Revision Of Walker's 13 Steps Of Flashback Management

[Powder]

I thought I might share my adaptation of Pete Walker's 13 Steps for Flashback (Fb) Management. Walker states that all 13 are not needed, but that sampling from among them is recommended. Often only one of them is needed to break away from the Fb.
I will put my revision below his words in bold.
I think it would be great to revise something that works for you and reply below. Hopefully, we can see how people have figured out what works for them and see if there is a pattern.

13 Steps for Managing Flashbacks

1. I think as "loud as I can" and over and over until it sinks in: "I am just having a flashback". I am feeling a lot of pain, but I am safe. I am in pain, but I am not in any danger.
2. To remind myself that though "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." I smack my hand or reach out and touch the floor and furniture around me, repeatedly, as if pinching myself to awaken. For some, holding something brings them back. I have to smack my hand hard enough on the floor to see it's real. I reach out and feel the things I see around me. {I have to get down on the floor, sometimes in a fetal position or crouching to feel less dizzy.}
3. Maintain boundaries by giving myself time to process the flashback with steps that will work for me. I don't feel the need to explain what I'm doing until I feel ready, and only to the extent that I want to or that helps me. Think lovingly of the child that I was that had to live through these feelings then. Respect that s/he was wise to use whatever coping she had at the time, but that I can now compliment them with new skills.
4. Remember the flashback will pass as it has many times before, and that now I can make it stop faster unless I want to see what happened. I am ultimately in a certain amount of control of this.
5. Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small and little is a sure sign of a flashback]
6. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into 'heady' worrying, or numbing and spacing out. THis is the hardest part for me, and the inability to relax is why the Fb can last days/hours. So, rather than relax, I have to do other steps, regulate breathing, and be in whatever position "tricks" me into feeling safe, usually a form or squat or fetal position. Then, I smack the floor or feel the furniture around me, sip ice water, and work on normal breathing. I try to focus on my supporter and my surroundings, rather than being lost in the internal pain I feel physically and emotionally.
7. Put a scent, like Vicks medicated rub or aromatherapy oil under my nose, smell it deeply to help regulate breathing and trick my body into noticing I am "here and now."
8. [a] Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends unnecessary danger signals to the brain)
   Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger).
   [c] Slow down: rushing presses the psyche's panic button.
   [d] Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap.
   [e] Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react self-destructively to it.
9. Resist the Inner Critic's Drasticizing and Catastrophizing: [a] Use thought-stopping to halt its endless exaggeration of danger and constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame, hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying NO to unfair self-criticism. Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments. For me this is really just taking credit for the ability to handle the Fb's with more experience and coping skills, and/or the ability to integrate the seemingly endless supply of trauma memories that tell a sad story about my past and who my parents are. Feel proud of ability to finally face the truth, hard as it was/is.
10. Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate - and then soothe - the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion and our anger into self-protection. Realize that the people who truly hurt me are no longer in my life. They cannot hurt me now. I am safe now.
11. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them. I am limited in what I can do with this so far. It is hard enough for me to trust medical professionals to seek medical help. I do not know where to find the kind of support that I would benefit from other than a few trusted people. I have major trust issues.
12. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes. Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable. Rather than 'blame' others when they trigger me by accident, I focus on educating them about what their behavior does to me. For instance, if someone is angry and raises their voice to someone else, and this triggers a Fb, when I have recovered, I let them know that I haven't eliminated angry outbursts as a trigger and they need to own that, even as I own that it's MY trigger to deal with. I seek them to own their role and commit to working on dealing with their anger differently.
    [*]Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and abandonment. They also point to our still unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met. Letting the Fb come to me, unresisted, allowed me to learn a lot more about my trauma and myself.
13. Be patient with a slow recovery process: it takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process [often two steps forward, one step back], not an attained salvation fantasy. Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback. Having a Fb is a healing crisis, not just a time when PTSD is kicking my butt. It's a sign, just like an illness, that I can take better care of me. But it also means that I'm integrating and becoming whole.

Please copy paste your fav list or list your T's recommended coping steps, and personalize them with your own findings.

Thank you for sharing. It is the simple things that help the most.

Cold, company, and using the senses and postures and breathing to 'come back' fully into the present. Grieving in the present heals the past.

 

[lostforgottensoul]

Reading this gave me a flashback. No, im joking. I actually couldnt read most of it as it is making my anxiety sky rocket. The only thing (not a good thing) that i found stopped my constant, at the time, flashbacks were huffing duster. I think its the only drug that will. Im not advising to do that, just stating. Ive never really attempted to get myself out of a flashback, didnt know i could. I just pin myself to the wall or whatever and "wake up" and learned i just pinned myself against the wall....

 

[Powder]

Yeah, it's a long list. Ideally, it should be broken up into some simple system like HALT.

Several steps should be consolidated into one, as they are so closely related to each other. Maybe that would be better than adding an interpretation to each.

Also, I copied and pasted the list. When I tried to add comments a line below each, the auto numbering wouldn't let me, so I had to use spacebar (very annoying).

.

 

[Teasel]

When I remember to read his 13 steps it helps ever so much. Occasionally when I'm really badly triggered the steps are less effective...

I like to do deep breathing, down into the belly, very calming.

 

[Powder]

Thank you, @Berlinda

I agree in the moment is too late to start. I usually get a few seconds of clarity and just do whichever one I can remember in the moment. Usually, this is to think to myself that I'm having a flashback.

For me, that has helped in the last 4 years when flashbacks have been happening on a regular basis. For a while, this was too disorienting to even do that step.