Flashbacks: good definition?
Submitted by Pheepho on Thu, 11/18/2010 - 8:53pmSo is it like a hallucination where you really feel yourself back to the moment of trauma, or you just feel crap because something reminded you?
I mean, the trauma for me ended over 20 years ago, but it went on for most of my childhood and basically most of my childhood and teenage memories refer to it in some way. I am surrounded by memories. So what is a flashback and what is just having intrusive memories or emotions?
Does anyone have links or a good definition of what an actually flashback means? Or thoughts from personal experience?
Is this used as a gauge of how affected you were, the fact that a person doesn't get flashbacks means well it couldn't have been that bad? Or, must you have flashbacks in order to have PTSD?
Really good questions that I
Really good questions that I am also unclear on- particularily since what I am thinking of as flashbacks for me occurred with psychosis almost simultaneously. I had one that waas pre psychosis though where all of the bodily sensations of the moment came back to me and I was not seeing/aware of my surroundings. There were no images only feelings, of being trapped and squeezed and dying. Then I was back. and everything was normal and I was confused. It was my old therapist who was a clinical psychologist that told me that this experience was probably a flashback. She said that they can be intrusive images (although that wording confuses me- so if you can't get a memory out of your head or are ruminating over something is that a flashback?) or body sensations. They can involve hallucinations or not involve hallucinations. And no, I don't think that if an experience doesn't cause you to have flashbacks that it necessarily means that the event or situations was less traumatic then someone who does. Whether or not someone will have flashbacks or be overwhelmed to that point by their trauma depends on a persons individual threshhold for traumatic processing in general as well as in the moment. I don't really know what the threshold depends on but I bet it is configured by a lot of factors. A woman recently told me that she was beaten by her father as a child and that this didn't give her ptsd, but her sister her was not beaten by watched the whole thing did develop ptsd. Maybe because the sister felt more helpless than the other in that situation? The woman told me she would deliberately provoke her father to steer his anger away from the sister. Maybe the fact that that worked made her feel like she had agency in the situation, so she did not get ptsd. i don't know I am just guessing things, I am interested to hear other peoples thoughts on flashbacks.
What does this sound like?
What does this sound like? Sat down at the end of the night, wanted to draw. Picked up my scetchpad. Flipping through it, all my drawings suddenly seemed so, so painful. I came to a blank page and drew a sketch of two figures. The image was meaningless to me, ie, no associations.
Suddenly felt so odd, and I can't put a name to the emotion. Not sure if it was scared or sad...and then I tried to kind of write it out, but I had to kind of unsay everything I said, I couldn't make a clear statement. And while this was going on, I thought, wow, I never feel emotion, this is emotion, like everything suddenly hitting me. It was disturbing but I guess it just disapated. I went to work today and felt cautious because I thought I would be like a raw nerve but I was okay. I slowly came out of it. But now I am at this point of kind of resisting evaluating anything. I don't want to give names to things because I feel I just don't know, and if I try to name things and fit them into some predetermined disease condition or set of experiences, it wont allow me to really experience who I am.
So I may think, these set of experiences are my traumatic experiences, but I don't really know. Do you guys think there are those who repress memories and then those who just repress the emotions but remember fucking everything, and then the emotions pop up one day and you don't recognise what it is, like martians just landed in your head or something, and what it is is just feelings. And then you feel like you should be having some revelation, some repressed memory surfacing, but it's just the same old stuff that you've always known, the revelation is, you're somebody different than you thought you were, and there are little details that come up that aren't very traumatic in themselves but I guess house the emotion.
Anyway, that's where I'm at. Have to get off line. I'm okay. Just what's going on. Any feedback is cool.
OH MY GOD! YES! THIS is
OH MY GOD! YES!
THIS is what happened to ME. I thought I was having this weird intense emotions that made no sense, no connectedness to anything. I remembered all my traumas, but I never thought they were traumatic because I had no feelings about any of them. I thought I was untouched by them. So when I did intakes I never said anything about trauma, I was tough, it didn't affect me (I thought). Meanwhile sometimes - especially when I started trying to understand PTSD - these emotions that I couldn't attack to anything would pop out and seem like psychosis to doctors. Like suddenly I am sobbing for no reason and feeling things in my body that are not there and everything looks weird. But why would I think it had to do with anything from my past - My past didn't upset me, so I thought. I had no feeling when I remembered it.
What is interesting is that these emotions as I began to have them connect to experiences I had detached my emotions from (Is that dissociation? I can see everything in my mind but it doesn't feel real, there's nothing but facts.) - Once I attached them to where there came from (which was spontaneous) and worked with that, the intergration made me feel so much more whole!! The main one was rage when I started to talk about being raped - At first I spent a year thinking it wasn't rape, because rape is in an alley with a gun, not some guy saying he loves me, even though when I described it to a few others they said it was rape (however one guy friend said it wasn't which totally ruined me). Once I was sure it was rape and that I was allowed to feel upset, the rage that used to pop up unexpectedly like a drug rush came and I could connect the need to kick and throw things to the rape trapped in my body. I went to the hopsital fearing I'd kill people, and when I got out and had let it settle, some interesting things happened:
No longer did I have an imagine of a trapped teenage girl naked in the dark suffering from being raped, she wasn't someone ELSE, some girl I was trying to rescue anymore (and that rescuing took form also in trying to rescue women I knew had been raped during the time of my life when I wasn't aware I had been). She was me. I was WHOLE finally. I didn't feel like I was on the outside of my self, I felt like I got in my body more. It was like there was this inner 14 year old that took up a lot of room that I had no control over, but her emotional state took over a lot and she and I were so seperate, I had no idea how to help her or stop her.... Now I see that "she" was the respressed emotions. Once I intergrated the anger she felt and the need to protect her body, by having it hit me hard, we were one. The weird empty feeling in my body was gone, I cannot explain it aside from I didn't feeling like I was hovering on my edges anymore, I had gained access to my body.
I had thought for a whole when first working with the rape that I had DID issues. But it isn't that clear cut I think. I had the memory, but not the feelings. Once it was clear to me that it was Ok for me to have those feelings by reading lots of rape recovery stuff, I had the feelings with awareness of why, and ended up reunited with a part of my experience.
I still have no feelings about the unexpected murder I was at. Even in my memory my only thought was "I cannot do anything about this, I hate the guy who killed that drug dealer, why does my friend date him, ugh, oh well, let's get high" and blocked my brain. I don't think there was any way I could have felt anything about the murder at the time being 17 and dependant in NYC where we were scoring - I mean I couldn't have run screaming into the lower east side in the 1980s with no friends there. So I just ignored what happened and I have no feelings about it that I KNOW OF - But I am sure they ARE there and coming out in other ways,now that I understand myself better. When I said the story in therapy, I couldn't really come up with an emotion, aside from maybe fear that this asshole might kill me one day. So I expect that the emotion does show up at some times and I often wonder if my fear of checking email and VM and leaving the house are fear that he or someone else will be contacting me to kill me. I hope that when I get the emotions in the right places I won't be having emotions that are unrelated to anything around me anymore.
This is how my terror that Vikings or zombies are outside operates too - The feeling is from the past, and my brain I see now cannot say who really is causing it, because it doesn't make sense to my brain that those people who "loved" me would harm me so much. So to protect that, my brain I guess grabs at the idea of Vikings and other scary things being in my yard. It feels 100% real - and even writing this, I feel it - and Iknow with thinking that it isn't true, but my bodyself really believes it is happening. So I think my bodyemotion self has a flashback and my brain self tries to make sense of it and puts Vikings in the story since it cannot handle thinking it is from these people it wants to love and think are good. I have read little kids to this a lot to handle living with their abusers.
Thank you so much, because all of this is helping me understand my own experience of being me. You all are a real gift and I am very grateful. have a good day. Know we're all pulling for you.
"It's the end," said the caterpillar. "It's the beginning," said the butterfly.
That is a GOOD question - I
That is a GOOD question - I don't think I know the answer either. Yeah, I don't think some of the professionals really know their definitions either - some of them can at best parrot a textbook/DSM definition, but that's about it. People (often) become social workers because they couldn't make it in a medicine, law, accounting - or any other more lucrative career. Not that all the doctors are so brilliant, either.
Alot of people become social
Alot of people become social workers because they have alot of heart and want to help people, not just that they couldn't make it. I work in social services, and I love my job but it is a sort of awesome resposibility to carry that if you suck at your job, or are not listening properly than that person, who is often either in crisisor close to it, doesn't get the help they deserve. Its hard and emotionally taxing and social workers/psychologists are human too.
a lot of people become
a lot of people become social workers because they are searching for the answers to their own mental health issues. i suffered a nervous breakdown getting my social work degree, my phd telling me i was traumatizing myself again and again with the classes i was taking. three weeks before graduation i was in the state hospital. i completed my final report, a community assessment, on the patients in the hospital. i made a collage for my presentation using tape to put it togehter because they wouldnt let me have glue. it was beautiful. i got an A.
Sarsha, I am so sorry, what
Sarsha, I am so sorry, what I said about social workers was inappropriate!! What I said came across as minimalizing the hard work, skill and compassion of dedicated people like you who do social work. I guess that when I read about Pheepho's experience with being unable to get a definition of flashbacks, I felt frustration on her behalf and wanted to vent about those professionals who are not able to help for whatever reason - but like you said, these people are human too, and in many/most cases it may not be incompetency that hinders their effectiveness. I hear that caseloads can be unreal and social workers really are often overtaxed - just the fact that they keep doing that line of work may indicate compassion and a commitment to service, rather than just settling for that line of work. Thank you for reminding me about these challenges in a kind and respectful way. : )
And Pheepho, I think that your post about working in veterinary care was totally appropriate and helpful, because you were expressing empathy and solidarity with the challenges social workers face.
I welcome the possible new male group member if he wants to join. I totally support anyone who's not comfortable having a male in our group, but for me there is no discomfort.
Mary, no worries! I hope I
Mary, no worries! I hope I didn't sound all lecturey either because certainly I have been guilty of stereotyping groups as well...
Yeah, I get that Sarsha, I
Yeah, I get that Sarsha, I work in a veterinary hospital so I get to take on everybodies issues with the whole profession if I discuss my day-job with anyone. Anyone with a job dealing with a lot of emotion is subject to a lot of criticism that is not always warranted, and we need to regard everyone as an individual. I find I need to remember this when meeting new pdocs as well: just an individual. Sometimes I think I made the wrong career choice and would like a change. Perhaps there are pdocs who feel that way to, like "this industry sucks!" but not everyone has that freedom, as in financial pressure, etc. So we all continue to do our best, and try and find creative solutions to the moral dilemmas we face. Frankly sometimes I am too tired to even do this, and so it is hard. I think in the beginning we are all idealists, but bottom line we are all just people. There are also things I love about my job, er, i almost forgot to add that.
Sorry, I can't scroll up and I don't remember what this original thread is about so I have to stop there.
Oops...
I'm just realizing what I wrote up there may sound like a lecture. I don't know why I had to jump in on that, nobody here is a judgemental person, so who am I talking to? I guess I just grabbed the opportunity to vent about my own career problems. So sorry if it came across wrong...
EXCELLENT QUESTION!!!!
EXCELLENT QUESTION!!!! Wow! Thank you.
I thought I didn't have flashbacks - I don't hear a song and then see awful things. But now I know I do have them. It's when I have feelings that are huge and out of context. When I am having terror mostly. It means something is triggering me and I am phsyiologically going into the mode as if something is happening to me, the fight-flight-freeze response jumps right in. It;s inconvient to say the least because I am dealing with chemicals in my body saying one thing is happening and a reality where it is not. I tell people flashbacks are like acid. You know you're tripping, but you cannot make it stop. I didn't know I was tripping on trauma though, so I thought I had bipolar - huge feelings our of nowhere! So I was told I was ultra rapid cycling with these intense emotional changes out of the blue all day. It defintely made me look "crazy" when I'd hide in a closet or be afraid to go outside because I thought killers were there. For a while I worried Vikings were going to kill me. Then add to this "psychosis" that I kept thinking I was fading and didn't exist or that the world was fading away - derealization and depersonalizetion - and they all said bipolar psychosis. With the trauma element recognized, now it makes sense to have these reactions, it's not some random chemical blip.
For those of us who thought that flashbacks were like movies playing in our heads, it is hard to understand what they really are. And yeah NO ONE explains them well at all. But ANYthing that happens because you are triggered and then physiologically you change into fight-flight-freeze mode and are not "here" is a flashback. It can be a headache, a pain in your gut, an image, a voice saying stuff (when I had that it made them totally think I was psychotic), panic, rage, turning into a little girl, paranoia, saying stuff about the trauma as if it is happening, violence, nightmares, etc. To me a flashback is when you are not here and you are then. This is why they work so much with mindfulness for trauma now, to really get the bodymind to understand that the trauma is over and that today is today. I learned some very helpful mindfulnness tricks for when i can feel a flashback happening - like the terror that makes me see black spots and feel totally disoriented - when I can figure out what I am feeling - I do the 5 5 5 - I look for five things of one color, listen for five noises, and then touch five textures. It really does stop the flashbacks. It takes some training to practice to remember to use it.
I think what scares me most about flashbacks is that I am so vulnerable when having them and I do stuff that can hurt me. I need to be in the present to take care of myself.
BTW I went to my PCP and told her I wanted Clonidine which is a blood pressure lowerer for my tardive dyskinesia. She said sure, she really has no idea how to help, but I researched - It is used to stop ADHD hyperactivity and insomnia and PTSD anxiety, heroin and alcohol and cigarette withdrawal. See, if they make it so you cannot get high blood pressure, you cannot freak out, you cannot have flashbacks, you cannot panic. Your body cannot do that. Well it didn't help the TD - but it totally cured the PTSD. I Mean it. CURED. NO symptons. The bad part was that I was kinda wasted and floaty, very very happy though. But I could do everything that usually scares me! My hypervigilance and terror was gone. I got a rash though and I stopped taking it because it might be an allergy. Also it was making me want to lie in bed and be happy while my hands felt floaty. I read a report that 1 in 5 combat troops stopped having any PTSD symptoms when taking this medication. At least it is not addictive and it is not a psych med. But the low pressure has to monitered. It was really nice to have the fear taken away, gang, it was heaven. To live without PTSD for a few days.
OH and a male Icarista I write with was raped as a teenager by a group of older boys (his friend's brother and his friends) and when he tried to tell people they said he was gay and so he hasn't really told anyone since. He struggles with anxiety disorders and also fear of having power and thus being a doormat. He's a big activist for animal rights. He might want to ask to join the group, but he didn't want to upset us by being a man. (He spends a lot of time with hardcore feminist women.) He's also scared of being triggered, so he might not request to join for that reason. But can I tell him it is Ok if he decided to join? If we want to keep this women only, he understands.
Love to you all. XO Heather
"It's the end," said the caterpillar. "It's the beginning," said the butterfly.
Wow, thank you Heather for this
Wow, thank you Heather for this definition! I definitely get the flashbacks. I start to feel like the little girl, go into old terror and shame/guilt, etc. I am excited about finding more and more ways I can verbally identify and communicate what it is that happens to me.
I am starting to "come out of the closet" with my emotional health!!! In the past two weeks I have had successful conversations with FIVE different people that I had been superficially friends/acquainted with, where I felt like the obstacle to reaching a more meaningful state of connection was a basic sense of validation of the fact that I have severe emotional issues.
I did not ask for support or advice or management of my symptoms, or say things that would imply the need for support/advice/management like I had many times in the past. ("I am overwhelmed and I don't know what to do" often seemed to prompt "problem-solving" responses like "well you should go out and do volunteer work" when the person knew very well that I was already up to my ears in volunteer work as a coordinator for a bajillion different community music/dance projects - but I digress.)
So instead, this time I told people things like, "I am sorry that I was unfriendly the last time I saw you. I am realizing that in order to be comfortable relating in social situations, I want some of the people I'm working with, including you, to understand that I have a lot of emotional problems. I'm not even asking for you to do anything specific to support me, and really I'm winging it as far as figuring out how to talk about this, because I feel like nobody talks about it! But I think the first step for me is just for people to know that I have these problems and to be accepting of that reality. I really appreciate you being willing to listen to me say this."
I didn't go into detail about my specific problems. I think I mentioned anxiety in all the conversations, and in a couple of them I said, "due to some of the things I've experienced I have some gaps - or blank spots - in my personality." Just being able to say these words - man, this was huge.
I think I understand more about why I've always felt such solidarity with LGBTQ folks. I felt like some of those celebrities - didn't Ellen Degeneres and Melissa Etheridge both do this? - who've gotten up on stage at high-profile events and said, "well, I just wanted everyone to know that I'm gay." I mean, I don't want to presume to understand everything that LGBTQ people go through, but when it comes to the whole coming-out-of-the-closet - I think I get it.
And all of the people I talked to - two women and three guys, one of whom is now my daily walking buddy and the other four of whom work closely with my husband in some music projects - were kind and accepting and didn't seem threatened at all. I'm sure largely this is a result of what seems to be a new ability on my part to choose nicer people from whom to seek interaction. Even if some or all of these interactions do not evolve into closer friendships, I am reasonably certain that at least none of these people are the narcissists/abusers/neglectors to whom I seemed to be magically drawn in the past.
I must admit, the very reality of my crush-like feelings toward one of the guys I ended up talking to made me suspect that he must at least be one of the "neglectors." In some ways - his talent and melancholy and a sense of absolute style that seems to pervade his entire persona - he reminds me of the ex-boyfriend about whom I was writing in my last blog entry.
Okay, I am starting to ramble - I just wrote and deleted several sentences about the ex-boyfriend - so I will go to bed now. Thanks to everyone for listening to me! Sweet dreams.
WOW Mary
WOW Mary Congratulations!!!! I think it is not just picking the right people but how you are saying it. You're just letting them know why you might do dsome stuff that seems unsocial and now they know why, that you don't hate them or something, and so they feel more comfortable too I bet? You did such a great job! I am impressed. I think it is like people I know with Tourette's - Even once I was on a subway and a man was muttering "Fucking fuck mother fuck" and he said to me "I have Tourette's, this is not about you" and I felt so much better and safer and also more compassionate towards him. I think sometimes when we seem comfortable with our problems other people do too. Like if someone says to me "I am going through a lot of personal changes right now and am not the most relaible person, please don't take it personally" it totally changes how I was interpreting their actions, you know? But if they said instead "I cannot help it that I blew you off, I am in crisis, I am seriously considering suicide and I don't know what to do and you're bitching at me about missing lunch?" well, that would drive me off because what could I say then? - and I have driven A LOT of people off by being that way. My feelings were totally valid, but it wasn't helpful for me to say it that way.
I was worried last night when I wrote That I hadn't found anyone who listens - I thought we were talking about pdocs, sorry! Yes, I am lucky I finally got Dennis - But I also know that a year ago I wouldn't have been able to tell him my story. I needed to read about the shame of PTSD, the societal stuff, the brainwashing of guilt, the healing process, the need to control the healing process, the different treatments for PTSD, what info they need to help me and how I can say it that is Ok with me, and how to self sooth when I am overwhelmed in a flashback or dissociated - mindfulness since that's the skill for being here now, and flashbacks and dissociation are about being somewhere else then. There was a lot of prep wok that I thought was wasting time, but it got me so I can say what I want to say and feel safe finally. I know the lingo, the intake procedure, too. I also have an idea through trial and error horrors of what it is that has helped me so I know what to say I want. But I haven't found a pdoc. However I am not so scared now, because I see that if I tell some facts of the abuse no one ever thinks it isn't PTSD anymore, which is nice, I am not as scared of a bad diagnosis ruling their decisions. As much as I hate that I was treated for bipolar and not PTSD for years, I do see that when I was asked "Any sexual abuse? Any trauma?" I always said no, so why would they think PTSD? I am not letting them off the hook, but if I saw a doctor and didn't say I had chest pains I am not sure why they'd be expected to assume a heart attack was happening. But I really didn't understand I had any trauma. Which is a typical thing with people who have PTSD - we're always thinking other people have had it worse and it's not a big deal. So now when I say hypervigiliance, insomnia, anxiety attacks, dissociation, flashbacks, and rape, domestic violence, mentally ill parents, and seeing a murder, well, they just go PTSD. I have to remember pdocs are being sceintists, and are ruling out stuff, so they ask questions that I take as an offense, when really it is just a question. When I see the neurologist and he asks if i have any numbness in my left hand I don't get offended, but when a shrink asks "Do you hear voices?" for some reason I do. A doctor can only work with what I tell them since there are no tests which is why I am so list crazy, because then I have control of what gets said.
Learning how to communicate a message is so vital, and so hard, I applaude you! I like hearing this stuff because it helps me decide what ways are more effective. Thanks!!!!
"It's the end," said the caterpillar. "It's the beginning," said the butterfly.
Thanks Heather! It seems
Thanks Heather! It seems to me that being to communicate about the problems themselves means everything, but I am only just now learning how to do it after doing so much writing here at icarus for the last five months. I am starting to make sense of part of my experience, a little bit at a time.
I started to write more about how I relate to what some of you said about the emotions being cut off from the memory, but I think I will start a new thread/topic here, since it is a little bit different for me and especially involves my sexual history.
Its ok with me if he joins,
Its ok with me if he joins, if its ok with everyone else.