Difficulty recognizing Flashbacks

peanutbutter2 wrote:I wouldn't realize I was having a flashback when I was having one. Could understand what had happened once it was over.

Never worked on being able to identify a flashback while experiencing it. Worked on the issues producing it and no longer have them.

For me they became pretty easy to spot. If I was yelling back in real life like a crazy person at the images of people in my head that were abusing me, or felt my leg/glutes being kicked and responded by trying to dodge the imaginary blow, or needing to do anything to snap me back to reality, I knew I was in one.

Son wrote:on a lot of really stressful days I would be in a kind of daze, not very present, and experience loud, sharp memories of times in my life when I felt ashamed or embarrassed.

I don´t know how helpful this is since I´m not diagnosed with PTSD (or any disorder at all), but I got this, too. Thankfully, though, I don´t yell at the people who appear in these memories, I only whisper "I hate you" (not sure if I mean them or me), and often I just move my lips. These memories can be about situations, by the way, in which I embarrassed myself and somebody witnessed it, or situations in which others said or did something that made me feel ashamed. They might not even have intended to hurt me. I feel intense aggression in these moments, a wish to be wiped off the face of the earth because I am such a despicable being. I find myself repugnant and revolting, not so much on a physical level, but in terms of character. I cannot think up an appropriate insult or an appropriate punishment for a person like me, it all seems too mild. I often feel severely tempted to hit myself on the head real hard then, just to make the feeling go away. Sometimes I feel unable to move and just freeze. It is really bad when I am walking around somewhere in public when this happens. Every step becomes an effort and I cannot bear to look at other people. I feel like everybody around me becomes a witness to the thing I remember, and I can see the disgust in their faces. Usually I strictly stare at the ground and walk on, anxious that I run into someone or something because I am not fully there. And then I get even angrier at myself for experiencing this at all and being "weak" enough to be hurt by it (again) instead of "just putting the memory behind me".

It is really difficult to describe this in such detail, since normally this kind of thing just happens to me, passes, and then I don´t think about it anymore.

[quote=It is really difficult to describe this in such detail, since normally this kind of thing just happens to me, passes, and then I don´t think about it anymore.[/quote]

That inability to process it and move on is the PTSD (in my experience). When my PTSD is quiet, I can process and move on no problem. When I can't, and the memory haunts me over and over, it's because I wasn't able to process the emotion at the time and instead hid it away. It comes back because it wants to be dealt with.

Yes, I have the embarrassing moments flashbacks too. I think of these as flashbacks once-removed because the original moment I felt embarrassed/scared/ashamed/humiliated in front of someone was, at the time, very much like some time in life as a child that I really did feel those things in a much more serious context.

TRIGGER

Maybe Dad or Mom hit me after I embarrassed them in public. Maybe I made them angry. In any case those feelings of being abused or the anticipation of it multiplies and attaches to other situations later in life where there is no actual danger. Took me forever to figure this out. I thought, why am I so upset about things that others just let roll off their back haha.

Another thing I've learned is that the ability to let something small and embarrassing roll off their back is a psychological filter that we all have to some extant, but it can be eroded by ongoing trauma. If you don't have that ability, people call you thin-skinned. I say I'm tough as nails to survive this.

i don't know what I have, but I can quite relate to that.
Strangely, I don't have memory flashbacks of actual traumatic events.
I do have some of small unseemingly events. Events that I found shameful. They keep coming back, and they don't want to go away. They are like very small sketches of the event, but the main thing is the feeling. It is a mix of anger and shame. I would like to be angry at them, and I am, but at the same time, I am somehow to blame, thus the shame. I guess I don't know what I should feel about those.

I get your thing about being thin-skinned. I am like that too. Quite thin-skinned in some circumstances, but not all. I'd like to be tough. Thus my user name.
But am I really? I don't know. Sometimes. But some things really get to me. Or maybe I am just fooling myself. The delusion is nice though.

Tungsten—that's how my flashbacks tend to happen. The shame, weak, embarrassed, scared thing. I've read about it online many times and it's very common apparently. My abuse happened very early in life so I figure my brain locked the actual memories up that are causing distress, and the feelings of shame from the original trauma "leak" past that barrier in those shame moments. It's the feeling that remains and takes over, comes back again and again, not the original memory, because your psyche did such a good job of hiding it. Do you dissociate during these shame moments? I do... I disappear mentally. I'm sure that's how I survived as a kid, and why the memory was never dealt with at the time. Also why they keep happening: I'm not dealing with the feelings of shame in the moment now. Since therapy I can catch myself and and feel those feelings right away, and accept them. Now I'm not really creating those dreadful moments that come back, for about 6 months

If you're like me, you aren't weak you just view yourself this way. Someone bullied your sense of strength away when you were young perhaps. I've gotten in touch with, actively reclaimed, that strength. Now I practice thai kickboxing and walk around with my head held high, not scared. I can get through anything, because I have. That confidence is awesome. Bet you can find it too at some point.

Son,

it might be a slightly strange question, but what is it like to dissociate during those moments? Did you disconnect yourself from the shame somehow? I find it difficult to recognize dissociation, as well.
Did you also say you also dissociate a lot when on a subway train or am I mistaking you for someone else? Is that always an unpleasant feeling, or can it also have the quality of slipping away into a daydream? This latter thing happens to me almost all the time, not just when I leave the house. It´s like I´m in constant highway hypnosis mode.

I think if a therapist told me to accept or feel my shame I would get very angry and resentful. I´d feel like he is mocking or even bullying me, or as if he thinks the shame is justified. Did you experience problems like these during therapy?

Inferior_Force wrote:Son,

it might be a slightly strange question, but what is it like to dissociate during those moments? Did you disconnect yourself from the shame somehow? I find it difficult to recognize dissociation, as well.
Did you also say you also dissociate a lot when on a subway train or am I mistaking you for someone else? Is that always an unpleasant feeling, or can it also have the quality of slipping away into a daydream? This latter thing happens to me almost all the time, not just when I leave the house. It´s like I´m in constant highway hypnosis mode.

I think if a therapist told me to accept or feel my shame I would get very angry and resentful. I´d feel like he is mocking or even bullying me, or as if he thinks the shame is justified. Did you experience problems like these during therapy?

Hey Inferior_Force, Yes my dissociation feels like a constant daydream that I don't have much control over. I'm inside, not in the world. It has a gravity to it, a way of pulling me in whether I like it or not. I get triggered by some things, yes the subway, and meeting new people. Or sometimes someone just says something, a single word, that triggers a rapid free association to something traumatic I vaguely remember. I dissociate right away.

This has all gotten A LOT better this year because of therapy. Honestly it's almost completely gone because of the imaginal exposure my therapist and I did.

I hear you about being angered by the notion of feeling shame. Keep in mind this is 4+ years into our relationship in therapy and I trust her a lot. It's hard work and does not happen over night but it's orth it. From day one, her goal was to get me to feel my feelings, which moved thru so many stages. I came into therapy completely blocked, with no awareness of any emotions at all. I had them, but they didn't belong to me, or something like that. After a lot of work I've been able to embrace and integrate my emotions without judgement. What I've learned is feelings aren't right or wrong. They can't be justified or invalid. Thy just *are* and want to be recognized and validated. Pushing them away is what gets into the mess to begin with... not being able to feel them in the moment because we were too busy surviving something awful. But now that the danger is over, it's safe to feel them. And trust me, they will make themselves known whether u like it or not haha. Hence flashbacks. It's how your body pushes them through that dissociative barrier and makes you deal with them. Now I just try to feel them and say to myself, I feel shame, or I'm embarrassed.

And keep in mind, being angry about feeling shame or anything is OK too... it's just a feeling

Hi Son,

I am not sure I dissociate in those moments. Actually, I am pretty sure I do not. Those thoughts seem to always be in the background and get triggered by something. So I would say they are different issues for me. Although if I am trying to figure out some problem, they might come out more readily. In that case they might go hand in hand, if the problem is traumatic. They are a pain when they just pop out of nowhere, and I cannot really tell why.

I tried martial arts in the past, and I agree it helped me at the time. I was more confident in many ways, and I still am. But my abuse is mostly emotional, and there is no martial arts against that. Sometimes I think about restarting, if only for the physical health and energy it seems to give. But I am so anxious when meeting with people that I am not too much in the mood of going to such a place, or anywhere else at the moment. Just going shopping is almost too much.

I talked about PTSD to a psychiatrist yesterday, and he did not want to put me on an Axis 1 diagnosis. That diagnosis in particular because I do not seem to have one big event that traumatized me. He seemed to say that you needed to be in an Earthquake or something in order to be diagnosed with that. Anyway, it does not really matter, as long as I can deal with the issues. He did not want to give me meds either, which is why he thought Axis 1 was not warranted in his opinion.

Hmmm. my therapist is a trauma specialist (trained at Columbia!) and recognizes the kind of PTSD that occurs from prolonged abuse. Doesn't have to be one event. In fact the symptoms usually include classic PTSD stuff plus a lot of others. Some people know this as C-PTSD or DESNOS. It's new, not in the DSM yet, but is being studied widely and Dx more and more. Often caused by the same abuses as DID, and is thought to exist on the dissociative spectrum. Not many therapists are familiar with it

Probably your therapist knows more. Mine was a greenhorn, but after a few hours of questioning, I was not in the mood to argue. No point in arguing with experts anyhow, they know better by definition.
I was leaning about that C-PTSD as well in my case.
It is a good thing that you found someone that can acknowledge your problem. I didn't know they could officially diagnose outside the DSM. Or is it informally?