Hello, survivors and thrivers.
It's Sophilia Lark-Woodbury of thehappymeetium.com, and today we are beginning our skills and
techniques series, where I'm going to be teaching actionable tools to help you resolve the effects
of complex trauma in your everyday life.
Now in today's video, I'm going to be talking about how to resolve emotional flashbacks
that come from complex PTSD, so keep watching.
For the best trauma recovery tips, tools, and strategies, be sure to hit that subscribe
button and click the notification bell, so that you'll never miss a video when I upload
new content every single Wednesday.
Hey everybody, welcome back.
If this is your first time here, I am a survivor of complex trauma, a licensed professional
counselor, a trauma recovery coach, and a certified clinical trauma specialist helping
people and organizations resolve the effects of trauma and build resilience.
If you're a survivor of complex PTSD, you have more than likely experienced the debilitating
effects of an emotional flashback.
So let's dive into what an emotional flashback is, how you can tell when you're having one,
and what you can do to manage its effects.
So, an emotional flashback, it is an overwhelming ... sudden overwhelming feeling of being returned
back to childhood feelings that you felt when you were actually being abused and is triggered
by something in the present moment.
So, something in the here and the now triggers those feelings that you actually felt when
you were being abused.
They can be feelings of shame, or fear, or guilt, or depression, irritability, whatever
those feelings are.
And typically, when in emotional flashback there is not a visual, so you can't really
picture a particular situation where those feelings were actually happening, but the
feelings are just as raw as they were when you were being abused or neglected.
And so, it's really hard for a person to access the part of the brain where they can pull
themselves out of that emotional flashback, because the amygdala, the part of our brain
that stores the emotional memory, hijacks that part of the brain.
And so it makes it hard for a person to access the reasoning abilities to be able to rescue
themselves.
So, that is what an emotional flashback is.
So how can you tell when you're actively having an emotional flashback?
Well, there are some telltale signs and I think Pete Walker, the author of Complex PTSD:
From Surviving to Thriving, really nailed it.
He said that some of the signs can be as blatant as a blow up, an overreaction to minor infractions.
Or they can be more subtle, where you're triggered by an event where you go inside yourself,
maybe you retreat, you shut down, you feel helpless, maybe you're unable to speak, those
kinds of things.
I'll give you an example of one of those situations where I felt really diminished, I felt really
small, only for a second, until I was able to rescue myself out of that emotional flashback.
There was an incident with a family member Christmas Eve of 2019, and I won't go into
the details of what happened, but there was a disagreement between me and this person.
And This person suddenly went off the rails, started doing all this cussing and challenging
to a fight and all this other kind of stuff, and I emotionally flashed back to the time
when there was a lot of sibling bullying, sibling abuse, in the home and I felt really
diminished.
I felt really small, sort of unable to speak.
And I was eventually able to get myself out of that situation, walking away.
If you read Pete Walker's book, he talks about four different response types to a complex
PTSD response type, and I'm more of the flight-freeze type of response type.
And so, anyway, that is what happened.
So it may be as subtle as that, or it may be that overreaction that we talked about.
Maybe you speak out of turn in a group, apologize for it, and instead of moving on, you just
dwell on it all day long for the rest of the day.
Or there could be maybe somebody interrupted you during a conversation and instead of you
saying, "Uh, excuse me, I'm not done", you blow up at this person, you call them names
and you challenge them to a fight, kind of like that family member did to me.
And you can have things like that, or maybe you may feel a sudden urge to engage in unhealthy
self-medicating behaviors; food, alcohol, drugs, sex, a spending spree, gambling, things
that you learned earlier in life that really helped you to manage the pain of that emotional
experience.
And so that's some of the ways that you can tell that you're having an emotional flashback.
So how do you manage emotional flashbacks so that they don't continue to control your
life and run the show?
Well, here's my three-pronged approach that I think really gets the ball rolling to help
you resolve an emotional flashback fully.
The first thing you want to do is access what we call, "The wise mind."
Now the wise mind is the ability to merge both your emotional side with the rational
side of the brain, so that you can make effective decisions of what you need to do to rescue
yourself.
With this, remember how we talked about in the beginning earlier how when the amygdala
hijacks the rational part of the brain, it's hard for a person to access the reasoning
abilities.
So when you get into the wise mind, this opens the flood gate for you to take control of
the situation so that the emotional flashback doesn't continue to run the show.
And so you can start basically by acknowledging.
One of the best ways to get back into the wise mind, to access the wise mind, is to
acknowledge the fact that you're in a flashback.
So, say with me, I'm in a flashback.
Now you'll recognize you'll start to understand that a little bit more in a minute, but you
really want to acknowledge that fact, "I'm in a flashback."
And then you want to call a feeling, "a feeling," a thought, "a thought," an opinion, "an opinion,"
whatever comes after that.
You recognize I'm in a flash back and then you say, "I'm scared," or "I feel really sad,"
or "I'm confused."
Whatever the feeling is, you speak that feeling, you're feeling that way.
"I'm not in danger, there's no harm coming to me."
That's how you begin to use your ability to take control of that emotional hijacking by
rationally calling the truth what it is.
A fact of fact, "I'm having an emotional flashback.
I'm not in any kind of danger, but I do feel what I feel."
And that is how you can begin to take control.
The next thing you want to do is to increase your body awareness.
So when the emotional hijacking happens, when the amygdala hijacks the rational part of
the brain, it jars the body because the body then braces itself to protect itself.
And so basically you want to ease back into your body, you want to calm your body so that
your body knows it's okay, you're not in danger.
And you can do this through grounding techniques, self-soothing techniques.
Three, two, one, come to your senses where you're identifying three things that you see,
three things that you hear, three things that maybe you smell.
Two things that you see.
Two things that you hear.
Two things that you smell.
One thing that you can touch, maybe you can describe the texture of that, how it feels
on your hands.
And then you take a deep breath, so your body feels what it's like to release that tension.
And so your body starts to say, "Oh yeah, it's okay, I'm fine."
And then the last thing you want to do is to engage self-compassion.
So how you do that is that you're going to first shrink that inner critic, what we call
an inner critical voice.
So a lot of times when a person is in an emotional flashback, that flashback is exacerbated by
this inner critic that says, "See, I told you, I told you you were stupid.
I told you, you were a loser.
How did you ever think that you were going to accomplish that?
Why did you even put yourself in that situation?
You're just not a smart person."
And you want to stop that inner critic from making the emotional flashback worse by saying,
"No, uh-uh (negative), you don't get to tell me that I'm stupid.
You don't get to tell me that I'm not going to win, that I'm not going to accomplish or
succeed.
That is not your place.
I don't want to hear it, get out of here."
And the more that you talk back to that, the critic starts to shrink, and then you strengthen
that by showing yourself compassion.
So you can develop what we call a compassionate voice in response to that critical voice.
So you can place your hand on your heart if you want to do that with me, and you can take
a deep breath and say, "I am worthy.
I'm valuable, I'm doing my best.
It's okay that I'm struggling.
There's nothing wrong with struggle as long as I'm working on it and maybe I need help,
but I know that I can reach out to people who will support me and who will be there
for me."
You show yourself that compassion, and that increases your ability to be able to resolve
that emotional flashback fully.
And that, in a nutshell, is how you deal with an emotional flashback.
Now, of course it's going to take more than one time, and you really want to develop this
as a daily lifestyle practice in order for it to become more solidified.
If you're looking for more advanced techniques on how to identify triggers to an emotional
flashback and how to resolve those emotional flashbacks, you want to get your hands on
my free trauma recovery mini course, you can click the link in the description below to
access that free course.
It comes with a 33 page workbook and three videos to help you really work through resolving
the effects of complex PTSD, which includes emotional flashbacks most of the time.
And so you want to do this as a daily lifestyle practice and that workbook will help you do
just that, so click the link below to get that free course.
If you're looking for an uplifting community where you can gain access to spiritual approaches
to healing complex PTSD or other struggles that you may be having, be sure to join me
on Instagram where I share inspirational content that speak to the spiritual aspects of healing.
Well, all right.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
If you liked this video, be sure to show some love by hitting that like button, sharing
with your friends, and comment below to let me know what your experience has been with
emotional flashbacks, I'd love to hear from you.
Please be sure to subscribe by hitting that subscribe button, and click the notification
bell so you'll always be in-the-know when I upload new videos every Wednesday.
I'll see you guys next time, have a great day.
Bye-bye.