Emotional Flashbacks: What You Need to Know
Do you ever have moments when you are overwhelmed by an intense feeling that is out of proportion to the present situation? Feelings like being scared, alienated from your surroundings, intense grief, rage or shame?
If these feelings are not connected to what is happening in your current surroundings or are way more intense than the situation calls for, you are likely experiencing an emotional flashback.
We often think of flashbacks the way they are presented in the movies: dramatic visual hallucinatory experiences where someone thinks they are somewhere else. And these kind of flashbacks can happen. But there are other kinds of flashbacks as well, which can be related to emotions or even other sensory data such as body sensations, smells and sounds.
Emotional flashbacks are when something in your present-day environment triggers an emotional memory—a memory that has an intense emotional charge but may not be accompanied by images or even a conscious remembering of a past event. Emotional flashbacks take you back to a time when something traumatic did happen, but you may or may not recall other details about the original event. You may just feel the emotion, often with a sense of confusion about what is causing the feeling.
Emotional flashbacks can be confusing for everyone
Emotional flashbacks can cause us a lot of trouble, especially if we don’t realize what is happening. We can try to find a reason for the feeling and mistakenly assign a false, present-day reason for the feeling. This can be really confusing to the people around us who see us as irrationally angry for something small, or wonder why we are crying when nothing all that bad happened.
For example, we might receive a small criticism or correction at work for a minor error in a report we made, which triggers an intense feeling of shame, guilt or rage as we remember all of the past times were were criticized by our parents, or were bulled as a child. Or the emotional flashback may seem to come out of the blue.
Therapist Pete Walker, in his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, describes emotional flashbacks as a defining symptom of complex PTSD.
Emotional Flashbacks: Some Ways to Cope
Reconnect with your body: breathe, slow down, walk, pay attention to whatever is happening in your body to ground yourself in the present moment. Take a break from the situation. If this is hard for you, work with a therapist to learn and practice ways to ground yourself in your body.
Tell yourself you are having a flashback: Look around and notice that the situation you are in is not what you are reacting to. Look for signs that you are safe, and remind yourself that the past cannot hurt you in the present. Remind yourself that you have skills and supports now that you can rely on.
Talk to your inner child or wounded part: let the part of you that is having the emotion know that you see it and want to help it. Let it know that you are safe and that your strong parts can handle the situation. If you have a critical part of your mind yelling at you, let it know that you see it and can handle the feeling.
Analyze the experience: think about what triggered your feelings, what you felt in your body, how intense the emotions were. See if you can connect the feeling of the emotional flashback to earlier times in your life when you felt similarly and what caused those feelings.
Give yourself compassion and understanding: acknowledge that you have been through difficult and/or traumatic experiences, and allow yourself to grieve. Find ways to feel comfort and reach out to others for support.
Consider finding a therapist who can guide you through the process of working through your past.
I work with many individuals who are on the path of emotional healing and recovery. If you live in Colorado and would like to work with me, feel free to check out my website at www.arborcounseling.com, give me a call to set up a free consultation at 970-698-6488, or click the link below to message me.