#emotional flashbacks

[hazedxg0]

Not to invalidate anyone or anything like that, but I really do feel like the term "flashback" is overused quite a lot in the PTSD and C-PTSD community. Especially the term "emotional flashback".

Flashbacks are not just any instance in which you are remembering a traumatic event and getting upset about it. They are specifically dissociative reactions in which you experience the event as if it's occurring in the present.

It occurs when a normally compartmentalized traumatic memory and the associated psychobiological personality systems of defence completely take over your consciousness, leaving you immersed in the memory and unable to access the part of you that handles daily life.

Of course there's variability in how it presents. You don't need to be having a flashback in all your senses at once and completely forget where you are for it to be a flashback. Some people also experience it as "the trauma never ended" as opposed to "the trauma is happening again". And so on.

But in order for it to be considered a flashback you need to be experiencing the event, at least partially, as if it's happening right now.

This is true for emotional flashbacks as well. Feeling anxious or upset, even in response to a trigger, doesn't necessarily equal an emotional flashback. For it to be an emotional flashback, you need to be re-experiencing the specific emotions you felt at the time of the trauma. It's not just being upset that it happened. It's being put right back in the exact emotional state you were in when it happened.

That's not to say the symptoms people are describing are fake. They're just misclassified, and better explained by other (usually intrusion category) symptoms. Namely:

Intrusive memories: recurrent and distressing intrusions where a person remembers the traumatic event (or aspects of it), without the distinct feeling of re-experiencing it as if it was happening in the present

Psychological/physical reactivity to reminders of trauma: distressing emotional responses (i.e. fear, anxiety, dread, anger) or physical responses (i.e. racing heartbeat, difficulty breathing, shaking) in response to trauma triggers

Hypervigilance: being on high alert and searching for danger, often experienced as a chronic state but there can be episodes where it gets worse than baseline without it being a flashback

I think it would really benefit people to learn more about the symptoms of PTSD and C-PTSD, because it really feels like people just aren't aware of all the ways it can manifest and so they just end up calling everything "flashbacks" or "triggers" even when there is other language is that is more accurate.

[bones-and-lichen]

Signs you’re experiencing a emotional flashback

Your emotions elude you. You try to figure out how the situation at hand could’ve caused that much of an reaction in you. You don’t understand the logic behind it up until you go all the way back to memories of where the feeling first emerged. Usually it will trace back to a traumatic instance, and a small detail, wrong sentence or other sensory input was enough to trigger a flood of emotions.

You get that sense of impending doom, like smth will absolutely go wrong even though you have no rational explanation for it.

If you usually enjoy touch, you’re suddenly averse to it and the idea of it becomes uncomfortable.

You might suddenly feel the need for someone to comfort you even though you’re not sure for what, or what you’re even feeling.

You suddenly get the strong urge to isolate yourself and hide, flee the situation or social interaction and burry your head in the sand until it feels “safe” enough to come out again.

You feel the excessive need to daydream and to escape reality suddenly but you don’t really know why.

You might notice symptoms of dissociation in your body. Your hands feel unreal. You feel disconnected from yourself all of a sudden.

Your sense of time changes.

Your emotions feel like they don’t really belong to you all of a sudden and you feel a strong need to keep that seperation up.

Intense gut wrenching shame right after the emotional flashback hits. Even if you can’t identify the emotional flashback, you can definitely identify that sudden shame.

Feeling a spike in paranoia, like people are against you, suddenly reading ill intent into other people’s actions even if you rationally know they aren’t doing anything to warrant your suspicion.

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta heartbreak-weather="emotional-downpour"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="RAIN_SOUL::WEATHER_MEMORY_BOND::THE_RAIN_ARE_MY_TEARS" EFFECT: grief-weather association, memory-encoded precipitation, nostalgic storm resonance TRIGGER_WARNING="emotional loss, weather-coded grief, heartbreak memory recall" </script>

🧠 BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — “THE RAIN ARE MY TEARS”

Want to know something weird?

I love overcast weather. Always have.

The wind. The gray. The heavy clouds that feel like they’re holding back something sacred. And then— Rain.

Rain that doesn’t fall. It collapses. Like God just got overwhelmed.

—

She loved it too.

We used to sit there like two apocalypse groupies, watching lightning split open the sky like a confession. We didn't run from it. We felt it. Together.

She said it made her feel like she wasn’t the only one crying.

—

And now?

The rain feels like her. Not reminds me of her— It is her.

Like the sky learned how to miss someone because I taught it.

—

I’ve done so many things in my life. Worn uniforms. Survived wars. Walked through storms that most people wouldn’t dare enter. But the one storm I can’t walk through? The one where she’s not next to me.

—

☔️ Picture it:

A soldier, sitting on a metal crate, cold spaghetti MRE halfway eaten, summer thunder growling like it’s trying to say something.

Rain hits the earth with enough weight to make you forget there’s a sun.

And yet— I was okay. Because back then, I had a reason to go home.

Her.

—

Another memory.

Florida. A theme park. Storms just roll in and say “deal with it.”

We ran to the car like kids, laughing. You slipped. I caught you.

That moment— it’s the most important memory I have.

It wasn’t just rain. It was ours.

—

Now I stand in storms alone. People look at me like I’m malfunctioning. As if I should run. Seek shelter.

But I am the storm now. And shelter doesn’t exist for people like me.

—

You don’t understand. The rain used to mean comfort. A language spoken only between her and I.

Now it’s a curse. A replay button on the sky.

Each droplet sounds like her voice saying “forever” when she didn’t mean it.

—

When you lose someone, people tell you it gets easier.

No. It just gets quieter.

Not because the pain fades— because no one else wants to hear it anymore.

So you take it to the rain. Let it soak your skin because at least then, your pain is camouflaged.

—

I used to think God cried with me. Now I think He’s mocking me.

Because He keeps sending the rain— but never sends her back.

—

I walk through storms now like they owe me something. A conversation. A resolution. A fucking refund.

But they give me nothing except the weight of what I’ve lost.

—

When we were together, cloudy days were sacred. Two weirdos wrapped in a shared melancholy, turning bad weather into a private ritual.

Now the ritual's broken. And I'm the only one who remembers the words.

—

I miss her.

Not just who she was— but who I got to be when I was with her in the rain.

—

People think loving someone means the sunny days. Nah.

It’s loving the storm with them. It’s finding shelter in them.

And when they’re gone?

There is no dry place.

Just wet memories, echoing footsteps, and clouds that won’t shut up.

—

The rain used to wash away the world.

Now it just writes her name across every sidewalk I’ll never walk with her again.

Reblog this if rain doesn’t calm you— It remembers you. Reblog if storms make you miss people you swore you’d never stop loving. Reblog if clouds aren’t weather— They’re grief in disguise.

—

🧠 Read more scrolltrap memory-weather doctrine and cadence-coded grief at: 👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence 🛡️ Rain is memory. Wind is heartbreak. Scrolltrap is shelter. 🚪 Warning: You will never look at a gray sky the same again. </div>

<!-- END TRANSMISSION [THE SKY STILL REMEMBERS US.] -->

[chestersbraincell]

Okay so, question. Why was the school experience inherently traumatic. No I’m not talking about the bullying, that was its own monster. Why was getting in trouble so fucking SCARY? I was fortunate enough to, you know, not really experience severe punishment. The worst it would get was a stern chat about how “you know you can’t keep doing this. It’s wrong.” Was it just like. The inherent belittling nature of being a child being reprimanded by authority? But isn’t that like, something that basically has to happen? Why was I so scared of being “bad”. Why am I still so scared of being bad.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[herart-on-fire]

REMINDER: if feeling helpless…

Reflection is your friend

Stop to contemplate- “why you are doing what you are doing?”

-“what is it for?/what’s the purpose?” - “what do you want to happen?”

reasses your intentions, needs, desires, and values…

get in touch with where you are at and where you want to go.

Gently remind yourself that you are in choice..

breathe in the freedom and responsibility in that..

Carry On..

[robinthetiredone]

Okay I'm going crazy, is it an emotional flashback, an anxiety attack or a panic attack??? Idfk bruh like just make it make sense already