Are my reactions to flashbacks normal?

[Alice97]

I'm new to the whole C-PTSD thing, so I'm a little confused about emotional flashbacks. I know I have them frequently, in the form of chronic nightmares and sometimes triggered by things in my everyday life. I usually don't recognize that I've had a flashback until after it's over. Is that normal? I'd think during a flashback it would be disturbing enough that I would recognize it immediately. I also was wondering if my panic response is normal. If I feel like I'm in danger or scared, I generally completely freeze. I become extremely quiet, and feel like I can't move. I try to become invisible. Is that a form of a panic attack or do most people act out more by becoming angry or upset outwardly? Also how do I know for sure if what I'm experiencing is an emotional flashback?

[Dutch Uncle]

I usually don't recognize that I've had a flashback until after it's over. Is that normal?

I also was wondering if my panic response is normal. If I feel like I'm in danger or scared, I generally completely freeze. I become extremely quiet, and feel like I can't move. I try to become invisible. Is that a form of a panic attack or do most people act out more by becoming angry or upset outwardly? Also how do I know for sure if what I'm experiencing is an emotional flashback?

I'm still not that familiar with an EF, but I think it's pretty normal not to recognize it as one when you're in one. Possibly further in recovery one can recognize it as one is in one.
Panic and anxiety is quite common for me too. Whether one Freezes or Fights or Flees or Fawns depends on the person's "type" (see the 4F's on http://www.pete-walker.com site) I guess.
There's also an article on EF-management there.

Other people here might know more about EF's.

[Sienna]

Hey Alice97

I think that for the first time, i am able to help someone here, so ill give it a go!

It is ok to be confused about emotional flashbacks.
It is also normal, to not even recognize you are in an emotional flashback, until its over.
When you get used to what it is like to have been in them, you just naturally get better at spotting when you *are* in one.

You say:
I'd think during a flashback it would be disturbing enough that I would recognize it immediately.
I thought that, and sometimes it is so disturbing you realize its a flashback,
but sometimes, - it is perfectly normal for them to be milder, barely noticeable, easier to move on from after its happened.
Emotional flashbacks can be milder feeling to huge feeling.
And it can also depend on the type of trigger that set it off, or how much sleep you've had, lots of things effect weather you have them more often and how intensely you experience them, according to Spartanlifecoach on youtube.

I would say that, yes, your response to flashbacks is normal.
Sometimes, if you have a second trauma defense- such as, you could be a freeze-flight, you might act on the flight, and not think your in a flashback because you are not *freezing* as you normally do.
We all apparently, flip back and forth through all four of the trauma response styles, that being if your not aware,
Fight, Flight, Freeze and Faun.

The freeze types, and other types, don't always act out.

I was trying to find the question i posted on here asking, how do you know when you are experiencing an emotional flashback, but i can't find it, I'm so sorry.
I will post some things down the bottom, that might help you.
If you have any more questions, you can always ask.

[Sienna]

Hello again,
Here is Pete Walker- a psychotherapist with complex PTSD, who explains the trauma responses very well if you want to check him out:
http://pete-walker.com/fourFs_TraumaTypologyComplexPTSD.htm
Here is Spartanlifecoach on Youtube, talking about what emotional flashbacks are like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl29G_Vq2CM

And here is a list of symptoms of flashbacks, found on this website:

This is a list of possible signs that you're having a flashback. Many of these points are symptoms (panic attacks, armoured muscles, tunnel vision,...). Other things are simply just signs that you're stressed. Still other things may even be coping strategies (such as exercizing a lot to burn off excess adrenaline, or seeking warmth if flashbacks always make you feel cold).
The purpose of this is to help us find out about signs of flashbacks that we've had all along, but haven't really been conscious of. Flashbacks are so overwhelming that it's hard to monitor yourself for signs and symptoms while you're in the middle of it all. Moreover, people around us might have shamed or blamed us for showing signs of distress, making us feel that our own feelings and physical reactions were best ignored.
For this reason, we've collected as many possible symptoms as we could. Some of these are mutually exclusive, and none of us have ever experienced all of those at the same time. (Or so I hope.) This isn't a list of diagnostic criteria. It's not a tool meant to let you decide whether or not you have CPTSD. It's just there as a kind of map to our collective flashbacks, meant to help us become more aware of our own reactions. What kinds of symptoms each of us has depends on many factors - whether our trauma is somaticized or not, whether we're in touch with our feelings or have gone completely numb, whether our preferred response to crises is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, etc. Everyone's different. Flashbacks can be mild and very hard to spot, like a grey fog settling over everything. They can be strong, sudden, and debilitating. They can come in several stages that you cycle through (for example: feeling agitated and restless --> elevated Fight response --> Freeze response plus shame).

PHYSICAL

Dehydration: being very thirsty, drinking lots of water; maybe also dry mouth, slight headache, feeling tired, feeling dizzy

Feeling like one is adrenalized, has lots of chemicals flooding the body; feeling almost hungover or drugged

Feeling sick and nauseated, feeling ill, feeling physically weak

Craving certain foods - especially sugary, fatty, and/or salty foods; creamy textures; comfort eating; never feeling you're full; craving more sustaining foods (if you usually eat lots of vegetables)

Loss of appetite, not feeling hungry, not eating

Heightened awareness - hypervigilant, easily startled, racing thoughts, a "tunnel vision" focus on potential threats (or on "unsafe" people in the room) coupled with being less able to concentrate on other things

Cold - feeling like you can't get warm; seeking a place near the heating system, longing for a hot bath, holding cups of hot beverages - anything that has warmth

Tense - tight jaw, shoulders, and chest; muscle tension, "armoured" muscles; feeling a tightening around your throat as if you're tensing up so you won't cry; butterflies or a knot in your stomach

Sleep - difficulty sleeping (if EF lasts a few days), or waking up at night and staying awake for several hours; insomnia; feeling a need to sleep to reboot your brain

Breathing - shallow; unconsciously holding your breath; shortness of breath; feeling like you aren't getting enough air, wanting to always keep a window open because there isn't enough air in the room
   
Senses - very sensitive to light, sound, movement: things easily seem too loud, too bright, too hurried
   
Restlessness - feeling adranlized; unease, heightened alertness, feeling like you're never fully relaxing comfortably into a situation, instead always sitting perched on the edge of your seat (as it were); talking quickly


Fight response - feeling flushed, having a red face, feeling hot, feeling adrenalized


Freeze response - shaking in fear but being frozen and unable to do anything
   
General malaise - feeling itchy; existing conditions may get worse (food intolerance, stomach troubles, arthritis,...); sudden illness; general exhaustion; being more illness-prone (sinus trouble, head colds, infections,...); reacting more strongly to things like caffeine, cold meds, chocolate,...

Panic reactions - shallow breathing; palpitations; your heart races; strong urge to hide and find a safe place, to be held and comforted; starting to cry uncontrollably; panic attacks (a discrete period of intense fear or discomfort, accompanied by physical symptoms such as trembling, an accelerated heart rate, sweating, feeling choked or smothered, nausea or abdominal distress, derealization, depersonalization, feeling dizzy / unsteady / lightheaded / faint, chest paint that can make you think you're having a heart attack, sense of impending death, fear of losing control or going insane, numbness or tingling sensations, and chills or hot flashes).

EMOTIONAL, BEHAVIOURAL, AND COGNITIVE

"Overreacting" to a certain situation - becoming extremely defensive or very angry, "seeing red" as the anger wells up from deep inside you, or feeling flooded with fear; your fear or anger is overwhelming, and you have difficulty calming yourself; feeling like a child who has been hurt

Cognitive distortions aka thinking fallacies - especially filtering, polarized thinking, overgeneralizations, jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, personalization, the fallacy of internal control (=we feel responsible for the happiness and welfare of everyone around us), blaming ourselves for every problem around us, "should"s, emotional reasoning, and mislabelling (more here: http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153)


Strong urge to hide - hiding in a closet; choosing a seat where people won't see you; closing the curtains (if you usually don't); wearing nondescript clothes that let you blend in and / or hide most of you; not wanting to leave the house. If seated or standing, adopting positions that are tense and don't take up much room, and/or let you get up again at a moment's notice, and/or copy what everyone else is doing so you don't stand out (even when doing so is physically uncomfortable for you - for example, crossing your legs even though it's * on your knees)

Social anxiety - feeling afraid that people will notice your distress and mock/reject/judge/abuse you, wanting to avoid people, wanting to not leave the house

Strong urge to do something - for example, watching a child being yelled at and feeling a strong need to call the police or put yourself in the middle of it to protect the child

Fear of standing out of the crowd: not daring to disagree, feeling a pressure to go along with what others are saying, feeling that it's safest to not contribute to the conversation (except by making vague agreeing noises or letting others talk about themselves); feeling pressured to correspond to people's expectations, to be average and ordinary so one won't attract attention; urge to withdraw

Fear and unease - fear that someone will notice that you're barely holding it together, worrying that you're having a breakdown, worrying how long this is going to tak
   
Lack of control - feeling threatened, feeling helpless and at the mercy of forces beyond one's control; urge to hyper-control everything, feeling that everything must be just right or it's a disaster, escaping into activities one can control

Lack of poise - feeling off centre, feeling unsteady and unsure of yourself, feeling awkward and self-conscious

Diminished sense of self - feeling little, insignificant, small, vulnerable, ashamed, etc.; feeling that people around you are all of them to be a lot more powerful / important /handsome than you, feeling that they matter and you don't, feeling powerless

Emotional armouring - the walls go up as you try to shore yourself up emotionally; being emotionally distant

Echoes of your trauma - aches and pains in specific places (that were hurt back then), avoiding certain places (that are strongly associated with your trauma)

Toxic shame - feeling disgusting, worthless, stupid, ridiculous, etc

Urge to *, self-sabotaging behaviour, ignoring your needs, suicidal ideation

Urge to drink or engage in other kinds of addictive behaviour

Confusion - feeling confused while trying to figure out what's going on; something isn't quite right, but you don't know what; a vague sense that you're to blame for something, you just don't know yet what for; similarly, a sense that there's danger around, you just haven't found out yet what it is

Hyperfocused - "tunnel vision" on the issue that triggered the EF, scanning the environment for signs that it's happening again

Absent-minded - being less able to concentrate, being scatterbrained, constantly forgetting things, attention constantly drifts off (into worrying or a freeze-response kind of daydreaming)

You sense how someone else might be feeling about you and this destabilizes your own sense of what's real (to the point where you're not sure anymore whether this imagined perception or your own is real)

Racing thoughts

Slowed down - thoughts slow down to molasses, slower reaction times, feeling sluggish, feeling drugged

Staring off into space - thousand yard stare while the mind goes blank

A sensation that the world is moving faster than you, like you can't keep up or track things

Feeling sucked back into the past, losing track of where you are and what you're doing

Possibly faster reaction times (?) - time seems to slow down and your reactions speed up (for example, thinking you gave someone ample time to respond or react to something you said, then later finding out that you waited for a bare two seconds)


Depersonalization - watching yourself act while having little or no control over the situation; everything seems unreal or hazy; feeling unreal, feeling cut off from your own personal physicality, from your own sense of self


Derealization - the world around you seems unreal, and/or seems vague, dreamlike, lacking in vividness, emotional colouring and depth; feeling separated from the outside world by a fog, a pane of glass, or a veil; familiar places suddenly look alien and bizarre


Freeze response: feeling less able or unable to concentrate; foggy-minded; feeling numb, sleepy, maybe even bored; feeling physically tired; wanting to crawl into your bed (or into a computer game, a TV show, a book, the internet...) and never come out; feeling like you're disappearing, like you're not fully real anymore; feeling like you're a powerless spectator; feeling wiped out and hopeless


Fawn response: seeking to conciliate others by doing them favours, anticipating their wishes, being "good" (=helpful, cheerful, competent, a good listener,...); being beyond reproach; keeping your 'difficult' feelings and opinions entirely out of a social interaction; "eliciting" (=encouraging the other person to talk about themselves at length so the conversation turns into a monologue that doesn't require you to participate or be open)


Fight response: seeing red, feeling overwhelmed by anger, feeling a strong urge to do something, to "fight back", to destroy everything fragile you can lay your hands on


Flight response: a need to "do, do, do", a need to achieve something: jobs, errands, speed-cleaning, hyper-organizing one's house or project, increased need to exercize,...

----
ps. i forgot to say-
for me, it is a feeling that *i have felt this before even though i don't remember when, and even though i don't remember a visual actual memory*-
it feels like an echo back to a time you don't remember.
Sometimes, its raging anger at things- that maybe most people with out CPTSD wouldn't normaly get mad at, even if its *about other people*- its about them because i can't connect it back to the past, but it doesn't mean its simply *only about the present day situation*- it could also be about the past only-
or could be both about the past but also about the present day irritations which are actually happening-
but which also remind me of the past.

[Alice97]

Sienna:

Thank you so much for everything you posted! Very helpful info. I don't feel quite so insane now

[Sienna]

Hey Alice87,
That is so great!! You are definitely not insane.
Im so glad i could help. I hope it wasn't too much, i understand if so, because there is a lot of info. Sorry to overwhelm you if I did.
If there is ever anything you need to ask, I am here.