Out of the Storm

The hardest part of CPTSD has been what I now know are emotional flashbacks (EFs).  Walker gives a good example from his own life of what these feel like:

I recall the first emotional flashback I was ever able to identify, although I did not identify it until about ten years after it occurred. At the time of the event I was living with my first serious partner. The honeymoon phase of our relationship came to a screeching halt when she unexpectedly started yelling at me for something I no longer recall....

What I do most vividly recall was how the yelling felt. It felt like a fierce hot wind. I felt like I was being blown away -- like my insides were being blown out, as a flame in a candle is blown out....I felt completely disoriented, unable to speak, respond or even think .....

Some years later, I came to understand the nature of this type of regression. I realized it was a flashback to the hundreds of times my mother, in full homicidal visage, blasted me with her rage into terror, shame, dissociation and helplessness (pp. 3-4)

My EFs range from this stomach dropping, mind numbing variety through to really intense ones where it feels like I'm in a special effects movie and  everything is moving in slow motion, I hear and see like I'm in a tunnel or something, and things don't feel real or quite right. 

I am beginning to figure out when I'm having a milder version, what the triggers are, and more and more how to calm myself, but I'm still quite nervous about those moderate to big tsunami ones. I take heart from Walker's suggestion though that the more we practice managing them, the less intense and frequent they will be.

These are also posted in the "Rocovery" forum but thought I'd add them here too.

13 Steps for Managing Emotional Flashbacks

by Pete Walker: http://www.pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm

1.   Say to yourself: "I am having a flashback". Flashbacks take us into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless and surrounded by
        danger as we were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.

2.   Remind yourself: "I feel afraid but I am not in danger! I am safe now, here in the present." Remember you are now in the safety of the present, far
        from the danger of the past.

3.   Own your right/need to have boundaries. Remind yourself that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you; you are free to leave dangerous
        situations and protest unfair behavior.

4.   Speak reassuringly to the Inner Child. The child needs to know that you love her unconditionally- that she can come to you for comfort and
        protection when she feels lost and scared.

5.   Deconstruct eternity thinking: in childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless - a safer future was unimaginable. Remember the flashback will
        pass as it has many times before.

6.   Remind yourself that you are in an adult body with allies, skills and resources to protect you that you never had as a child. [Feeling small
        and little is a sure sign of a flashback]

7.   Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into 'heady' worrying, or numbing and spacing out.

          a.  Gently ask your body to Relax: feel each of your major muscle groups and softly encourage them to relax. (Tightened musculature sends
               unnecessary danger signals to the brain)
          b.  Breathe deeply and slowly. (Holding the breath also signals danger).
          c.  Slow down: rushing presses the psyche's panic button.
          d.  Find a safe place to unwind and soothe yourself: wrap yourself in a blanket, hold a stuffed animal, lie down in a closet or a bath, take a nap.
          e.  Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it. Fear is just an energy in your body that cannot hurt you if you do not run from it or react
              self-destructively to it.

8.   Resist the Inner Critic's Drasticizing and Catastrophizing:

           a.  Use thought-stopping to halt its endless exaggeration of danger and constant planning to control the uncontrollable. Refuse to shame,
                hate or abandon yourself. Channel the anger of self-attack into saying NO to unfair self-criticism.
           b.  Use thought-substitution to replace negative thinking with a memorized list of your qualities and accomplishments

9.   Allow yourself to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unexpressed feelings of fear, hurt, and abandonment, and to validate
        - and then soothe - the child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn our tears into self-compassion
        and our anger into self-protection.

10.   Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't
        mean you are shameful. Educate your intimates about flashbacks and ask them to help you talk and feel your way through them.

11.   Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid unsafe people, places, activities and triggering mental processes.
        Practice preventive maintenance with these steps when triggering situations are unavoidable.

12.   Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate and heal our wounds from past abuse and
        abandonment. They also point to our still unmet developmental needs and can provide motivation to get them met.

13.   Be patient with a slow recovery process: it takes time in the present to become un-adrenalized, and considerable time in the future to gradually
        decrease the intensity, duration and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery 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.

Thanks for posting this, kizzie.

EFs are still quite hard for me to recognize, especially the subtle ones with no obvious triggers. Sometimes I just feel unaccountably tired even though I had had enough sleep.

Those 13 steps are great!

Although I am reading and liking Walker's book, and feeling validated a lot by it, this list of how to manage EFs seems like a joke to me. None of these tips work for my EFs. Maybe they are too powerful? I am triggered by totally innocent things (or at least what other people see as innocent). But saying "I'm not in danger now" would be a lie. I feel in danger and really believe I AM. I have to go to the doctor tomorrow and the next day for 2 "innocent" "routine" cancer tests. But I feel like I have been wrongly convicted of murder and will be getting the death sentence. (I don't mean cancer--I do not worry about having cancer--I worry about doctors physically hurting me and causing my death, because that's what happened to my mother) It's not some irrational fear in my head. It really happened. But I also knew I was flashing back to it, so I decided to skip ahead in the book and read these "tips" to see if I can help myself. But they really aren't helping, they are just making me mad and making me feel like a failure.

Going to the doctor is a huge trigger for me, but for everyone else it's "normal." There are triggers all over in everyday life and that's why I can barely go anywhere at all without feeling like complete crap and getting upset (I have SA too). So I stay home and try to avoid being triggered. 

It's weird how I finished grieving for my mother, but I am left with the EXTREME distrust of drs. I have no idea what to do about that.  :(

Now that I know what they are, I think they are the key explanation for anger flare ups.

Twice in the last few weeks, my S.O.  has triggered me. Once we were shopping, and she disappeared in the store. My mother did that to constantly me at the grocery when I was very small, and I had a sense of PANIC that I was being left behind. I had to go looking for her, she was never really concerned about where I was. Now, I blew up at my SO for taking off into a dressing room which left me wandering all over, all the way out to the car, trying to find her. Yesterday, she was having extreme stomach pain to the point that she was on the floor grabbing her gut, which, again, made me angry because I was afraid. My mother wouldn't go to the doctor no matter what and had similar reactions to stomach pains. Now she's upset with me for not showing compassion.

Would you agree that these are EFs? I'm hesitant to share the info with her because I don't want every time I get upset to have it thrown back at me.
At the same time, I feel badly for the poor woman for putting up with my irrational blow ups.

Hey Pam - Would you feel comfortable telling the doctor about your reaction and discussing it?  I am really afraid of the dentist but once I tell them and they know they need to explain what they are doing, take extra time to reassure me, and so on, it's not quite so bad.  (We moved fairly often so I had to do this on many occasions - I had a really bad experience as a child so the distrust never went away, just my approach -- revealing that and asking for care and attention that would help).

The other thing I thought was perhaps you could rewrite the steps for yourself so that they do reflect the past and the present.  E.g., "I may be in danger if the doctor is not competent, but I recognize that part of my fear is because of what happened to my mother. The other part is that like most people, I am afraid of the possibility of pain and perhaps even death, but I need medical treatment.  I can manage this fear and distrust and get the treatment I need by ............."  Not this exactly but whatever works for you.

   

HI GT - I told my H about EFs a while ago and now when something he does triggers me we have a conversation about it.  It really helps because so often my reaction is mostly about the past and only a little about the present, but it's the layering thing that makes me have such a strong reaction.  He gets that and now doesn't walk away confused or upset that I did react in a bigger way than the situation called for.  Much, much better!

Maybe. Mayyyyybe I will try this. However, since she is carrying around her own set of Samsonite, she's not always so calm in return, but I may introduce it into the conversation. I just don't want every disagreement to result in blaming me for another flashback. It certainly would help when I'm hit with the question "I don't understand why you're this upset!"

What I am learning is recognizing the fact that it is a flashback and what I'm flashing back to. That's progress, right?

Huge progress IMO!

Pam, I am right there with you.  These steps are foreign to me.  The "present" does NOT feel safe to me.  I guess we all heal at different rates.  Hope you come to a better place soon. 

I so understand about the doctors.  I watched so many doctors drop the ball when it came to my Dad's care. 

Hugs to you.

Same here about doctors. I actually thought about that topic today, when I thought about the Freeze Response. Doctors demand a freeze response of you as a matter of course - they're doing something to you, and they take it for granted that you keep still and obey them. It's not the most untriggering situation you can be in, I think. I profit hugely ifa doctor explains things (even very briefly will do) before she does them. "I am safe" wouldn't work for me either. But simply just remembering that I now have several options to keep me safe, that helps. Absolute safety is impossible, but choices and fallback options and "plan B"s, those are things that happen now, and that alone has made a huge difference: that I'm able to tell myself, "listen, just give it a shot - if the worst happens and it's really bad, we can always leave". After all, the worst about the situation that got me traumatized was this absence of choices, escapes, and alternatives.

Quote from: Kizzie on September 08, 2014, 09:10:50 PM
Hey Pam - Would you feel comfortable telling the doctor about your reaction and discussing it?  I am really afraid of the dentist but once I tell them and they know they need to explain what they are doing, take extra time to reassure me, and so on, it's not quite so bad.  (We moved fairly often so I had to do this on many occasions - I had a really bad experience as a child so the distrust never went away, just my approach -- revealing that and asking for care and attention that would help).

The other thing I thought was perhaps you could rewrite the steps for yourself so that they do reflect the past and the present.  E.g., "I may be in danger if the doctor is not competent, but I recognize that part of my fear is because of what happened to my mother. The other part is that like most people, I am afraid of the possibility of pain and perhaps even death, but I need medical treatment.  I can manage this fear and distrust and get the treatment I need by ............."  Not this exactly but whatever works for you.

I have already tried that in the past--was honest about how I feel and what happened but they (the drs/nurses) seem to get defensive at least, and even dismissive and angry attitude at worst. Once a nurse even yelled at me while she had her hand in me because I had severe sharp pain around my cervix area. I wish I had kicked her in the face. But I was in too much pain. I just haven't had the greatest luck with ending up with "caring" professionals. I also regress to (a scared to death) 5 yr old if I open my mouth to talk at all and start crying. Then they look at me like what's my problem. Not understanding at all. It has been * for my inner kids, so I keep them away from any medical harm for the most part. 

Well, I went to my 2 appts, one being my first mammogram. For once I get a piece of paper that says I'm "normal"! Really? I'm usually the oddball, the freak, always in the minority, etc. So that was nice. AND, most importantly, the health technician was VERY NICE! She didn't scold me for putting this off for 6 yrs, or that I don't really bother to do self-exams, etc. She didn't get mad when I made faces or said ow or made gasping noises. She was very soothing with her voice and words. This in turn helped me "obey" willingly. Just went along with it, didn't feel like she was trying to hurt me. She didn't make me feel like a piece of meat that should just shut up and quit whining. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting (the actual mammogram) but I DID break out into a sweat on my face from the pain and discomfort. I had also anticipated that I would hurt for hours after, but I didn't! When it was over, so was the pain! She said I might get a rash from stretching the skin, and that didn't even happen!

So finally, a good experience. Only problem is what if it had come back that i had cancer? I know I don't have the strength or willingness to go thru treatment and i know how bad this sounds, but i think I'd kill myslef if I got that diagnosis, so it's just a good thing that didn't happen. I did try to tell my male GP the week before--What's the point o getting the test when i won't go thru the treatment? If I did get cancer I'd..I don't know WHAT I'd would do." I figured he knew what i meant by that. But then he says  "Why do you want to worry about it? Why not just get the test and be done with it. Only like 8% of people..." I didn't bother telling him, "But I DON"T worry about cancer--only when you doctors bring it up!" My GP is very charming yet very pushy and I have a hard time saying no to his face.

Anyway, I made it thru that and the next day went for the pap test. Again I'm not worried about the results. This nurse who I;ve seen before and wasn't very nice ALSO didn't yell at me for not having this done for 6 yrs now. (I thought it was only 3 yrs) Anyway, she's gotten better at the procedure if you ask me. So it was over in no time also. And again, I just went along with it, made faces, focused on breathing and being as cooperative as I could so it would be over faster, lol.

But the best news is, I didn't regress for either one....I could cry just for that! What a relief!

But I cannot point to anything I did to prepare prior to the tests, such as using Walker's tips. Actually I cried for days in advance (off an on) in anticipation of not being in control of my own body, having parts of my body helpless and literally in the hands of people I don't trust! I didn't have any coping techniques to use. I figured I was going to be hurt & huniliated, end of story. The only thing I can think of is that, in general, my inner children and teenagers are able to handle more now because they are getting better. I think Walker's tips are too cognitive for me. I mean what you wrote was way over my 9 yr old's head, lol. After the tests, I told her I was proud of us, that we were "big girls." :D 

recently I found alcohol works perfectly on my anxiety, but I didn't want to go to these appts under the influence because isn't that the definition of an alcoholic?  ::) So I went sober. And I'm glad I did so i know I can handle it without alcohol.   

Quote from: PureJoy on September 09, 2014, 08:40:58 AM
Pam, I am right there with you.  These steps are foreign to me.  The "present" does NOT feel safe to me.  I guess we all heal at different rates.  Hope you come to a better place soon. 

I so understand about the doctors.  I watched so many doctors drop the ball when it came to my Dad's care. 

Hugs to you.

Thanks, yes, I feel better now. Yeah, I don't understand the concept of changing how you feel while you are in the middle of having an EF. It's just not possible with me. I mean, I have improved over the yrs. My EFs are not nearly as intense as they have been, they last shorter time, and I recover better. But, WHILE IN ONE? forget it! I do inner child work and it seems like their maturity and level of healing dictates how bad my EFs are. ....after all, isn't that what they are anyway? (They are for me)

I see it like someone's asking me to meditate while I'm hanging off a cliff with one hand. That's not really the time for meditating, is it? lol. My bodily responses will trump an otherwise healthy activity in that situation.

But I guess I can see it if you are reminding yourself of something you already truly believe. That would definitely work. Maybe I could now remind myself next yr that things went ok, and when it was over, so was the pain. I won't suffer, etc. If you have some good memeories or experience o draw from maybe that is what he wants us to do? IDK... :P

Quote from: schroedingerskatze on September 09, 2014, 07:41:42 PM
Same here about doctors. I actually thought about that topic today, when I thought about the Freeze Response. Doctors demand a freeze response of you as a matter of course - they're doing something to you, and they take it for granted that you keep still and obey them. It's not the most untriggering situation you can be in, I think. I profit hugely ifa doctor explains things (even very briefly will do) before she does them. "I am safe" wouldn't work for me either. But simply just remembering that I now have several options to keep me safe, that helps. Absolute safety is impossible, but choices and fallback options and "plan B"s, those are things that happen now, and that alone has made a huge difference: that I'm able to tell myself, "listen, just give it a shot - if the worst happens and it's really bad, we can always leave". After all, the worst about the situation that got me traumatized was this absence of choices, escapes, and alternatives.

Wow, that's really true about the freeze response! I don't like to be under the control of someone else and "obey". That is exactly it, but it feels humiliating and dangerous to me. People I have talked to don't have this at all! They trust and just hand themselves over, which is pretty foreign to me!

My inner critic will use whatever it can against me so if I cry, I'm in trouble, if I cancel an appt, same thing, if I speak up,--doesn't matter what i do, I will somehow be wrong. But these 2 recent tests went well, so I should be happy, right? And I am.....except my inner critic says "That's because you have to be treated like a baby!" Because to tell the truth, the technician doing the mammogram DID talk to me in a gentle voice like I was 5 yrs old! And that's what I need, so I feel guilty and like a fool because the inner critic is calling me a baby. Can't win.

I do think it's good to have the awareness of different options. It probably helps to feel like one has some control over what they do and what happens to them. But if you do have to leave a situation, doesn't your inner critic punish you for it? Or don't you then feel like a failure for having to leave? I'm sure not everyone is the same. My inner critic is internalized from my nothing but critical father and dismissive insulting grandmother, so it uses their words to taunt me a lot. (I haven't gotten to Walker's explanation o fhow to shrink the inner critic. I have quieted mine for the most part, but when I fail or get scared, it comes out full strenght again.     

But the best news is, I didn't regress for either one....I could cry just for that! What a relief!


Yay adult Pam and younger Pam's!!!!  We need a clapping smilie for things like this  ;D

Quote from: pam on September 12, 2014, 09:57:59 PM
I don't like to be under the control of someone else and "obey". That is exactly it, but it feels humiliating and dangerous to me. People I have talked to don't have this at all! They trust and just hand themselves over, which is pretty foreign to me!

It's like they think they're surrounded by an invisible force field that willl keep things at bay. "Oh, such things only ever happen to other people, I'm quite safe."

Quote from: pam on September 12, 2014, 09:57:59 PM.....except my inner critic says "That's because you have to be treated like a baby!" Because to tell the truth, the technician doing the mammogram DID talk to me in a gentle voice like I was 5 yrs old! And that's what I need, so I feel guilty and like a fool because the inner critic is calling me a baby. Can't win.

I once knew a huge, strong guy, a trained policeman who now worked as a truck driver, who fainted at the dentist's.

Quote from: pam on September 12, 2014, 09:57:59 PMBut if you do have to leave a situation, doesn't your inner critic punish you for it? Or don't you then feel like a failure for having to leave?

I feel like a failure anyway. But let me think about this. The thing is, about twelve years ago, two separate doctors on two separate occasions triggered my PTSD. (No assault happened, they were just insensitive jerks and triggered me.) Those weren't CPTSD flashbacks, they were PTSD ones - hypervigilance and tunnel vision and the feeling that I was physically, actually under threat. That feeling lasted for three days each time. After that, it grew into a numb sense of heightened (but not actual) danger. It took me a LONG time to feel safe and at ease again. So that's probably why the sheer thought of making a run for it comforts me. I know, it's not practicable in most cases. But the thought that I could theoretically do it helped. I'm at the doctor's volitionally. No one can force me to stay there. I can leave. If someone made me stay, I could call the police. PTSD makes me feel actually, physically threatened, to the point where I enter a room and instantly choose a seat where I can get up and leave, I scan the room for exit routes, I jump out of my skin if someone sneaks up on me, all that kind of thing. And in that particular context, it made sense to remind myself that I have always the option to flee.

So far, I've only ever exposed myself to low-risk and low-fear situations. I've been to the hairdresser's, but not yet to a GP. I dodged out of routine appointments for the past... how many years? But I went to a GP a few weeks ago, for something that was low-risk and didn't feel threatening. (A toe that wasn't as bendy as it should've been, and I wanted to make sure nothing was broken.) And the GP I went to was nice! Wow. So maybe that'll help ease me back into things.

But back to the point I was trying to make - I think I prepared for those situations ahead of time and tried to find out at what point I might leave, and how I might go about it. If a GP is about to do something that might trigger me, I might tell him that I'm prone to anxiety attacks and I'll have to do this some other time when I've had time to prepare? I never had to put this to the test, so I've no idea if this is doable. Or, I might say: "I'd like to think about this for a few days first"?

Thanks Kizzie  ;D I honestly think if Big me was better at knowing what to say to a Little me (like a good parent?) then I could then comfort myself when I have anticipatory anxiety. But I suck at that stuff/haven't had any experience not having a mother or kids. I was crying to my boyfriend the night before the test saying that this is why I didn't deserve to have kids--because I couldn't make them go to the doctor either! (ie. "put them through pain") I don't know how to be "soothing" to someone else, or my inner child, without lying (so I can't do it). But now that I had a good experience, I hope I can draw on that. But I doubt it because my personal statistics are still on the side of not trusting drs.

SK, Thanks for reading and responding.
So you differentiate between CPTSD and PTSD symptoms or flashbacks? I have to think about that more. I know I qualify for both. But i just never separated the 2 from each other--just lumped them in together. Some of my symptoms are very physical, like if someone comes to close to me while I'm sitting down and their hand comes anywhere near my face, I will flinch (from being hit in the face) in exactly the same way as the startle response (which I annoyingly have all the time). I also noticed when about to go to a wedding reception this summer, that my anxiety caused me to literally freeze up as if I am scared to death to even breathe. As if I'm at home alone and an intruder broke into the house and I'm hiding in a closet trying not to breathe, to save my life. But in reality, I'm sitting on my own couch, safe in my apartment with my bf, dressed up and ready to go to a fun social event.....yeah, right! My body thinks it's in mortal danger--I could barely talk or breath and was tensed up like crazy, gripping myself tight with my fingers etc.. So this would be a PTSD FB (flashback)? But if I had emotions that went along with it, such as "everyone's gonna laugh and point (just like they did when i was 12) so I can't go" -- that would be more of a CPTSD EF? If so, I have both combine a lot. But this is a very interesting difference I should pay more attention to it, lol.

"It's like they think they're surrounded by an invisible force field that willl keep things at bay. "Oh, such things only ever happen to other people, I'm quite safe."

Yeah, that's because that is actually true for them.

I think emotional flashbacks for me are like if I was an animal. I feel the anger(sometimes), stress, panic disorder,but it comes out of no where for NO reason and I can not really identify what is causing it. So for me it is just a reaction. Not different than an animal, a reaction coming from no where for no reason. I am trying to identify the WHY's but not much luck yet.

I only found out about EFs a few days ago. So I never thought about my various flashbacks and how to classify them until I wrote that post. It's one reason I'm so glad to be here. Talking to others is a lot more thought-provoking than simply just thinking about things, and it makes one think clearly and combat woolly-mindedness.

So... hm. Let me think about this. Perhaps those flashbacks might be mainly caused by CPTSD, but I seem to get two basic kinds.

Variation one triggers my freeze response. It numbs me and makes me tired and less able to concentrate. I drift into doing all kinds of numbing, escapist things, while also feeling terrible and having toxic thoughts run amok in my head. Up until a few days ago, I didn't even know those were flashbacks. They're hard to spot. It's really like drifting into a fog. It's a slow poison, not a quick shock.

Variation two gets me a feeling that I'm threatened, that I'm under threat of... I don't even know what. No, now I get a clearer idea. A threat of being actively rejected and abused, not just passively ignored and overlooked. I think that's it. That too makes me want to do some of the escapist things I mentioned. But I don't gently drift into doing them: I frantically dive for cover. I feel that I'm acutely in danger of being scapegoated, singled out, othered, and made to feel shameful, the way I felt as a kid when my mother was close to exploding (she had a LOT on her plate and was sometimes very short-tempered from all that).

That kind of flashback is the one I called PTSD flashback in my previous post. I realize though that I'm not a hundred percent sure it is one. It fits the PTSD model well, and I think it's the reason I was (mis?)diagnosed with PTSD by two different therapists.

However, there's never any tangible memory that gets evoked. There isn't anything visual, or anything I re-hear or re-feel. It's all just in the way my body reacts, it's that sense of danger, and it's the moods and thoughts.

There are two possibilities.
1) I have both CPTSD and PTSD flashbacks, like I thought at first.
2) I have two kinds of CPTSD flashbacks (possibly more? - must look into this). What kind I get depends on what kind of past experience gets evoked:
--- a) memories of being neglected and/or memories of "passive" / "gentle" emotional abuse (like withholding, minimizing, trivializing) -----> freeze response, numbing, dissociation, depersonalisation; flashback feels like a fog thickens around me; I avoid people and "risky" situations mostly because I feel too shameful/inept/unacceptable (=inner critic)
--- b) memories of being emotionally abused in an "active", i.e. recognizably aggressive or hostile way, or memories of physical abuse -----> feeling shocked, endangered, like I'm under threat now; feeling like I must dive for cover; highly elevated startle response, I can't stand being crowded and very easily feel claustrophobic, I feel like I need to hide, I avoid people because everyone seems like a potential threat for more abuse (=outer critic), I'm panicky and hypervigilant,...

I'll have to think about this again a few times to see if it holds water, but right now, it seems likely that this is what's happening. After all, each flashback mirrors the way I felt about the specific trauma back then when it happened. (And all these years I thought I didn't remember what my life was like when I was a child. A part of me remembered all along, and tried to tell me about it, but I wouldn't listen.)

Thank you for talking to me about this. I hope I wasn't misleading you.

Thank You for posting this. I am thinking/trying to work through My abusive childhood. My Mother also raged. A LOT. Her encouragement was criticizing... I don't remember getting any positive responses like "You did a god job!"  I toke care of My siblings at such an early age that I did not have a childhood...I don't think I was even allowed to have any thoughts of MY OWN. I think I probably was the Golden Child most of the time... but sometimes the scapegoat...Thank You again!  :)

BadMemories, I have always been aware of why i was reacting or having the feelings I was having. I always could see where in my past it related to. Maybe this is because my abuse was more overt? Or "active" like SK describes. I knew my emotions were too intense for the present situation, so I always knew I'm really upset or angry or whatever about other things. I could feel myself being triggered. But I could never (still can't really) "control" my feelings, especially in EFs. 

IDK, maybe that's the one "good" thing about overt bullying type of abuse, compared to covert manipulation and betrayal, is that it's pretty obvious and therefore easier to see, admit, share, get empathy for, and harder to deny within yourself.

Maybe you could ask yourself, when feeling like you're in an EF, "What does this feel like? What does this remind me of? When I was younger I felt like this when ______." or say to yourself "This is just like _______." Maybe that could help you pinpoint the origin?

One time a female counselor I was seeing told me she was getting married. My heart sank and I got quite depressed. I felt very sad and alone. My "rational" mind was like "what's the problem? It's none of my business. That's her personal life! What do I care?" But my FEELINGS were that she "was about to abandon me, I won't be that important to her anymore. I won't be a priority. She will forget all about me." Things like that. But I wasn't even that close to her for any of that to make sense either! So, after a few days ZI figured out that her getting married was a trigger for me--It brought up how when I was 8 and my father married my stepmother, they both started neglecting and abusing me, yet before the wedding, they both treated me quite well. So I felt that my counselor was going to "leave me/hate me too." Once I figured out why I wa having these crazy feelings, it went away. It also helped that she said her patients were her No. 1 priority and no man was going to stand in the way, lol. So, basically someone getting married triggered my childhood feelings of abandonment and I "over-reacted."     

SK, You only found out about EFs a few days ago? Well you sure sound like you know what your're talking about!

I like the way you analyze this stuff.

I read somewhere here that EFs are not visual, but FBs from PTSD are. But if a person has both CPTSD and PTSD, oh who cares what type we have. It doesn't matter as long as we pay attention to it and try to let it lead to some kind of healing, etc. I actually started using the term "EF" on my own yearsa go to describe what was happening to me to my therapists. They first think I am literally reliving the same EVENT as before, and I was like "Noooo, I am in the present situation, but there are emotions from my past coming up and mixing in. And I know they don't belong there, but i can't help it. So I am having an emotional flashback, not a completely delusional state where I actually think my father or stepmother is here right now. Nothing like that. It's just the EMOTIONS."

An example of that is whenever a boyfriend would break up with me in my late teens and early 20s, I would cry, then the next thing I knew I was thinking of my mother andcrying because she died (when i was 5). So again with the theme of abandonment--the breakup would trigger my unfinished grieving for the loss of my mother. Part of me was literally stuck at 5 and I would go back to that any time someone would leave me in a permanent way.

A few weeks ago I had, for the first time, a weird flashback that was UNTRIGGERED! I was lying in bed thinking about how I love DJ and so glad we are together (not something I've felt a lot in life). I was about to fall asleep and all of a sudden i heard this sound in my head--the wood creaking from my father stomping up the stairs when he was mad and was about to storm in my room and hit me for some unknown reason my stepmother made up. That sound scared me wide awake, and I was like *? I was happy and just about to fall asleep! So......IDK, that was a first.   

Quote from: pam on September 14, 2014, 02:34:59 PM
A few weeks ago I had, for the first time, a weird flashback that was UNTRIGGERED! I was lying in bed thinking about how I love DJ and so glad we are together (not something I've felt a lot in life). I was about to fall asleep and all of a sudden i heard this sound in my head--the wood creaking from my father stomping up the stairs when he was mad and was about to storm in my room and hit me for some unknown reason my stepmother made up. That sound scared me wide awake, and I was like *? I was happy and just about to fall asleep! So......IDK, that was a first.

Maybe your good feeling about loving DJ and being glad you're together was a trigger - you warning you not to feel too good because it might be taken away from you?  And maybe some soothing here would help - telling your younger you it was bad then but things are good now and it's OK, the rug won't get yanked out from under you this time. 

Ok so I only thought of EF as the times when I was in extreme high anxiety and panic. It didn't occur to me the flinching and startle response, the times when for no apparent reason my energy is utterly drained and fall asleep in the middle of the day. So are these EF too?

From http://www.pete-walker.com/flashbackManagement.htm

Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions ('amygdala hijackings') to the frightening circumstances of childhood. They are typically experienced as intense and confusing episodes of fear and/or despair - or as sorrowful and/or enraged reactions to this fear and despair.

---

Flashbacks strand clients in the feelings of danger, helplessness and hopelessness of their original abandonment, when there was no safe parental figure to go to for comfort and support.

---

Without help in the moment, the client typically remains lost in the flashback and has no recourse but to once again fruitlessly reenact his own particular array of primitive, self-injuring defenses to what feel like unmanageable feelings. I find that most clients can be guided to see the harmfulness of these previously necessary, but now outmoded, defenses as misfirings of their fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses. These misfirings then, cause dysfunctional warding off of feelings in four different ways:

• fighting or over-asserting one's self with others in narcissistic and entitled ways such as misusing power or promoting excessive self-interest;
• fleeing obsessive-compulsively into activities such as workaholism, sex and love addiction, or substance abuse (uppers');
• freezing in numbing, dissociative ways such as sleeping excessively, over-fantasizing, or tuning out with TV or medications ('downers');
• fawning in self-abandoning and obsequious codependent relating. (The fawn response to trauma is delineated in my earlier article on "Codependency and Trauma" in The East Bay Therapist, Jan/Feb 03).

This thread is amazing but it makes my head hurt lol  - ack, I need to figure out how to add more smileys, love the one with the stars going round and round the smiley's head, it would work here so well. 

Flashbacks - I have both Katz.  I have the PTSD kind where I can see and feel a traumatic memory (like being spanked really hard and screamed at by my M for embarrassing her when company was over and then put in a hot bath), and others that are just feelings based with no visual component, a stream of consciousness kind of flashback which do range as you suggest Katz from a milder sort that make me foggy to really extreme where I have a huge panic attack.  So it's natural to notice the BIG ones like Butterfly captures in her post, and miss the smaller ones.   Walker does suggest that "Flashbacks can range in intensity from subtle to horrific"  (p. 3) so it does sound like there's a continuum of sorts with CPTSD EF's and most likely the same holds true for PTSD visual flashbacks (VFs). 

Kizzie - "range from subtle to horrific"? Oh thank goodness, that explains a lot.

Do you tackle your different flashbacks in different ways? That's on my to-do list - to explore what precisely I'd need during panicky vs foggy flashbacks. With the panicky ones, I need safety, reassurance, maybe the chance to anger or grieve my way through the bad memories. With the foggy flashbacks, I need... what? Hm. Must think about this. Hah, maybe I need a Richter scale for EFs. An early warning system.

Butterfly, I've asked myself that same thing for years. Those things always happened around EFs though. During bad times, even my food intolerance* gets worse, which is just weird.

(*If I eat foods that contain histamine liberators, it's like something's hitting my off switch. Histamine is a stress hormone. Maybe EFs produce so many stress hormones that the little extra contained in food tips me over the edge, I don't know.)

Wow Katz, I have the same thing with certain meds and foods when I am in an EF (which I did not realize before).  Things that my system usually handles seem to have an extra punch - caffeine, chocolate (wah), and cold meds especially.  Makes perfect sense now - we already have a lot of adrenalin and cortisol and heaven knows what else pouring into our systems (or trickling depending on the intensity) so add anything on top of that and blammo. Hunh.

Hmmmm, do I handle my flashbacks differently ? Good question.  I know with the PTSD type ones it's almost easier to get through because its visual and tangible.  My H is a great at helping me through those - so talk therapy of a sort, validation and comfort for those. 

The CPTSD EFs  - like everyone here I guess I'm just starting down that path.  Differentiating between them by level or degree and then our response is a great start though.  Butterfly - I startle really easily sometimes and hadn't considered it as part of a milder EF perhaps.  But I think we're onto something here.  So what to do for the different degrees of an EF? E.g., "Hmmmm, I feel like numbing out - what's going on here and what can I do to stay in the moment?"  So I guess some grounding strategies for staying in the moment. For the more severe ones - I haven't had one in a while but now that my H knows what they are now so I guess talk to him about what's going ion, use Walker's 13 Steps and some of the other soothing strategies, and when I'm able post here to see if that helps to bring it down too. And stay away from food and meds that add to making my system go haywire, rest and not joking here, drink lots of fluids to wash all the toxins out. 

Love the Richtor Scale for EFs  Katz  ;D

I split this topic and moved three posts to "Our Relationships with Others" under "Relationships with SOs" http://outofthefog.net/C-PTSD/forum/index.php?topic=122.msg735#msg735

Just had an ef for a few hours, but I'm still struggling with it, I'm trying to settle my breathing and my chest and stomach and thoughts. I so want to ring my therapist but haven't the money and the children are around. I know it's nothing but I was writing on here when my husband and son started saying, pushing me verbally to get off this forum, my husband started manipulating me and making me feel guilty. I knew that if I were vacuuming or doing dishes he wouldn't have said anything. I always meet my children's needs before I write anything. Anyway all I gave my son the iPad and went to start the dishes, but I nearly started screaming and pulling my hair out and almost cried ( which i was kind of happy about as apparently I need to learn to cry and my facial tic will go away) I kept thinking "it's all I'm good for". Working, it was the only time my mother kind of left me alone, even though if I hadn't done it properly ( like spend 2 hrs on something meticulously cleaning it) she would yell, hit scream until I worked all day long, she even made me late for school most days because I had to do so many things around the house constantly.
So I feel like this is all I'm good for, I went for a walk so I wouldnt shout in front of the kids which I ended up doing to my husband when I came back anyway, he said it wasn't true, but actions speak louder than words. He never tells me to stop what I'm doing if I'm cooking or cleaning. He is nice to me most of the time though even when I am doing something I enjoy.

Annie, it's great that you went for a walk. First and foremost, it's important to take care of ourselves so we are in a good state to care for others, too. Try to do something for yourself every day!!!  It may be different, but the others will get used to it.

I had a chit chat w my T yesterday about a couple of EFs I had over the last few weeks. One thing I find interesting is that things that were scary when I was young, now I no longer act in fear but in anger when I'm having the EF. Do you ever feel like this?  Is this progress, or just a more adult like reaction?  When I told my T that, she said "Hmm, I wonder what that means?" Not sure if that was a real question or one of the ever-famous rhetorical questions.

:) yes i wonder too... Probably rhetorical ;) To make you think, which it did, made me think too,
Pete Walker is positive about anger as long as we put the blame in the right place, however after doing thought inquiry with my T after a few mths i told her i wasn't feeling angry at my mother anymore (but i am again now) but then i wasn't and i said now i feel more sad, my T said that sadness is more healthy and more a sign we are looking at things more rationally as anger means we are placing blame and blaming increases hate and is more painful for us.

I don't know if I'd agree with that. Anger is a self-protective early-warning system. It tells us that something's wrong, and it gives us motivation and energy so we can fix things. It's a self-protective certainty that "yes, this thing is just WRONG and I don't have to simply just take it - I MUST do something and I CAN do it". This certainty was worn down to the point where, nowadays, I still have quite some catching-up to do. For me personally, anger's a very necessary and healthy thing right now. I'm a Freeze type, so anger is a healthy antidote to the things that were slowly killing me. (Might be different for Fight types?) Plus, anger helps me drive out introjects.

It's a bit of serendipity that I read the following article just this morning: http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/GrievingAndComplexPTSD.pdf (http://www.pete-walker.com/pdf/GrievingAndComplexPTSD.pdf) . The main points:

Recovery from CPTSD = working through our traumatic memories and through our EFs. To do so, we can do the following:
1. Angering, which fosters our sense of self-protection;
2. Crying, which fosters our sense of self-compassion;
3. Venting, which fosters a whole lot more things that I've forgotten about;
4. Feeling, which means simply letting the "negative" emotions well up inside us without instantly pushing them out the door again and double-locking everything.

The way he says it, angering and crying both need to happen. There's a lot more in his article. He's also written a book, and he says there's something in there about how to use anger in a way that keeps ourselves and others safe.

Just in my experience:

Anger gave me a backbone so I was less of a doormat,
but Sadness--the true expression of it, grieving, (and without guilt or self-criticism) was actually therapeutic for me.

I think Pete Walker focuses on anger so much because it helped him personally with his codependency. When it's directed in a healthy way, it really does give a person strength.

But I've heard other therapists say and write that anger is always covering up something deeper that still has to be addressed (such as sadness, frustration, hurt). In my own life, it's true--there's usually hurt under there. But it's hard to cross the line into vulnerability and feel those feelings. It feels (at first) like the other person wins if you get sad rather than stay tough and angry.

Maybe there's a right time to focus on anger, and then when it's made us strong enough we're free to focus on the sad things?

This is really interesting Pam and it actually makes things a lot clearer and SC it is really fascinating what you came up with here. I am sure this makes a lot of sense,  so I reckon it's what my T was meaning as she is certainly not anti anger, so that is the first sign we have been unfairly treated which later gives way to sadness etc and I'm sure it must be back and forth a lot for a while . I didn't realise but I had been feeling angry constantly and when it got less I felt vulnerable and sad which I had t felt before and it felt dangerous but T said it's actually healthier.

Quote from: globetrotter on September 19, 2014, 06:58:16 PM
I had a chit chat w my T yesterday about a couple of EFs I had over the last few weeks. One thing I find interesting is that things that were scary when I was young, now I no longer act in fear but in anger when I'm having the EF. Do you ever feel like this?  Is this progress, or just a more adult like reaction?  When I told my T that, she said "Hmm, I wonder what that means?" Not sure if that was a real question or one of the ever-famous rhetorical questions.

Sometimes I feel fear, shame, humiliation, abandonment, but you're so right GT that a lot of the time now it is anger, but of a different sort than when my adult self gets angry (and isn't in an EF).  In an EF it is a younger me feeling some very childlike anger, rage really about being treated badly, dismissed or whatever and often I will shake, cry, yell, etc.  It's more primitive or over the top. 

I just realized this when I read your post GT (and tks for that  :D) and that's great because at least adult me handles anger pretty well, even if my IC needs some help with this.  I haven't had a meltdown kind of angry EF in about a year when my narcissistic M triggered me really badly and I just about ended up going no contact with her it was that bad. It was a gift of sorts though in that I knew afterwards I would stand up for myself and my family no matter the cost and that included cutting ties. It broke that last bit of a hold she had over me and I came all the way out of the FOG.  So in Walker's terms it really kicked in the self-protection.

I agree with Walker that anger can definitely be healthy, even required for recovery, but I think some people get stuck there and don't move on which is probably what some T's are a bit concerned about.  I also agree Pam that there is something underneath of all that anger.  It was a whole lot of sadness and grief because it was crystal clear after that incident that I  had lost something really big -- my parents love and protection.  That was hard to accept but freeing too.

Thanks,  all...

I seem to feel plenty of sadness when discussing the past but the emotional hijacking with the visual imagery accompanied by anger is new...new for me to recognize it as an EF anyway. Now my challenge is to hone in between the two, (adult vs inner child) similar to what you're describing,  Kizzie. And to reign it in. Therein lies the challenge when so many seemingly small things can be triggers.

Been busy RL so catching up . . .

Food intolerance worse at some times than others. Never connected to EF but I've just started to grasp the idea of the subtle EF. Like the Richter scale idea.

Anne, I'm finding my EF are shorter duration if I grab the Walker guide sheet for what to do in
EF and I'm sorry yours lasted so long. So good the walk helped, have you tried getting the guide sheet out as soon as you recognize EF? It took me a while to even recognize EF but I'm getting better at taking as to back and saying 'ok this is EF'

Encounter with uPDm triggered super bad freeze but I went ahead and contradicted her in front of others. She didn't like what she was hearing and tried to interrupt but I kept my eyes solidly fixed on the others in the conversation and ignored her chattering in my ear to get my attention off topic. It was a triumphant moment and I did this twice that day. If I can stand up for myself I feel better even if I wind up freezing until I can muster courage and choose my battles and timing.

Reading Walker book today and he commented about turning the 4 responses into useful tools. Like turning freeze into "acute observation mode". I think I can do that, someone on OOTF said it becomes a Spock-like raising of the eyebrow and saying 'fascinating' examining human behavior and situation. Someone else has said like an anthropologist view of events. Need to give this some thought and practice.

Congratulations on standing up to your uPDm!  :cheer:

I like the Spock thing. Putting myself into a mindset where I'm a kind of researcher into normal and abnormal behaviour of the typical Central European always makes me feel more at ease. I never connected it to my Freeze Response though.

It makes me wonder if hobbies that hone our observational skills might be good things for Freezers - like painting, drawing, keeping a writer's notebook where we jot down weird things people do...? Maybe also some hobbyist sociology, or character type theories, anything that can help us stay in Spock Mode?

Anyway, thanks for pointing this out.

Quote from: Butterfly on October 01, 2014, 12:07:10 PM
Encounter with uPDm triggered super bad freeze but I went ahead and contradicted her in front of others. She didn't like what she was hearing and tried to interrupt but I kept my eyes solidly fixed on the others in the conversation and ignored her chattering in my ear to get my attention off topic. It was a triumphant moment and I did this twice that day. If I can stand up for myself I feel better even if I wind up freezing until I can muster courage and choose my battles and timing.

Reading Walker book today and he commented about turning the 4 responses into useful tools. Like turning freeze into "acute observation mode". I think I can do that, someone on OOTF said it becomes a Spock-like raising of the eyebrow and saying 'fascinating' examining human behavior and situation. Someone else has said like an anthropologist view of events. Need to give this some thought and practice.

That is so good BF and twice in one day - you must have felt triumphant!   :applause:   So in spite of the super bad freeze, you went ahead and contradicted her - that sounds to me like your IC is not quite as afraid of your M. You took a big risk in spite of the freeze. What's happened since the "Day of the Great Contradictions" - is she trying to FOG you at all?

Quote from: globetrotter on September 21, 2014, 01:49:42 PM
I seem to feel plenty of sadness when discussing the past but the emotional hijacking with the visual imagery accompanied by anger is new...new for me to recognize it as an EF anyway. Now my challenge is to hone in between the two, (adult vs inner child) similar to what you're describing,  Kizzie. And to reign it in. Therein lies the challenge when so many seemingly small things can be triggers.

I wonder if feeling anger in an EF instead of shame, fear, rejection etc is actually progress?  That our self-protection is kicking in? My angry EFs are a little primitive for my tastes but if my IC is waking up and coming out more, it would make things easier to know that's what's happening.  I did have an incident in a support group where I got angry about something someone said and I "talked" to her and suggested it was better to let the adult me handle it and that worked. So perhaps this is progress. 

The visual component hmmmmmm - apparently alot of us have PTSD in which visual flashbacks are a symptom. Could it be that some of the trauma in childhood is remembered as single incidents (PTSD) while some is felt as a cumulative melange (CPTSD)?   

I'm wondering if a little ham-fistedness might actually be only logical. After all, those aspects of us were pushed out of sight for a long time. They lack practice. It's like trying to write with one's non-dominant hand, the pressure is going to be either too subtle or too strong. A child who's learning to dance is either going to just baaarely sway in time with the music, or it's going to jump on the sofa and scream its head off. That's not to say it's okay to let our anger do that, as it were. But it might be just a phase it's going to grow out of? What do you think?

What you wrote made me remember a quote by Maya Angelou on anger. I came across it a few days ago when I was looking for "I Rise":

"You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it." And elsewhere she says, "anger is like fire. It burns all clean."

 :yeahthat:    I love the quote Cat!

 :yeahthat:   I agree on the quotes, Cat!

Yes, anger can fuel passion, that is true. The anti-freeze! Har.

I like the thought of hyper vigilence being "acute observation mode". I swear I miss nothing!
Honestly, looking at the list of 'symptoms' so many of these are so entrenched in my being, I assume that's just a part of livin'. Hrm.....

Well, if Martians ever invaded Earth, me thinks all of us in our hyper vigilance would be the first to notice, and then to knock them back out into space!!

Everyone else would just be grocery shopping, etc....

:party:

Oh yes. If we could harness this to... hm, say swordfighting... we'd be like those guys in the movies.

Normal guy: "Hm, did you see that bloke who just came in? He looks a bit suspicious..."
CPTSD guy 1: "You mean the one with the two loaded pistols, the concealed stiletto, the blood-stained cloak and the poisoned dagger?"
Normal guy: "Uh... yes?"
CPTSD guy 2 (joining them and sitting down): "It's cool. I took care of him."

Globetrotter: antifreeze? That's brilliant.

 :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Anger as anti-freeze - love it GT!!     :thumbup:

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on October 01, 2014, 12:17:29 PM
Congratulations on standing up to your uPDm!  :cheer:

I like the Spock thing. Putting myself into a mindset where I'm a kind of researcher into normal and abnormal behaviour of the typical Central European always makes me feel more at ease. I never connected it to my Freeze Response though.

It makes me wonder if hobbies that hone our observational skills might be good things for Freezers - like painting, drawing, keeping a writer's notebook where we jot down weird things people do...? Maybe also some hobbyist sociology, or character type theories, anything that can help us stay in Spock Mode?

Anyway, thanks for pointing this out.

Thanks for the cheer! Loved the connection to hobbies and art and have recently renewed my art passion. Maybe I should do some quick sketching to see where it leads me.

The quote in anger vs bitterness - great distinction!

Quote from: Kizzie on October 01, 2014, 01:06:46 PMThat is so good BF and twice in one day - you must have felt triumphant! So in spite of the super bad freeze, you went ahead and contradicted her - that sounds to me like your IC is not quite as afraid of your M. You took a big risk in spite of the freeze. What's happened since the "Day of the Great Contradictions" - is she trying to FOG you at all?

Triumphant - good word to describe my feelings and yes I guess that means IC is less fearful, thanks I didn't make that connection, I'm really slow  :)

"Day of the Great Contradictions" Love this! It's odd because she tries to FOG me in odd kind of softer ways, not her usual PA ways so it's difficult for me to frame it as a Hoover FOG attempt. Good thing is I do recognize it for what it is and don't respond. It's almost a year since my sudden OOTF flight and she still seems puzzled why she can't get to me like she did and that feels good because while I feel like a crumbly mess inside I know on the outside I'm in charge of me.

I have some thoughts on the grief link but maybe better suited to a post on grief if we have one.

I just wanted to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread so far. It has had a profound effect on me today. I understand so much more about so many things that I've experienced, and can now attribute them to EF's.

I always thought of them as the more traditional visual flashbacks that are attributed to PTSD, so when therapists asked me about them I always said no...but there is a whole list of things that "trigger" me, emotionally. And I figured out why I'm having such a strong reaction to something that I've been struggling with recently, so thank you all.

:yourock:

Quote from: Butterfly on October 03, 2014, 10:19:15 AM
"Day of the Great Contradictions" Love this! It's odd because she tries to FOG me in odd kind of softer ways, not her usual PA ways so it's difficult for me to frame it as a Hoover FOG attempt. Good thing is I do recognize it for what it is and don't respond. It's almost a year since my sudden OOTF flight and she still seems puzzled why she can't get to me like she did and that feels good because while I feel like a crumbly mess inside I know on the outside I'm in charge of me.

Feeling like "crumbly mess inside" - that's a great description of how I used to feel around my NPDM whenever I took a risk before BF - so afraid but not willing to put up with her PD behav.  It does get better or at least it has for me.  My M was quite discombobulated by changes in our behav too and tried a bunch of different tactics to see if she could get what she's wants in some other way. It was really tiring for us but she did eventually "relax" into a sort of acceptance that we weren't going to be PD'd, I think when she realized we are consistently kind and compassionate to her even when we have to reiterate boundaries. She has other sources for attention now (part of our strategy) so doesn't hoover much at all any more.

Leading up to feeling less crumbly inside though, I had two major PD events with her and actually felt as though there was an earthquake happening in my internal landscape. Very shakey and had BIG EFs in which it felt like it was life or death on some level.  Awful!!  It was the closest to going NC that I have ever been. Both EFs served to show me just how truly frightened my IC actually was (and is),  that she may in fact have thought she would die if she did the "wrong" thing, and how much care and support she needs to come into the present and process the past. So I understand too when you say the outside of you knows you're in charge, but the inside - not so much.   I do think that by being here and talking about all this we are taking steps to close that gap, and considering the fear I felt in those two EFs, baby steps are just fine -- maybe even necessary. 

Spryte, so happy for you!

Kizzie, your post help me tremendously. First lightbub from your post, I never really thought the crumbly feeling inside was fear since I don't respond out of fear anymore but it must be fear I'm feeling. There's been times I felt the internal earthquake you describe. But there's other times where I just feel a little off kilter, not quite so confident or quick how to respond to different interactions.

It's so sad to me that even when she's being nice I need to be alert and aware. That's where there's the most risk of inviting enmeshment and I know letting her in just a little bit is like a wedge in a crack to be wiggled until the crack is wider and wider.

One of my biggest triggers still is her unwillingness to see me as an individual and to grab onto any tidbit of information to try to enmesh. It makes me furious inside that she'll take anything she can find out and suddenly she wants to do it too, has had it, has done it, feels that same way, 'why do we feel this way', etc.

It's the enmeshment that allows her the bullying. Being enmeshed is what gives her the feeling of entitlement to treat me as she pleases and free license to her bullying. That reminds me of the post on OOTF about accepting the abuse and allowing it to continue sends the message the abuse is ok with us.

Second lightbulb, when I say "outside I'm in charge of me but inside on the crumbly mess" maybe what I'm really saying is that my adult has got the situation under control but when I say inside maybe what I'm really saying is my inner child. Thank you so much for your thoughts because the thought of an inner child is something I have a difficult time getting my head around and getting in touch with.

It's comforting to to know that your M has excepted this is how things are and being consistently kind and compassionate she's leveled off. I can kind of see that with my own M in that these last few months she's just kind of reluctantly accepted that this is the new normal. Through it all I've made sure I never cross or unkind in my tone or my words, simply not enmeshed. She now accepts my MC responses without the drama or PA fits MC first triggered, but only because I didn't cave and give in to her bullying.

DH and I were talking how grateful we both are to OOTF, this forum and the books I'm reading. Never give up and never stop the journey to wellness.

re: Spock Mode - First, I love this. Spock is seriously one of my hero's. If it were possible, I would absolutely undergo Vulcan Training. But, when I was reading this, the thing that came to mind to "help us stay in Spock Mode" would be mindfulness practices. As I understand it (I'm just beginning with it) a main tenant of mindfulness is "observation". When I'm doing that accept and embrace meditation - I'm generally doing it when I'm being triggered by whatever emotional/physical thing is going on at the moment. I'm not sure that it's EF related...but I get definite panic feelings about not being in control, which I know are all past-related. So, the first thing I have to do there is "observe". Get out of my head, which means emotionally detach from whatever is going on.

What am I feeling? (emotions) If I can't identify the feeling, accept that and move on.
What am I feeling in my body?

Observe, and then accept whatever it is as being my current reality, which cannot be changed by me in that moment. I don't know if it would be helpful to others for EF's.

But mindfulness period - is about that first part...observing with curiosity (and a book that I'm reading right now said observing with compassion and curiosity).

Quote from: Butterfly on October 06, 2014, 11:59:17 AM
...I never really thought the crumbly feeling inside was fear since I don't respond out of fear anymore but it must be fear I'm feeling. There's been times I felt the internal earthquake you describe. But there's other times where I just feel a little off kilter, not quite so confident or quick how to respond to different interactions.

This is interesting. I never thought to connect the crumbly feeling to EFs. But it's so plausible.

With me, it's mostly a feeling that I shouldn't be here, that I'm doing something wrong, or that there's something wrong about my looks or the way I'm walking, or that I'm saying the wrong things.

It's a little depressing how often this happens. A few years ago, I felt like that all the time with literally everybody. It's better now, but still - bleargh.

This made me realize how many thought substitutions I've yet to do. ... That's weirdly encouraging, though. If it's simply just sh*tty CPTSD crap, then I can shift it.

Mindfulness helps a lot, but for me personally, it's not 100% of the answer. I think it's beginning to work for me when I'm already recovered enough to have a stable independent observer inside of me. As long as the EF literally becomes my entire world and brainwashes my entire thinking, all there is to be mindful of is my own misery. Having said that, once I'm at that stage, it's astonishing what a change it makes.

Hmm...yes. I can see where the distinction would come in. I have these moments which I call "brown acid" moments - which I'm not sure yet if they're EF's...I'm trying to sort through my emotional reactions not wanting to label every single "off" emotional moment an EF...where regardless of what sparks it feels similar to what you describe. "...literally becomes my entire world and brainwashes my entire thinking." I think though, at some point in the past I DID develop a "stable observer" although...that didn't help me reduce the "brown acid" moments (though I wasn't doing specific work on those) What it DID do...was put the observer IN those moments...I've described it this way...and maybe it doesn't make sense to anyone who hasn't taken a hallucinogenic drug...but usually, someone on a bad trip doesn't KNOW they're on a bad trip. It engulfs them, becomes their world, THAT becomes reality. For me, these bad moments are like...having a bad trip, but KNOWING that you're having a bad trip, and not necessarily being able to stop it, or get out of it. Sometimes I can but it takes a WHOLE lot of work, and is super exhausting.

But, so now that the observer is "installed" I guess, enough in these moments to help me be aware that they are occurring, I guess I have found enough space (sometimes) to be able to say, "Ok...I'm having a brown acid moment, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it right now, so instead of letting myself get swallowed by it I'll just hold onto something and ride it out."

"With me, it's mostly a feeling that I shouldn't be here, that I'm doing something wrong, or that there's something wrong about my looks or the way I'm walking, or that I'm saying the wrong things."

Have you identified specific triggers for those feelings? I used to have that all the time and I sometimes still get them...like, imposter feelings. "You don't belong here." feelings. I was completely defeated a few years back when I was going door to door putting door knob hanger flyers for my business on these really rich mansion homes...my anxiety was ridiculous and then I figured out that it was because despite the fact that these neighborhoods were quiet - it was the middle of the day so it was unlikely there was anyone even there, I was seriously freaking out because I thought that at any moment someone was going to come out of their house and scream at me and tell me to get off their property, that I didn't BELONG there.

I have noticed that reaction a lot actually...feeling as though I am doing something wrong, even when I'm not. That any moment someone is going to yell about me about something. I got that feeling constantly when I was working this one job cleaning a guys condo while he was away. Those were the most serious cases of that, and I can't remember if there was anything that "triggered" those feelings other than the circumstances. At the time, I chalked them up to just...really poor self-esteem - that my mom had obviously succeeded in crushing me to the point where I didn't feel like I had the right to even exist...although obviously, there were specific circumstances that surrounded those feelings - they weren't all the time...does that sound more like an EF experience than just a self-esteem/worth issue?

Interesting question, this. How do we tell what's an EF and what isn't? I haven't thought about this properly yet, but at the drop of a hat, I'd say it's about being in control. Normal sadness has something of poise about it. It's a bit more like being in a cinema and the lights go down and the movie starts. So yes, I'm moved by what I see, but there's still some part of me that's in control, quiet, calm, and able to make decisions. EFs are different. They're like the whole world suddenly turning into one huge poltergeist that then begins to haunt you.

Triggers can be anything, unfortunately. My mother grew up poor, and like many formerly poor people, is super-hyper-conscious of how your hair and clothes and style give messages about your social class. I read a while ago that many poor folks do that to their kids: "Oh, but you can't wear that t-shirt! It looks frumpy and threadbare!" - meaning: it looks like we're poor. She fusses about my hair and clothes and posture and mimicry and everything all the time. Always has done. Still does, to this day. I either get: "Oh... what you're wearing looks nice", with an undertone of surprise. Or she'll look me up and down and give me this really grave look: "Here, I'm giving you some money so you can buy yourself something nice to wear." It's all really mild, soft, indirect. But it happened all the time. All the time. It's the rule, not the exception. Most of our interactions consist of my mother warning me, correcting me, giving "advice", asking probing questions, making sure I'm not making mistakes. So this morning I was triggered when I looked in the mirror and my hair was a little tousled. I simply assume without thinking that everyone will judge me the way my mother judges me. When you're a kid, never being good enough is an uncomfortable and scary experience. It would have been okay if my classmates hadn't given me yet more emotional

My EF was mild, comparatively. But it wasn't just a bad-hair-day feeling: because those I can deal with. I can joke about them, or laugh, or sigh, or whatever. It's like windsurfing. I can stay on top of things. I can live through those bad feelings and think: "this will make a funny story later, once I'm feeling better". The EFs though make me feel like I'm on the defensive. I'm subtly wrong. I feel like I'm to blame, I just don't know yet what for. My thoughts become sluggish and I can't concentrate too well. It's like a fog that starts to seep through everything and cloud my entire thinking. And it's precisely what it was like when I was a kid.

So that's why I'm calling that an EF. It's only to myself, and for my own life. I'm not saying that any such experience is always an EF for everybody. But I needed a word for "mindset / worldview / feelings / tunnel vision etc that's precisely like it was back when I was a kid", so I'm using it even for those milder EFs. Using that word is a way of telling myself: "This isn't me. I'm not 'naturally insecure' or something. I've had bad hair days and this isn't one, it's something else."

Erm... what's brown acid?

Quote from: Butterfly on October 06, 2014, 11:59:17 AM
It's so sad to me that even when she's being nice I need to be alert and aware. That's where there's the most risk of inviting enmeshment and I know letting her in just a little bit is like a wedge in a crack to be wiggled until the crack is wider and wider. One of my biggest triggers still is her unwillingness to see me as an individual and to grab onto any tidbit of information to try to enmesh. It makes me furious inside that she'll take anything she can find out and suddenly she wants to do it too, has had it, has done it, feels that same way, 'why do we feel this way', etc.

And speaking of enmeshment .....segue, segue ......  So I emailed my NPDM that I had gone for my first African drumming session on Sat, had a great time, yada, yada, yada.  Her response?  "I love the song Little Drummer Boy"  Ding, ding ding, and we have a winner in the "How small, nay tiny a tidbit can your PD FOO grab onto to make it about them?"

Not making too much fun of the enmeshment BF because I was engulfed and have a NPDM who really does grab onto anything, literally the weirdest things to try and enmesh (and it makes me furious too), but sometimes you really just have to laugh. 

Gack!!! Little drummer boy???. :stars:
I'd be a bit frustrated as well !!!
I'm happy that you enjoyed it. Keep going!

...oh dear. What did you do?

My mother isn't a narcissist, so she doesn't segue so much as use conversation stoppers. When I'm talking about something that's important to me, she'll often cut things off right away. If she segues, it's not into talking about herself, it's into talking about people who're important to her, or into talking about that whole area of doing one's duty. So instead of talking about my life, I listen to her talk about how she mowed her lawn and got rid of the cut grass. So there are those moments where I go "...wait, did she really just say that??", which... probably you know how that feels.

Maybe that's a bit too sarcastic, but I've sometimes thought I might be better able to live through meeting my mother if I had a bingo square. One box for the likeliest kicks to my mental shins. "Expresses aghast surprise that I don't share her preferences", that could go in one box, or "when I mention something that's important to me, abruptly segues into talking about something that's important to her"... simply as a way of telling myself that yes, it will happen again, and yes, it feels painful, but also: yes, we can poke fun at this. Not at her, simply at those mechanisms that keep on wrecking our talks.

Quote from: schrödinger's cat on October 07, 2014, 08:28:31 AM
...oh dear. What did you do?

My mother isn't a narcissist, so she doesn't segue so much as use conversation stoppers. When I'm talking about something that's important to me, she'll often cut things off right away. If she segues, it's not into talking about herself, it's into talking about people who're important to her, or into talking about that whole area of doing one's duty. So instead of talking about my life, I listen to her talk about how she mowed her lawn and got rid of the cut grass. So there are those moments where I go "...wait, did she really just say that??", which... probably you know how that feels.

Maybe that's a bit too sarcastic, but I've sometimes thought I might be better able to live through meeting my mother if I had a bingo square. One box for the likeliest kicks to my mental shins. "Expresses aghast surprise that I don't share her preferences", that could go in one box, or "when I mention something that's important to me, abruptly segues into talking about something that's important to her"... simply as a way of telling myself that yes, it will happen again, and yes, it feels painful, but also: yes, we can poke fun at this. Not at her, simply at those mechanisms that keep on wrecking our talks.

And isn't that just a loud and clear message about you as an individual?!  Love the "kicks to my mental shins" - it would go over really well at OOTF.  I once started a thread there about the silliest or strangest gifts member's PD FOO had given them and boom 5 pages before it was locked and so funny, sad too of course but it was great to poke some fun at the PDs for a change.  I also started one about predictions about what your FOO would do in certain situations - again, so funny and 5 pages in no time flat.  It's really good to be able to see some humour I've found, I couldn't do that for the longest time,  but now my H and I have a good laugh every few days at her Little Drummer Boy type emails or remembering some of the sillier antics.   

SC - I get where you're coming from.

For myself, I'm not sure that I can associate them with control. (I'm still in the observing stage, so I don't know.) Because, as I think I explained somewhere else, maybe in this thread I don't know...there are times when I DO have control when I've been triggered. I am not engulfed...or at least, not at first.

And, maybe it's because I've been dealing with this moments of what feel like insanity for so long, and patchworked a way to deal with them and I've sort of gotten to a point where a) I know when they're happening b)I know they're not real and c) I can hold a small part of myself apart from them enough to know what's going on -

Brown Acid - it's not a type of acid, that I know of...just an expression to mean "very bad acid trip". It would not mean much to anyone who isn't familiar with the experiences of a hallucinatory drug...but it's the moment where all the fun and games with visual, somatic and auditory hallucinations turn nightmarish.

This blog post that I read this morning was a great description of a "brown acid" moment for me.
http://www.gresik.ca/2011/11/the-night-i-almost-went-crazy/

I had one very similar the other day, and I wrote about it too.

QuoteYesterday, I had a job assessment for a position that would actually be pretty great. I was nervous from the get go. All the way there, I was talking myself down off of the ledge. (This may or may not have been exacerbated by caffeine, I'm noticing the nervous "after" effects again) I get there, and see that there is another girl there, who is dressed way better than I am. When she speaks, her voice is clear and confident. She is...if I were a hiring manager, the one whom I would have my eye on. Meanwhile, I am under dressed, my hair is a mess and I don't have a brush, my cheeks were all red from being overheated from driving in my un-airconditioned car...then more girls show up, all dressed better than I am. I wonder, why didn't I put more effort into what I wore today? Why did I think this was appropriate for a job assessment?

The assessment itself wasn't terrible. Other than the fact that we were all seated together in a room, tested at the same time. There were five of us. There were two days, and two times offered for this assessment. So, assuming that perhaps there were five in each time slot (I have no way of knowing that) we can assume maybe 20 applicants? So, competition between 20 applicants, doing this assessment. I was not fantastic on the excel portion. And, the thing was...I could have spent yesterday brushing up on excel...because I called and asked the woman what was going to be on the assessment and she told me. I knew that I wasn't very good with Excel formula's. I even briefly looked it up online. And then got distracted by games.

Afterward, on the way home...there were tears. Partially because of the things that I rationally knew that I failed at...not dressing better, not brushing up on the Excel, not being better prepared to compete when I know how competitive these jobs are. The rest of it was just a slide into that awful, worthless head space. There was a moment when I just...gave up trying to "talk myself down" from the brown acid moment I was having wherein I was just absolutely worthless, had done terribly, had no chance at the job, had ruined everything, and on top of it all...was crazy, because I knew none of these things were actually true, except that I couldn't make them NOT feel true, and feeling...in that moment...absolutely alone because I didn't feel like I could explain any of that to anyone and Ron and my dad both wanted to know how it went. I felt like I could tell them the truth, that it went ok except in that moment, the truth felt like a lie that I was going to have to force myself to tell. I'd have to smile, and pretend that everything went ok, except that's not the way I felt, even though I knew it had gone Ok. <--the insanity of that is just...I don't know.

So, I mean...those moments for me...I've had them for a long time, and I've worked hard at trying to hang on through them, work to understand what's going on DURING them, but never thought to look at what proceeded them - which was obviously a lot of old tape worthless feelings that - it seems to me are flashbacks to when I was a kid - those criticisms are exactly the kinds of criticisms that I would have heard from both my mother and my father. Obviously, inner critic stuff...which is what I've been working on combating - but there's this other component that I'm not sure that I understood really until now...which is like...where I go in my head when the inner critic starts in on me - where those feelings originate from and why they have such impact.

Sorry to hear about the job assessment.

Quote from: spryteI knew none of these things were actually true, except that I couldn't make them NOT feel true, and feeling...in that moment...absolutely alone because I didn't feel like I could explain any of that to anyone and Ron and my dad both wanted to know how it went. I felt like I could tell them the truth, that it went ok except in that moment, the truth felt like a lie that I was going to have to force myself to tell. I'd have to smile, and pretend that everything went ok, except that's not the way I felt, even though I knew it had gone Ok.

Oh good. Not just me then.

I'm still only starting to investigate my EFs, so I'm not one hundred percent sure about them yet. I can imagine that, as I get better at identifying them, that lack of control will disappear. Or maybe "control" isn't the best word for it. "Poise" works too. Pete Walker calls EFs "amygdala hijackings", and there's this element of being hijacked and taken over: as if my EF had decided that we WILL take the ride into the haunted house today and there's no stopping it. That reminds me of what you wrote:

Quote from: spryteThe rest of it was just a slide into that awful, worthless head space. There was a moment when I just...gave up trying to "talk myself down" from the brown acid moment I was having wherein I was just absolutely worthless, had done terribly, had no chance at the job, had ruined everything, and on top of it all...was crazy, because I knew none of these things were actually true, except that I couldn't make them NOT feel true...

So there's this sense that some automated mechanism has started, and we're not pilots anymore, we're passengers. Or I'm reading too much into it, that's also possible.

For me personally, that's one sign of an EF: this sense that the whole world is narrowing down to this one trigger, and that my whole inner experience is narrowing down too, leaving me little or no wiggle room I could use to escape or take a step back from this. That's the worst. Simply just realizing afterwards that I had an EF has already been a relief.

Thanks, actually, the job assessment went just fine. I got called back for an interview, and got the job. That's the new job that I'll be starting here in a few weeks. I felt even sillier about my reaction to all of that when I got the call for the interview.

And it's funny, that was the first time that I actually used "anger" to snap myself out of that downward spiral. It was a liberating moment for me. I think Peter Walker's amygdala hijacking's is completely accurate...and the feeling to go with it. Hijacked.

See, I'm at the point with these things where one of four outcomes happens:

a.) I can spot dangerous territory and avoid it all together (still happens rarely)
b.) Once I feel the hijacking, I can thought block, or reframe, and manage to "talk myself off the ledge" altogether (slightly more than rarely)
c.) I can desperately hold onto the "rational" part of my mind, like I wrote about where I'm having two different realities...the one in which I "know" what's real, and the one that "feels" crazy and all I can do is hang on for the ride. (this is usually where I'm sitting right now, it's emotionally exhausting)
d.)it becomes too much effort to hang on and I just...let go and let myself slide into the feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, out-of-controlness

This last one was kind of a combo platter between the last two.

Quotethis sense that the whole world is narrowing down to this one trigger, and that my whole inner experience is narrowing down too, leaving me little or no wiggle room I could use to escape or take a step back from this. That's the worst. Simply just realizing afterwards that I had an EF has already been a relief.

I wonder what you'd need to do to create that wiggle room for yourself? Some kind of "hook" into reality that you could hold onto for comfort even if you ended up being swept away by it.

So like, with a bad acid trip, sometimes the way you get through it is just reminding yourself (or, having someone else remind you) that you took a drug, that reality is still there, that it will end - eventually. And that's kind of what I do when it's getting to the "I'm too tired to hang on to reality" point. Sometimes, I'll talk to my bf about it, and be like...Hi...I'm crazy right now, can you tell me what's real and true? Or, another trusted friend. Assuming of course that you have someone that you could say that to safely.

You got the job? Whoo-hoo! Congratulations! So at least all that heartache wasn't for naught...

Quote from: spryte...I used "anger" to snap myself out of that downward spiral. It was liberating...

Yes, same here. I'm beginning to wonder if Peter Levine doesn't have a point when he says that trauma symptoms happen if our normal, natural trauma reaction gets interrupted or hindered and can't be completed. The way he puts it, traumatic events release tremendous amounts of energy within us. If and as long as our natural reactions to trauma can flow naturally from start to end, that energy gets released and dissipates, no problem. If our reaction gets interrupted, that energy is trapped and sloshes about in us, creating all kinds of problems. Back then, when we were traumatized - maybe we were meant to react with anger, but for some reason this wasn't possible. And we were meant to look at the situation around us, to really see what was going on, and to blame our abusers for abusing us. But that wasn't possible either. Maybe that's why moving out of denial and anger are so liberating: things are finally clunking back into place. Things are the way they're meant to be.

I don't know how plausible this is. What I do know is, if I'm properly angry at what happened (in a healthy way), then there's a distinct sense that something's finally just the way it should be. A sense of rightness.

A good idea, trying to use anger on purpose to get myself out of EFs. I'll keep that in mind and see if I can use this. Thanks.

Quote from: spryteSometimes, I'll talk to my bf about it: I'm crazy right now, can you tell me what's real and true? Or, another trusted friend. Assuming of course that you have someone that you could say that to safely.

Yes I have, actually. My husband rather enjoys being the voice of reason. No, I'm kidding - there isn't one patronizing bone in his body, thank goodness. I usually ask him afterwards, once I'm already halfway down whatever ledge I happened to find myself on. Asking for help while I'm in distress still feels too risky for me. Always has been, even when I was little. That's an area I need to work on.

We had to read Hinton's "The Outsiders" for at school, and there was an advert in the back for her other book, "That Was Then, This is Now". That's something I sometimes say to myself during an EF: that was then, this is now.

Lack of control, poise = EF that's how it feels, just off. Here's the book definition:

QuoteEmotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feeling states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts. . . . A sense of feeling small, young, fragile, powerless and helpless is also commonly experienced in an emotional flashback, and all symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame.

That's how it feels, I'm feeling small and I actually shrink physically, caving in a bit on myself instead of standing tall, feeling rather invisible or wishing to be invisible.

Butterfly, that's exactly how I feel too when it's a shaming EF, little and ashamed and humiliated, as though my insides are hanging out for all to see. 

Spryte - congrats on the job - always good to hear good news!  :waveline:

Thanks Kizzie!
:party:

So folks we're at our 5 page limit so I'm going to lock this thread as it will get too unwieldy to read if we let it go on.  Cat had an excellent idea of summarizing threads and perhaps we can use that as a springboard into further discussion about EFs as it is such a central topic.

Tks everyone for all the good points and sharing  :waveline: