- Sometimes you don't know how much shame you carry around
until you get a piece of information one day
that all of a sudden just turns the lights on.
It makes you realize that what you thought
was this terrible aspect of your personality
is just a normal, common symptom of complex PTSD,
and for me, that piece of information
came from Pete Walker's book,
"CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving,"
and the most powerful thing in this book
is his identification of what he calls emotional flashbacks.
Now, if you haven't heard that term before,
write it down, emotional flashbacks,
because it is so right on.
I never heard anybody put into words
before this book what that is,
and so many people with childhood trauma,
when they hear it, they instantly relate to it
after never having a word for it before
and so pretty much blaming themselves, like I did.
This term emotional flashback,
it's going to be common knowledge.
Everybody will know what it is.
It's kinda like, I think it was back in the 80s,
when standard post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD,
was named and showed up in the news and in movies
and it became common knowledge.
Well, now complex PTSD is just starting
to break into the public consciousness,
and the most important thing I wanna make sure happens
is that those of you who have CPTSD
and you get emotional flashbacks,
that you learn the word for what's been happening to you,
and that, just like with so many people, including me,
that this knowledge liberates you from self-attack, okay?
Emotional flashbacks are normal.
They're a normal consequence
of growing up in abnormal circumstances,
and that means you're off the hook.
It's not your fault.
By the way, I'm Anna Runkle,
also known as the Crappy Childhood Fairy,
and in this video, I wanna tell you
why it's so important to understand emotional flashbacks
and what you can do to start reducing them.
So in Pete Walker's book, he describes it like this.
"CPTSD is a more severe form
of post-traumatic stress disorder.
It's delineated from this better-known trauma syndrome
by five of its most common and troublesome features:
emotional flashbacks, toxic shame, self-abandonment,
a vicious inner critic, and social anxiety," okay?
"Emotional flashbacks are perhaps the most noticeable
and characteristic feature of CPTSD.
Survivors of traumatizing abandonment
are extremely susceptible to painful emotional flashbacks,
which, unlike PTSD, do not typically
have a visual component.
Emotional flashbacks are sudden
and often prolonged regressions
to the overwhelming feeling states
of being an abused or abandoned child.
These feeling states can include overwhelming fear,
shame, alienation, rage, grief, and depression.
They also include unnecessary triggering
of our fight-or-flight instincts."
Now, this book, it's packed with practical information
and things that no one had ever said before.
It came out in 2013. The chapters are short.
They're perfect for somebody with CPTSD.
There's lists, just stuff that's easy to grasp
when your focus isn't very good.
I remember when I first started healing
my symptoms were so severe
I could barely read a paragraph.
I'd read it like 20 times over.
It was really hard for me to take information in.
So when I read to you
Pete Walker's definition of an emotional flashback,
are you recognizing yourself?
Are you like I was?
I was like, "Oh my God, that is me.
This is my story," and I tell that moment
of recognition in my Dysregulation Bootcamp.
There's a story in there about me waking up dysregulated,
like a lot of the time, in a terrible mood,
and it's been happening as long as I can remember.
It doesn't happen all the time. It's just occasionally.
It's a lot less often now than it used to be,
but when I'm under a lot of stress
it'll start cropping up more frequently,
and whereas I had no word for it before
and I thought it was just me,
I found out one day
that it's a classical emotional flashback.
I found out that day when I first read this book
that it is a textbook emotional flashback.
So emotional flashbacks are very similar
to ordinary flashbacks, the kind that are well-known
in connection to adult-onset PTSD,
the kind that combat veterans might get after a battle.
Now, in that kind of flashback,
a person might be experiencing feelings
and sensations connected to the traumatic event
and it hijacks their nervous system and it keeps looping,
but they know that it's happening,
and they know what the memory is about.
An emotional flashback is something common for those of us
who experienced neglect and abuse when we were little
and the feeling comes back without any associated memories
'cause it often happened before we could speak.
So when it happens really young,
it's a different kind of thing.
It's a different kind,
and when stress is chronic and intense,
that's the thing that causes
what is generally called complex PTSD.
It has some similar symptoms. Some are slightly different.
When you're having an emotional flashback,
because there's no information there,
there's a tendency to think that the feeling
is all about what's happening around you,
that it's happening in present time
or the person you're with is making you feel that way.
It doesn't make sense in connection to the present,
and so for other people
it seems like we're being very irrational,
and the fact that they feel that way
can really amplify how bad it feels.
Now, an emotional flashback might feel like irritability,
or sadness, or overwhelm,
or a feeling like you can't move,
or a feeling like you've just got to get away
from your current circumstances.
So when I have one,
it's a feeling of of agitation.
It's there when I wake up
and it usually follows the exact same telltale pattern.
I wake up already ruminating about things
and feeling stressed out,
like before I even know I'm awake
I'm ruminating resentfully about stuff.
My mind then fills up with a giant to-do list,
and then it's kinda like a computer crashing.
I get completely overwhelmed
with the sense that there's too much to do
and no one else is doing their share
and I'm going to have to do everything.
That's the negative mantra.
Now, because of my healing,
I know when I'm having that thought,
"I have to do everything," I know I'm in a flashback,
and that's one of the great goals of recovery
that I'm gonna put in front of you
is giving yourself a means to recognize
when you're in a flashback,
'cause the thing is, when you're in a flashback,
it's not a good time time to have a major conversation
or try to confront the people in your life
about why they're making you feel this way.
It's really just gonna create a lot of trouble.
If you know you're in a flashback,
you can say it yourself, "I'm in a flashback."
In fact, that's number one on Pete Walker's list
of what to do about a flashback.
You tell yourself, "I'm having a flashback,"
and right away that starts to break the spell,
and so then you can treat yourself like it's a special time.
It's not time to speak up.
It's time to collect yourself,
time to bring yourself back from the flashback,
and I have a husband and two college-age sons,
so there always, in fact, is a certain amount of truth
to the fact that I have to do a lot of stuff,
but the emotional flashback is not really connected to that.
It's coming from my early childhood
growing up neglected and drowning in chaos,
having to be self-sufficient
because of my parents' alcoholism
and freaking out that, "Oh my God,
the grownups are not gonna feed me.
They're not gonna get me to school.
My younger sister's not gonna get to school,
and if I'm going to survive this,
I'm going to have to do everything,"
and it was terrifying at the time.
It used to make me despair. I can remember that.
It left me with a lot of anger
that seems to have burned its way into my wiring.
It shows up at the worst times,
and so the overwhelm I wake up with sometimes
is not about the to-do list.
It's a flashback.
It actually might even be generating the to-do list.
That might be a sort of coping mechanism. Who knows?
I still love lists. (chuckles)
I believe in those moments I better do everything or else,
and it's really stressful,
and so, yeah, when it's happening it does look,
to me, like it's about my present situation.
It doesn't feel like it's coming from within.
My feelings are not an accurate barometer
of where it's coming from or what it means,
and I have pretty good circumstances now,
and if I don't stop when this is happening and notice it,
notice that an emotional flashback is happening
and take measures to reregulate,
my overwhelm will be going along at a pretty good pace,
kind of speeding up, and by the time my husband wakes up,
he can sense that it's happening
before I even know it's happening.
He can feel it. He can see it in my face.
There's this weird intensity about me, he says.
So I bring him a cup of coffee
and I think that I'm being all nice and normal,
but he can see that there's this mental list
in my mind and that it's really long,
and he tells me, he's like, "Uh-oh," (chuckles)
and then I can see in his face now
that he's trying to find a way
to scooch out of the bedroom before it starts,
and that means when I see him doing that,
like trying to escape me first thing in the morning,
that's another cue for me.
That means I gotta go get myself reregulated
or there's gonna be an argument,
and I'm gonna be the one who starts it,
about my feeling that I have to do everything.
And the next telltale sign is
he'll actually agree to do anything I ask,
but it doesn't fix the feeling.
So then I noticed that he'll say,
"Hmm, did you already write and meditate?"
and that's his polite way of saying,
"Would you hurry up and go write and meditate?"
'cause that's what calms me down.
So that's a hint I try to take.
That's part of my recovery too.
For me to live a life largely free
of the symptoms of childhood PTSD,
I've gotta follow a morning routine
that helps me reregulate
'cause I don't wanna be that person who's difficult,
and so I do my morning routine on good days,
I do it on bad days,
and let it be like a muscle that I wanna keep strong.
I teach all of these techniques,
including the morning routine, in my Dysregulation Bootcamp,
and that's a 20-day online program.
You can get a link to it below if you're interested.
I also really recommend you get yourself
a copy of this book.
There might be parts you don't relate to, but it is so full
of just on-the-nail clarity
about what it's like to have CPTSD,
and he's been working, helping people recover from it.
He had it himself.
He's been doing this for decades
and he knows what he's talking about.
He's actually agreed to come be on an interview with me
on my YouTube channel pretty soon, I think,
so I'm waiting for him to find the time,
so keep your eye out for that.
In fact, if you wanna get a notification for that,
this would be a good time to subscribe
to my channel if you haven't,
but I wanted to read to you
in the back of the book here toolbox six.
He says, "I'm ending this book with a reiteration
of the most essential principles of CPTSD recovering.
Please reread these steps
to help anchor them in your psyche,"
but he's got here 13 steps for managing flashbacks,
and, again, you should get the whole book
and read these in detail.
This is even a summary of a lot of what the book is about,
but I'll tell you what these things are.
"One, say to yourself, 'I'm having a flashback.'
Flashbacks take you into a timeless part of the psyche
that feels as helpless, hopeless,
and surrounded by danger as you were in childhood.
Two, remind yourself, 'I'm afraid, but I'm not in danger.
I'm safe now here in the present,'" okay?
"Number three, own your right and your need
to have boundaries," woo-hoo!
"Remind yourself that you do not have to allow
anyone to mistreat you.
You're free to leave dangerous situations
and protest unfair behavior.
Four, speak reassuringly to the inner child.
Five, deconstruct eternity thinking."
Isn't that a good word?
"In childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless.
A safer future was unimaginable.
Remember this flashback will pass as it always has before.
Six, remind yourself that you are in an adult body
with allies, skills, and resources to protect you
that you never had as a child.
Seven, ease back into your body.
Fear launches you into heady worrying
or numbing and spacing out,"
and then there's these sort of subpoints there.
"Gently ask your body to relax.
Breathe deeply and slowly. Slow down.
Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself.
Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it."
All right, "Number eight,
resist the inner critic's drasticizing and catastrophizing."
So the inner critic is another way of talking about fear
and resentment turned towards the self, (chuckles)
and that's what we do in my program in my daily practice.
We release the fear and resentment
through a writing practice
that is analogous to the inner critic here.
He says, "Use thought-stopping to halt
the critic's endless exaggerations of danger
and its constant planning to control the uncontrollable
and use thought substitution and thought correction
to replace negative thinking with your memorized list
of your qualities and accomplishments.
Number nine, allow yourself to grieve.
Flashbacks are opportunities to release
old unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment.
10, cultivate safe relationships and seek support.
Take time alone when you need it,
but don't let shame isolate you.
11, learn to identify the types
of triggers that lead to flashbacks.
12, figure out what you're flashing back to.
Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate,
and heal your wounds from past abuse and abandonment.
They also point to your still unmet developmental needs
and can provide you with motivation to get them met.
13, be patient with a slow recovery process.
It takes time in the present to become de-adrenalized
and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease
the intensity, duration, and frequency of flashbacks.
Real recovery," says Pete Walker,
"is a gradually progressive process,
often two steps forward, one step back,
not an attained salvation fantasy.
Don't beat yourself up for having a flashback."
So I'm acquainted with Pete Walker,
and the really exciting thing is
he's agreed to be interviewed
here on my channel sometime soon.
We don't have the date yet, but he's a very busy person
with some of the best work-life boundaries I've ever seen,
so it's taking time to schedule it,
but if you wanna be sure to see that interview,
please go ahead and subscribe to this channel.
It helps me and my team to keep making videos for you
and it helps you stay in the loop
when we've got topics that fit you.
If you have emotional flashbacks,
I invite you to talk about what you found that helps
in the comment section below.
This is gonna be a great discussion.
Be sure to check out all the links
in the description section this time
so you can connect with all kinds of healing tools
and information that you can use
to start feeling better today, and I will see you very soon.
(bright music)