Flashbacks, how do I control them?

May trigger some:


Ive been having very strong flashbacks followed by a lot of crying. I feel very depressed, and empty afterwards. These flashbacks just kill our happiness, or a least mine. They often come from seeing a variety of things and when they happen they just absorb me for at least an hour. They have so much power over everything we do. They control everything in my head and my life. Even after they have stopped, I feel either very sad and empty or just angry for no reason. Loneliness helps get me stabilized but after a while it just makes them worse.

TV doesn't help. Every other channel on TV has violence or people being nasty to each other and it makes me so angry. How could those things be on there.

I know Im profoundly sensitive to emotion, but is there any advice controlling or any theorys about flashbacks?

Dont be afraid to speak your mind, Im open to all possibilitys.

We're trying to figure out a similar thing. So far we have it set up that when one of us begins getting flashbacks or stuck in a memory, whoever else is around or awake tries to distract them.It works alright, (doesn't always prevent them though) but it also is nice to just have someone around when going through a hard time, so it works in a way.

The main thing I know about flashbacks is that, for them to make a difference, it requires a little courage on someone's part, usually the host. As unpleasant as they can be, flashbacks to some extent are necessary, at least for my system. These are parts of or most of a returning trauma memory and unless we can learn to harness (process) them, we remain at their mercy. My system has all sorts of avoidance behavior because of the panic or pain or inner chaos that we know can happen from certain things in the environment that trigger us. Processing flashback trauma helps free us and reduces our pain.

For us, there are productive and non-productive flashbacks. Note that I didn't say positive and negative. Flashbacks are the bad memories coming back, and for us these are virtually always just parts of the trauma memories. The emotional content, the visual, the physical responses, the thoughts running through the head, or some combination of these. It's critical to hold on to the awareness -- as much as possible -- that the flashbacks are of memories from the past. The emotions or visuals of a flashback are here and now but the danger is not. It's an important distinction to keep in mind.

Non-productive flashbacks are ones where I don't learn anything. Early on, we had some repeated flashbacks of the abuses that Ashar and Adam experienced. The same content kept coming up and the flashbacks seemed mostly the same or very similar. I didn't know what to do about them, I didn't know what it was about. There was too little information, I hadn't read enough about how trauma memories are stored in the body, and I was so overwhelmed by the flashback, pulled so far back inside, that it was hard to do anything other than ride it out.

Over time, I realized I had to remain present as much as possible. It was as if Ashar and Adam were trying to tell me something -- it felt exactly like that -- and, knowing they were so little and needed rescue and comforting, it was my moral obligation to help them and I wanted to do that. Of course, I was also aware that they were me, we were all the same person. But the experience was of a young child, helpless and in pain. I began to push forward and I was able to observe. It was really odd at first. My body was writhing or frozen tight, there were sometimes bizarre not-human, not-animal sounds coming from the mouth, lots of hyperventilating, crying, overwhelming fear, and I was objectively puzzled, thinking "what the heck is going on?" and as I began to understand, "what the hell happened to me?"

The repeated flashbacks are just painful and don't create movement or stability inside, but they can be turned into productive flashbacks. For me, there were a few elements for transforming them into something useful for us, something that over time freed parts of us from constant trauma, that brought greater stability to our system, that helped us grow and learn.

One, I had to own what was happening, even if I didn't understand what it meant. I had to acknowledge that this was real, that something really happened to my body, that this was not made up or nothing. I had to be brave enough to own this, whatever it was, even the nasty, horrible stuff. Denial was our friend in childhood but in adulthood it is the enemy.

Two, I had to try to figure out what had happened from the flashback, who the alter in pain was, what the actual event might have been, how this fit into our history, what they might need.

Three, someone had to step in as soon as we could to help rescue the alter in pain and then to soothe them. Early on, this was left to the others, most often Jack. He was far more proactive than me because he is a protector of anyone young who is under attack. This left me room to figure things out, to put the pieces together. Jack was the first alter to return in the recent "I acknowledge fully that I have DID" era and already had his trauma totally accepted by me as true, so he now had room in himself for support. The soothing often had to wait until the tail end of the flashback but before the alter who was there to experience the abuse faded back inside. We had to "catch" them before the flashback was completely over and bring them into the present. We've found that it's fine and good to pull them out of the trauma earlier. We don't have to wait unless we're all just overwhelmed. But sometimes you need to see what's there and flashbacks speak to you, if you can decipher the language. We had to get the affected alter out of the repeating trauma. Otherwise, it was the film Groundhog Day where they were imprisoned in an endless loop, except with major suffering.

If you look at some Youtube videos of long in-hospital treatments of DID, you'll see the technique is to trigger flashbacks deliberately and often so that the processing happens more quickly while in a safe environment. Trauma at some point needs to be processed, though not every single incident of trauma. Overall, I welcome flashbacks. I've learned to stay present, to observe the body, the emotions, the thinking, any visuals, and I learn more each time. Chase has been triggered several times but won't hang around like most of the others. Each time he is triggered, I learn more about what happened to him. It may be that we'll need to trigger him into the body in order to learn how to help him and we do know his triggers now. This will mean creating a flashback for him but we can't leave him in eternal pain because our entire system suffers. He is part of us, we are the same person, and we have to heal all of us.

Thank you so much for the responses! They do mean a lot to me So far from reading above, I will try to learn from them. Your right about there being productive and non productive flashbacks. I tend not to learn or capture any information from them hence the loop that keeps forming of them repeating over and over again. The emotional content for me is felt very strongly, i guess because we think in emotions. Its just a guess.

Im not sure though how I can get the host involved, I while back I made a deal with a few others who are in power not to get the host (or the core) involved in any of this. One of them saying the host Slight trigger "deserves to keep his innocence" End slight trigger Ive been told the host has limited awareness from us, one reason being the host could tell someone else about our inner system. Others have gotten loose lips about this, which has led to the schizophrenia diagnosis for those not aware in the outside world.

But there others who can be set guard to look at what is going on in detail, they might catch something that could be used to learn from what is happening to use during these flashbacks.

Some are still in Denial, the ones that aren't tend to go on blame game tangents looking for juicy conspiracies to explain it. Just putting it out there to help others in the real world understand better. The part that many are in denial in is that these happened in the past and that they did not harm us in any way, or a least we have healed psychically from it. The body is safe is what I guess Im saying.

The ones in pain are mostly younger than me often the same age as when these experiences happened. Theres are a few older ones that hold the memories but as rage. My PTSD episodes often can be broken in 2 major category: Rage and Pain. The Rage ones have a plan in place for deflation, but the pain ones I will start to work on. Those are very potent at least to the way they drain us.

I will try and bring those back who are experiencing this into the present. Easier said then done, but I will start to pull this together.

I currently see a psychiatrist that I actually enjoy and I don't see him as threatening (at least don't) and that helps me gain stability.

Again thanks for the input, opinions are welcome most definitely.

i couldn't read much and i can't say much but i hope these are helpful to you somehow:

-- Questions about flashbacks:
http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic108023.html

-- Help with Panic Attacks?:
http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic101340.html

-- Making progress with traumatized alter:
http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic108427.html

-- What a night last night was...good grief! (deals with helping alters in distress, communication, and "grounding" tactics) (possibly slightly triggering): http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic100630.html

-- Anchors/anti-triggers: http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic75378.html


- cassie (age ?)

Thank you so much for the links!!!!

you're welcome

glad they were helpful to you!


- cassie (age ?)