What I been through in my live. I will also Tell you what is wrong with me top and bottom. I will try my best to remember stuff to remember from when I was little. To be truthful it happened to me. Now through my stories you can hear my stories .
Your stand there and all of sudden something triggers imagines first inside your head.
Then it stops and you freeze up only gasping. Everything replays in your head. Except its real to you.
You are relieveing a nightmare. You do everything you can do to fight the bad knowing you have to live.
Then you feel a pull. This pull feels like love. You run towards it, only to open your eyes to find your grounding to the real world.
But sometimes that don't happen. Your stuck in that world and don't know how to get out. Your screaming at yourself that this is not real. Then you scream for someone to help you but they don't.
Flash back
A flashback can feel as though you are actually being drawn back into the traumatic experience, like it is still happening or happening all over again. They can occur uninvited, stirring up images, sensations and emotions of the original event. A flashback can be so overwhelming to one’s sense of reality, that many who suffer from them believe they are reliving or re-experiencing their trauma. A flashback is able to mimic the real thing because it provokes a similar level of stress in the body. The same hormones course through your veins as did at the time of the actual trauma, setting your heart pounding and preparing your muscles and other body systems to react as they did at the time (Rothschild, 2010).
For flashbacks to be dampened, or even eliminated- they must first, accurately categorized. Categorizing refers to the process of placing an event, or a flashback, in time. In reality, a flashback is not a repetition or replay of a past event; it is a memory of that event. This is the case no matter how intense it its, or whether it can fool your mind into believing the trauma is really happening again or still going on. Often, a minor editing of very tense (example- “I was attacked”, rather than “I am being attacked”) can have a huge impact. Using the past tense not only helps people identify the current flashback as a memory, but also highlights that the event is over, and they are not currently in danger.
In addition it is helpful to ground into the present moment, and alleviate the overwhelming emotional responses associated with the flashback.
Ideas for managing when experiencing a flashback:
NAME the experience as a flashback (example- this is a memory, NOT a recurrence of the actual event)
Use LANGUAGE that categorizes the flashbacks as a “memory” (example- I was attacked, rather than I am being attacked
Use the SENSES to GROUND self in your CURRENT environment:
Name what you see, feel, hear, smell etc.
Rub hands together
Touch, feel the chair that is supporting you
Wiggle your toes
Favourite colour- find three things in the room that are “blue”
Name the date, month, year, season
Count backwards from 100
Use an object as a grounding tool
It can be helpful to explore the patterns of flashbacks as well as dissociation. Identifying your experience of a flashback can provide helpful information:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
