PTSD has been studied, interpreted, written off, and medicated. I was in a specialized group with a specialist in the field, and she led the group discussion and danced around subjects. I got frustrated and directly asked “How do you make the flashbacks stop?”

     I was not overly fond of her reply. She quite flippantly said “Oh, honey, they never go away; you just learn how to not act like a fool.” I would not accept that answer. 

     The truth is that you can make them go away; you can even start sleeping through the night with peaceful dreams. There’s just not a quick fix.

     Flashbacks are basically a memory that takes you back emotionally, mentally, and with the physical sensations you had, as if you are reliving the event. These are often unwanted and extremely hard to pull out of. A trigger can throw us into fight, flight, or freeze mode. It is our bodies response to danger that has been triggered. This is the subconscious section of the brain that causes the reaction without logic. It is a form of sleepwalking or if you prefer autopilot.

     Flashbacks are our brains way of showing us what our body is responding too. They come in different forms but believe me they all SUCK.

     They also have the similarity in being able to fuck your life up in an instant. I have lived through multiple types and they can merge, so do not think dealing with any one type specifically creates an immunity to the others. I will list them as they seem to relate.

Repressed memories:

These are the flashbacks I started with. The car drive to school and the phone call I did not remember to my mom. This was also the beginning stage of my black outs and where I consider I started “suffering” from PTSD. My diagnosis was about eight years prior, but it was not until after I thought I was out of trauma that my life of hell truly began.

     Repressed memories are generally caused from trauma(s) that the brain could not process at the time. Another way they can be created is repetitive denial of the event. These are more common in child victims, but it can happen in adults as well.

     The “hero” stories of people not remembering the actual actions and thoughts they had during a rescue is a form of a repressed memory, when they functioned in the 5F’s and not in a normal reasoning state of mind.

     These flashes tend to be quick, sharp, and random. If you grab the remote to your TV and flip through the channels really fast, it is like that. Make sure you change the channel before you have a chance to really see the image. Now try to make a list of what you saw.

     If you did it right you might recall basic things like which series or what company the commercial was for, but not the actual show or which commercial.

     Repressed memory flashbacks are like that. There is a familiarity, something seems in place but to try and figure out exactly what it is can be frustrating. These flashbacks usually need help to stop. Stop is the wrong word, change is probably a better definition.

     I was fortunate to have a professor in abnormal phycology help me through. My mom’s recognition of the times, places, and events surrounding the flashbacks probably kept me sane. Nothing made sense. It was acknowledging that these ‘Flashes’ were memories that gave me the courage to work through them.

     My professor advised that I “Catch” the flashes. This is not easy. I wanted them to go away not encourage their existence. Flashbacks do not come on a schedule. They show up at anytime and usually when you are doing something else, like driving.

     To “Catch” them is to go against your will of making them stop and bringing back, something your mind was kind enough to hide from you. The flashes were getting worse though, and my blackouts had started.

     I was in college, great job, nice boyfriend, I needed to do something. What I am about to describe is really hard! It takes practice and not giving up. My shrink did have meds that he was willing to prescribe but I had already been on a few of them for sleep and they turned me into a zombie. I proceeded with the recommendation.

     The first priority was being able to recognize when they were coming. This is where journaling comes in handy. A trigger does need to be an actual event or item, it can be a thought, smell, sound, or anything that reminds your Amygdala of a past event. This means a song on the radio can cause a reaction as well as the smell of a cologne at the grocery store. Recognizing the physical reaction when a trigger starts can buy you a few seconds to pull over or get out of a room full of people. Those seconds can be lifesaving.

     Once you know you are having a reaction let the flashes play out. It is not as easy as it sounds. These are usually horrible things, and they bring with them all the emotions you experienced during the trauma, so it is not fun either. It is, unfortunately, necessary. I remember using strong words with my shrink that he was trying to torture me.

     Next try to hold the scenes as they show up. I found I needed to close my eyes to focus. A dark room helps. It is also good to have a cold compress ready. I lived on Excedrin for a while. This process also gave me chronic migraines. Over time I could catch the flashes and slow them down. Once they were slow enough to understand they would turn into scenes that made sense.

     The work does not stop there. Now I could see and remember things that I liked having buried. The sharp flashes create an ongoing fear that can make a person crazy.

     Not knowing when they would show up, how long they will last or even what they are about, is as bad as the memories themselves.

     The work was worth it. I have had to go through this process over and over again for other trauma’s, but once they came out of this form the unpredictable intrusion stopped.

Known Memories:

     The former flashbacks can end up here, but I would not call them stages. Some have relapsed here, but I would say for good cause. These would be the Flashbacks that play out with a stronger association.  You can place that something similar happened, but you try to discount it as not the same. In this case the mind does its best to reduce the physical reactions of 5F’s, but it doesn’t quite shake off.  

     This would be like my crab story. I would cringe and get creeped out about the thought of eating crab although I didn’t associate the trauma of spending a summer cleaning crab to the feeling of disgust for years.

     There is more to that story. This was a time our family was transient. We had left what we knew was home and dad had dropped us at his friends. Only he came back and got my older brother and myself. We were put in a camper trailer not too far from where we were to spend our days working but we didn’t have a bathroom, water, or electricity. (The bathroom was a problem for me as girls can’t just pee on a tree.) Our dad did not stay in the trailer with us, and I don’t know how long we were there. But my reaction to crab, isn’t just about cleaning the crabs. It is from the overall trauma of being snatched away from family, dropped in a camper in the woods, not knowing where I was; No food, heat, running water, and being forced to work all day in disgusting conditions with no way to escape.

     Flashbacks from this would show up as me laying in my bunk in the trailer, rubbing my feet on the ceiling and crying myself to sleep. I knew the memories were real. I could place where (ish) I was, and who was with me. They were not good flashbacks but not nearly as scary as not knowing what the images were in my head.

Prolonged – Running Flashbacks:

     This is where things get really bad. Sometimes I see people in the streets and know where they are at. It is when your day-to-day life continues while you are in the flashback. I tend to refer to this as dual screening. It is when the flashback (emotions, decisions, physical state), are present while you are trying to live a life.  Initially for me these were black outs – I couldn’t remember. I would “wake up” in class, at work, or in a store. To me I would go to bed and then be somewhere else doing something else. It scared the shit out of me and when I started seeing the specialist in abnormal phycology.

     I would apologize to people for missing an event only to have them tell me I was there. That I seemed a bit distracted, but…  

     Eventually I started drinking. I don’t like to drink in public and I had rationalized that if I passed out I could wake up ‘normal’. It was a fallacy in thinking, but I was scared.

     Over time and with counseling I could pull my life into the flashback. This meant I could actively function but …reacted and processed things as if I were at the same place in life, I was when the trauma originally occurred.

     First, I would stop eating. Food was a luxury, not a regular part of life. Then I would become compliant or withdraw. I was being hypersensitive to every sound, smell, or physical sensation. I could function but was very suicidal.

     I wanted the images to stop. I would drink or beg people to put me out! If I could sleep, I could maybe re-set. Wake up and be me again. Eventually, I couldn’t sleep even with drinking.

     It was years before I could pull the flashback into life, instead of the other way around. Even now I have moments. I can recognize I am triggered; I know I am not myself, but it takes reliving the torture mentally. I have to walk it through: that was then – this is now. It also takes me repeating it to myself and finding anchors – something that separates that time from this one. Often it is something in my day-to-day routine, something I didn’t have or do then that clicks in my conscience brain that I am in a Flashback and I need to put my physical body someplace safe and let it play out. Once I let the event end, I can shake it off.

     Practicing lucid dreaming helps, doing it when not triggered, helped me learn the skill needed to interfere with the terrors when I couldn’t control them.

     Things like projecting myself in the nightmare as a grown-up to cuddle me as a child. Basically, telling my subconscious mind that I am a grown up now and it is not OK to treat anyone like that.

***** I want to RED FLAG the worst therapy I suffered through. I’m not going to name it as I do not want to get sued, but it is teaching yourself to do something physical to yourself to pull out of the flash back.

     It is lessons like holding a ice cube, snapping a rubber band, doing something that physically hurts to pull you out. I stopped this treatment when I caught myself slamming my head onto a steal guard rale so I would “wake up”.

     I have known people that say this type of treatment helped them but a large portion of them are or were cutters. Meaning they learned that if they cut themselves, they would feel better. This is not a cure as most people cut themselves repeatedly, then they need treatment to get over that type of self-abuse.

      What does work… working through it. Flashbacks are your brain’s way of showing you something.

     I have found that cutting them, medicating or drinking through them does not make them stop. When I can see what my brain is trying to tell me and learn to accept it, I can look at things from a different angle, the flashbacks then can turn into memories.

     It doesn’t make things less hurtful, but it puts me back in control of my thoughts, decisions, without putting my body into shock.

     When my therapist told me to “catch” the flashbacks I thought he was crazy. I wanted them to STOP, I wanted the memories to be gone. The last thing I wanted was to relive all the pain I had already gone through, but he was right.

     When I learned to accept my past instead of hiding from it, I started to heal. This is where things get a bit difficult. I was raised “We don’t talk about those things.” I have a great deal of family that love me very much and most of them will never read this.

     When I finished my first draft I gave it to a family member who when they started said it was really well written but stopped reading when they got to the molestation chapter. She shook her head and said: “Do you know how hard it is to sleep with that stuff in your head?” LOL – I said Yah – yah I do.

     I love my family, but even right after being released after years of incarceration. I was asked to not talk about prison. I was told it hurt them to much to remember what happened to ME. 

     Flash backs can be a result of trauma’s that could just be memories if they are allowed to be debriefed appropriately.  When you treat a trauma like a ‘sin’, something that should be hidden, it will find it’s way back out. 

     To truly know you have completely worked through something you almost need to say it out loud and to someone else. The problem is the trauma may be too painful for others to hear. 

     That is why I created PTSD.Online. It is a place anyone can go to, to talk about anything. No judgement, no worrying about hurting someone else with your pain. A safe place to talk and let things out with others that understand.

     There is strength in numbers in so many different ways. Depending on the trauma there’s also a feeling of acceptance just knowing you are not alone.