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[ventality]

[ventality]

[csa-survivor-confessions]

? Could you explain the different severities of a flashback? What would a subtle flashback feel like and what would a really bad flashback feel like? Would a minor flashback just be emotional or visual and a severe flashback be body memories, visual and everything else?

Hello friend, 

Well, two things:

looking it at as types of flashbacks I think is a bit more helpful than “severity” as people are not always great at judging “severity” of their experience like downplaying their own trauma. Severity is a bit too subjective to accurately dissect

Flashbacks are different for everyone so I can’t really tell how you would ‘feel’ during one, just give common symptomology.

Types of Flashbacks: 

Emotional Flashbacks: Feeling as if you are mentally and emotional back into a traumatic event. This can be distressing enough to disrupt everything if you have a panic attack or dissociative episodes. Another thing that may happen is acting behaviour like you did during trauma.  This can be like returning to a state of submit or freeze (as in flight/fight/freeze/submit dynamic). Emotional flashbacks can often be tied intrinsically to somatic flashbacks (body memories) as emotions are felt in the body, like stomach pain from fear or sweating from anxiety. 

Somatic Flashbacks/Body Memories: This is feeling the same things in the body as you did during trauma. This is often very distracting like any sudden pain would be. This too can trigger behaviours used to cope during the time, can disrupt connection with the current situation. These can even cause extreme reactions like vomiting or passing out. Body memories can’t really be experienced without an emotional flashback happening at the same time.

Visual Flashbacks: This is the experience of the event with visual stimuli. This can be disjointed or a strict narrative. This can be like being back in your body (1st person view) or experience it dissociatively (3rd person). This often disrupts what you are doing and can trigger panic attacks or dissociative episodes. This again generally includes emotional flashback symptoms too. Some people can tell they are not back in the moment and see a mix of flashbacks and current situations. It can also be experienced as a complete disconnect and lose the ability to recognize the current location/time. Symptoms of panic attacks are common but not required, numbing out can also be an effect. 

Auditory Flashbacks: Experiencing the same sounds you experienced during the moment. If experienced alone this can mimic hallucinations or intrusive thoughts. These also often overlap with other experiences of flashbacks. 

So each kind of flashbacks can completely disrupt life, or be experienced in a way that doesn’t. The only real severity would be based around how much they disrupt life. All forms of flashback can cause a disruption from forgetting where you are, regressing to behaviours used at the time, trigger dissociation and/or a panic attacks. Most types can also be subtle to a point where others might not know.

It is also hard to completely disconnect emotional and somatic flashbacks. And then auditory and visual hallucinations don’t really happen without some emotional impacts. So they aren’t always easily separated when they are happening.

And then how upsetting they are to a person is completely subjective. And setting a hierarchy might not be really helpful.

I hope this helps,

-Admin 1

[traumasurvivors]

In case you need to hear it:

It wasn’t your fault.

It should have never happened.

You deserved better.

You and your feelings are valid.

I believe you.

[desultory-suggestions]

What triggered me?

[furiousgoldfish]

traumatized people can’t meditate bc we’re busy dissociating… being present in the moment is not a luxury we can afford in this life

[desnos]

[appalachian-in-2103-deactivated]

[studyingwithmi-deactivated20220]

[galactic-spec-of-dust]

Trauma things #94: The perpetrators were your best friends/family/lovers (the people who are supposed to be safe).

[wlfgrrl]

[mooglemain]

me: hey i feel pretty good what could go wrong

brain:

[dissociationdays]

Signs and symptoms of dissociation

- Feeling disconnected from yourself

- Problems with handling intense emotions

- Sudden and unexpected shifts in mood – for example, feeling very sad for no reason

- Depression or anxiety problems, or both

- Feeling as though the world is distorted or not real (called ‘derealisation’)

- Memory problems that aren’t linked to physical injury or medical conditions

- Other cognitive (thought-related) problems such as concentration problems

- Significant memory lapses such as forgetting important personal information

- Feeling compelled to behave in a certain way

- Identity confusion – for example, behaving in a way that the person would normally find offensive or abhorrent.

[ventality]

Me: wow I've been dealing with all this stress really well

Reality: dissociating

[moving-trauma-hero]

Tag urself I’m… all of them

[alienpunker]

i want to feel Safe with someone

[neurodivergentsupport]

Uh, I thought I never experienced flashbacks but then I read the thing about emotional flashbacks, and I was wondering if you knew of any signs that that's what's happening? Because that might be happening to me a lot more than I'd like to admit.

Emotional flashbacks manifest very differently depending on what the original traumatic situation actually was and how your emotional state was while it was happening, which makes them hard to give a singular list of signs for. Here are some feelings and defences that, among others, can manifest in emotional flashbacks:

Dissociation (especially if you dissociated in the original situation in order to cope)

Shutdown (autistic and anxious shutdowns also fall under this—in my personal experience, the sudden crush of emotions and fear that often go along with emotional flashbacks can trigger autistic shutdown)

Anxiety or panic attacks (these can often “go along” with other symptoms or experiences found in flashbacks, too)

Hypervigilance (often characterized as being “jumpy” or “twitchy”; it feels like you’re super aware of your surroundings because everything seems like it’s going to hurt you and you feel like you have to constantly be scanning for a threat)

Feeling like you have to moderate the feelings of other people (e.g. “this person said something that reminded me of my abuser, I have to employ the same tactics I used to use to try and stop my abuser from being angry at me with this person”)

Feeling shame, humiliation, or abandonment

Suddenly feeling like you have no control over the situation

Combinations of symptoms (e.g. feeling hypervigilant as a result of shame and humiliation to “make sure nobody else can see you”, or having an anxiety attack when you can’t figure out what to say to make someone not be angry at you—even if they’re not actually angry)

Sometimes, emotional flashbacks can be so intense that they make you feel like you are going to actually re-experience the original situation. Sometimes, a new situation triggers reminders of the old one, and you may know that it isn’t but feel like you have to employ the same defence mechanisms in order to avoid a similar situation reoccurring. There’s a huge spectrum of experiences in these because no two people endured the exact same trauma or coped with it in the exact same way.

- Bone