElevator]

Holly, my personal experience of a flashback is like being thrust into a memory, always with varying levels of intensity. Sometimes this will be accompanied by images, sounds, or even scents, sometimes it won't be. One thing that they always seem to involve are physical sensations of one sort or another. Sometimes it's a painful ache in my head stomach or back, other times it can be an itching feeling or a stiff feeling somewhere. Often the really scary flashblacks happen while I'm outside or on the subway or somewhere public like that. I get thrown into a memory and/or a 'life or death fantasy' or sometimes somewhere else entirely and my body just keeps behaving normally. I call this being on 'auto-pilot'. When it happens I consciously lose all sense of time and location and my body seems to function normally. Sometimes I've even been in a conversation and I'll apparently be still listening and responding properly but when I return to reality I have no memory of what was said at all. The same occurs when I'm walking down the street. I'll have an episode and suddenly I'm several blocks ahead of myself or already at the subway stn. et cetra, et cetra.

My therapist draws a distinction between these experiences and an 'emotional flashback' which he refers to as a 'hijack'. I definitely experience the latter a lot more often than the former. It's like having a historical emotional state take control of you, strongly influencing your actions and perception of reality. Just like this:

feeling "hopeless", "helpless", or "trapped" that will have me reverting back to acting like a "needy little child"

The way I've learnt to deal with them is by first consciously identifying the 'hijacker' and comforting it while trying to stay aware that what I'm feeling is a reverberation.

I tell myself on loop that I'm safe, that it's a memory and it can't hurt me, that what I'm seeing or smelling or hearing is not the thing I think it is.

As far as the 'spacing out' is concerned, I experience that quite often as well, especially when I'm out somewhere. It's pretty much exactly as you describe it. It's like instead of being moved somewhere I'm just put on pause for a moment or two. Sort of like my mind quickly jumps into the picture I'm looking at and takes a quick catnap, it's sort of a numb feeling... This is one of the many things my ex refused to even attempt to understand. So I want to assure you that it's not something you should feel any guilt about. I mean it's not like you're purposely trying to lose focus or you find what he's saying boring or not worthy of attention or something right. hahhah

By the way Little: I love the 'freaking my beans' expression and would like to 'hijack' it from you :P

 

[LittleGirlLost]

You are 100% welcome to hijack it. Spread it across the populated world like a farmer sewing seeds to feed his family. Language seeds.

 

[MoodElevator]

Hooray language seeds! It shall spread like wildfire. :)