A note on writing characters with PTSD
so I see a fair number of people without PTSD writing characters with PTSD, and one of my major… I don’t want to say problems, because it’s not really a problem, so much as a something I see lacking is that people don’t always get that PTSD flashbacks don’t have to be someone reliving an exact memory.
In fact, PTSD flashbacks don’t have to involve visualizations/linear, immersive reliving of the event at all, but people often go for the stereotypical seeing and feeling the event like you’re back there again and it is what your reality is.
When I started therapy for my PTSD, I went in thinking I didn’t have “real” PTSD because I have no visual flashbacks. My therapist immediately pulled out a pile of material to read, and the gist of the material boiled down to that PTSD flashbacks can take other forms. They can include but are not limited to:
Implicit flashbacks, or reliving just the emotions you felt at time of trauma, which might just seem like unusually strong emotions for the situation you’re in or unconnected to the situation emotions. Or, you may try to explain it as a reaction to something in your current environment and not a response to a trauma related trigger. These are super confusing and stressful for both the survivor and those around them.
Body memories, where you feel sensations related to the event without visualizations or other more stereotypical flashback symptoms. For example, phantom hands touching you.
Auditory flashbacks, which can distort what a trigger sound like a door slamming or a certain phrase actually means in the present. For example, if someone says a trigger phrase, you might hear what is said in your memories of the trauma and not what they actually say
I’d really love to see some more diverse representations of flashbacks out there for people writing characters with PTSD is the point of the post. Personal, I wish I would’ve been told about this years ago, because I felt like a “bad” or invalid survivor for being what I perceived as atypical.
Maybe people do know about this, but I certainly don’t see much about it.
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