It’s crazy when you learn what emotional flashbacks are you realise how frequently you have them

As people with trauma we are often hyper vigilant of tone changes because we were watching for danger when our parent's mood changed. We had to prepare ourselves for a verbal onslaught or make sure we hid from them.

That leaves an imprint and that imprint sadly doesn't leave us now even when we 'know' we aren't children anymore, because it's stored in our nervous system. Because the danger was so serious to the young us, we needed to protect ourselves to survive the world we grew up in. And serious life threatening dangers you react to.

No matter how much I try, if someone is poking something at my eye, (e.g. an optician) my limbic brain still makes my eye flinch. Working with trauma solely on the cognitive level rarely works (looking at you CBT), because trauma is encoded on numerous levels and we have to work with the others too.

I told a friend once that I experience about 200 flashbacks a day. Every 3-4 minutes from waking up to bedtime. 90% emotional flashbacks. It's exhausting, constantly talking myself through things and reorienting to the task at hand. Absolutely exhausting.

My partner was upset about something recently, and I realized I was herding my little dude out of the way, to the corner of a room, reminding him to stay quiet, keeping him effectively hidden with my body. My partner has never given me reason to fear violence, yet I was actively protecting my child like I used to do with my little sisters when I was young and mom was rampaging. It was hard to snap out of but I am aware of this reaction now so I won't fuck up and give my child reason to fear a danger that isn't present.

SAME! For the longest time I didn’t even know what an emotional flashback was, and once I learned about them it hit me how often I was having them. I always just thought it was me have a really disproportionate reaction or just being overly sensitive. The way you reacted with the snappy employee is totally how I get whenever someone seems pissed off in any way, whether it’s towards me or not. But it’s always worse if it is towards me. A certain facial expression, tone, gesture… I freeze up and want to cry and hide.

This is so me too ! I'm starting to be aware of my traumatic flashbacks and little by little connecting moments of triggers.

When you have been living your whole life this way, it is hard to expect changes immediately. This is where being conscient of what's going on will help because it will help see when these triggers, and then you will be able to confort yourself and start responding in different manners.

Look for ways to sooth yourself and make yourself feel safe, you got this !

There's a silver lining in that realisation because you can catch it before it affects you to the point of having a meltdown. From my experience in my healing journey some things get better, but some things get worse, but the best thing for me is learning how to give less of a fuck about what other people think of me.

this! it’s even to the point where my brain will trick me and think my amazingly sweet boyfriend said something mean to me, i instantly get overwhelmed with tears but it’s so embarrassing trying not to cry once i realize what he actually said which was not mean at all. i mishear / misinterpret things all the time because i assume someone is mad at me or bullying me

I've literally made myself cry by raising my voice at myself. I was driving and needed to pass between an 18 wheeler and a close concrete barrier, which makes me nervous. I was trying to hype myself up and yelled out, loudly "LETS FUCKING GO! MOVE YOUR ASS! DOOOOO IIIIITTTT!" as I passed. Just trying to be silly, music blasting, road-trip-ready, you know?

As soon as I passed, I laughed a little, then got hit with a huge wave of emotion and ended up crying for 2 miles before it passed.

Trauma and emotions are fucking weird.

My therapist (who is great, and trauma-informed) and I have a very chill relationship, and I was telling her about soemthing that I knew was a GOOD thing, that meant a really good forward step in progress, and was like, but you know, it was also triggering and I felt a lot of fear. And she (half humorously) was like, but don't get triggered! And we laughed and laughed 😂

She apologised and was like, I know it's a physical reaction and you can't help it, its just that you know everything cognitively, and it's sad that wisdom doesn't make much difference. I've been traumatized since I was very very young, so my emotional flashbacks are particularly distinct from my adult conception of the world. Yes, it's embarrassing a lot of the time, and I have to cover for them a lot, but at least I don't think I'm inherently defective or bad any more!

IFS style parts work and clinical hypnotherapy have been life changing, so I'm lucky and glad to be doing much better now. It sucks to realise the extent of how often flashbacks happen, but once you're aware of them you can manage them. You did great by becoming more self-aware, OP!

I have found this more and more as I go through IFS. I used to think that I was terribly anxious all the time, and that I was being completely irrational and needed to just force myself to do things that I didn’t want to. Now I’m realizing that I wasn’t ‘anxious’ in the clinical sense. I don’t have social anxiety. A part of me just knows that it is not safe. That part is not irrational. It just doesn’t know what my waking self knows.

The problem is, they didn't become easier even after I learned what it actually was. Damn

I didn’t even realize this was a thing…that isn’t just me being overly sensitive??

I had someone pass by me in an isle and i apologized for being there. He looked confused. I actually felt guilt for passing him. I have no idea why I would. It’s just like I feel the need to apologize for existing. My genes help create someone who suffers. I can’t shake the deep self loathing for something I had no control over, yet it’s like I think about how pain is the only thing that brings me comfort. I don’t self harm, just it’s been strange how I seek to confirm my own bias like a moth to the flame. Sorry, I’m done

In order to get over that, I just decided to either dissociate or be pissed off back (only internally of course, no need to be rude lol).

Realizing that it was happening was a huge breakthrough for me. I have a really wonderful psychiatrist who has given me lots of tool to assist in my healing. I think the biggest thing for me in this stage was the addition of a medication called prazosin - it was found by the VA to reduce nightmares and flashbacks. It has been really helpful in learning to manage flashbacks. I am more able to notice that I am flashing back and I am able to calm down and reregulate more quickly. I get the lessons from the flashbacks more easily. And it has eliminated the nightmares and the dysphoria I used to get in the morning after waking from a flashback.

It gets better ❤️

My experience is that when we get a situation with feelings too intense to deal with when we are kids, we just shut that down and hit restart. As adults we have these little pieces of fear and insanity and childhood perception locked inside our psyche like little grenades.. They resonate with similar feelings in the present. The feelings in the present do not have to be at the same intensity When they explode into the present , we are overwhelmed with fear and we experience the child’s perception. Children don’t have the life experience to say “this seems bad at the moment, but I’ll get through it like I’ve gotten through other things “. For the child there is no safe place and it seems like the end of the world. Often the parents, who are supposed to be the protectors, are the cause of the trauma so there really is no place to run. I have gone past a lot of this with 12 step recovery, experiential therapy and a good amount of practice. This can be healed.

I observed my healthy friends interact with people being snappy or rude to them and they don't go out if their to understand them. In fact, they take offense.

I came to the conclusion that the normal thing is to not try to understand and give reason to the person being an asshole to you but to set a boundary by usually being firm and cold with them because we do live in a society and being polite to eachother is the bare minimum to a well functioning environment.

My healthy friends will not just take that type of behavior and they shouldn't. I guess since we were taught that we always just must understand the over dramatic behavior and just forgive the disrespect seeing and experiencing it in the wild will trigger us.

I guess this is why you feel like crying and that it was your fault. It happens to me to. I get angry then I get ashamed of being angry, ugh.

Same. I think now I’ve gotten better at it but something today - the feeling of hopelessness against the system - and I’m triggered for sure. I definitely now feel weak and unsure of how to proceed.

Now, this seems to be a situation (dealing with US healthcare) that is actually valid, unlike EVERY. SINGLE. SITUATION. in the prior times, when all decisions were like that. Not knowing what to do, what I’m supposed to do, what would x do, and on and on.

When will this anger go away?

yes yes yes

I’m so sorry you had to feel that. Leftover trauma is so horrible. I hope you feel better today.

I feel like this all the time. It really sucks. I think it throws people off bc they can see my fight or flight mode (sometimes freeze) kick in real fast.

I despise this the most. It makes me feel so weak.

That’s so real! And it can turn really beautiful once you begin to heal and suddenly realize how less often or less severely you have them.

I just lost someone because I was experiencing this (and allowed it to manifest as blind rage, no violence btw). Why do we always have to learn these things in the hardest and most destructive way possible?

Yes!!! This is so much what I'm experiencing. It got better over the years and with lots of therapy and stuff, though. So there really is hope! A couple of weeks ago for example I went to a colleague to ask her about another colleague who is on sick leave. All I wanted to know was if this colleague has a serious illness. Not because of work, but because I'm on good terms with this colleague and would want to know if she has something to worry about. So my colleague reacted very bitchy and kind of "Why would I tell you"-ish. Years ago I would have probably cried my eyes out because of this reaction. And for a moment I felt so much shame for asking, for being an idiot and not knowing what's the right thing to do and basically just for existing. I pictured the situation over and over until I saw that this particular colleague reacted pretty rude to basically everyone around her. That was the moment I realized, maybe it's not just me, it could also be her. I still feel a tiny bit of shame, but at least I didn't think about this situation for days. That's quite a success in my world.

I just realised I never replied so I wanted to say I didn’t expect this kind of response. And I hate that we all have to deal with this bs but seeing these responses makes me happy that at least we have each other to confide in when we have these experiences so thank you to everyone who replied!

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Wait so is that what it is when a person yells, not even at me but in my hearing range, and I'm suddenly terrified. Like I just wanna curl up and hide the way I used to. That's an emotional flashback?