What do your flashbacks feel like? Part 1

[lonewolf]

Curious about the "itchies" especially at night - an itch pops up and the second you scratch it another pops up somewhere else and so on... can go on for hours.  Perhaps I'm the only one - it's definitely an odd one - but it only happens to me in an EF.

This list quite extraordinary. I have many of them, but wanted first to let Rrecovery know that the very same thing happens to me with itching although the correlation would never have occurred to me if you hadn't brought it out into the light.

One physical sensation I get with EF is never ending/pulsating butterflies or a knot in that same area. I noticed that feeling sick is on the list, but not sure if this is connected or something else entirely. When I get that sensation, it is typically associated with anxiety.

During EF I often have a huge loss of appetite. Interested that others get food cravings where I don't want to eat at all. Although I sometimes want to drink alcohol.

Also, I experience the sensation off being off-balance. I'm not sure how to explain this one, but I get a sensation of how someone might be feeling about me and it sets me off kilter because I don't know what is real. It is very destabilizing. Is that derealization? I'm not sure.

Amazing thread.

[Rrecovery]

Hi Lonewolf, I'm glad I helped bring it out into the light for you.  Thank you for letting me know.  It feels good when the sharing of my suffering actually helps someone.  Silver Linings.  I hope my remedy will be helpful for you.   

[schrödinger's cat]

Thanks lonewolf and Phoebe, I've added what you said to the list.

Lonewolf, is this what you meant? I'm feeling a bit woozy and tired today and want to make sure I understood what you were saying.

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)

[lonewolf]

Thanks lonewolf and Phoebe, I've added what you said to the list.

Lonewolf, is this what you meant? I'm feeling a bit woozy and tired today and want to make sure I understood what you were saying.

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)

That is exactly right. You said it much better than I did. Thank you.

[schrödinger's cat]

Thanks. It's happened to me, too, though not to the point where I feel fully derealized. But I only became aware of it when I read your post, so thanks for writing it.

[Annegirl]

The EF symptoms are showing me I seem like im just living one giant EF. With sporadic days maybe 1 -4 every few months where I am not in an EF.

[schrödinger's cat]

Oh yikes.    Poor Annegirl. That sounds very, very, very uncomfortable and very painful.

[mourningdove]

The EF symptoms are showing me I seem like im just living one giant EF. With sporadic days maybe 1 -4 every few months where I am not in an EF.

This is also true for me. You're not alone, Annegirl.

[Milarepa]

The EF symptoms are showing me I seem like im just living one giant EF. With sporadic days maybe 1 -4 every few months where I am not in an EF.

I've been there. IME, the severity of the perpetual EF decreases over time and the frequency and duration of "surfacing" experiences (when you're not in an EF) increase. The fact that you're having those moments at all means that you're on the right track. Keep going!!! 

[pippapop]

Im still trying to sort out flashbacks. I get a racing heartbeat, get short of breath and talk quickly and sometimes shake. I sometimes get palpations too. I also need to do, do, do. Jobs, errands anything. I need to feel like im achieving something. Is this a flashback, or just a panic attack? I also feel the walls go up as I try and shore myself up emotionally. I get emotionally distant. Recently ive had lots of the previous but also seperately an ache all over with shortness of breath. Ive linked this back to how I felt during the abuse while pregnant. I even ended up sleeping on the floor again, just couldnt seem to get myself into the bed. I used to sleep on the floor during my marriage, especially when pregnant and when my daughter was young. Most of the symptoms above I had while I was married. So Im guessing having them now years later makes them flashbacks?

[schrödinger's cat]

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)

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-harm, 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,...

[schrödinger's cat]

Hi pippapop, you brought up some very good points, so they're now in the list. An excellent description of what's probably a Flight-type reaction? (I think?) And the thing with being emotionally distant, I hadn't thought of that before. Also the wish to avoid certain things.

This list is now really, really, really long. I'm wondering whether I should shorten it. PRO: more user-friendly. CON: a long list contains more details, so it might be easier for us to find our own symptoms there. After all, there already are a lot of short symptom lists.

[schrödinger's cat]

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.) They're in some kind of order that looked sensible to me at the time, because I wanted to make the list more readable. So if you have one symptom out of a group and not others, it doesn't mean anything at all. 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

Needing space - you hate being touched; holding eye contact is difficult; you need more personal space than normally and feel crowded a lot more easily; you need escape routes (i.e. leaving a door open, sitting in a spot where you could just get up and leave at any time; in a restaurant or café, preferring to sit in a corner with your back to the wall, in a spot where you can see the whole place at once)

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

Aches and pains in places strongly associated with your trauma, and/or pain of a kind you felt back when you were traumatized

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 adrenalized; 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 at the drop of a hat, "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, all-or-nothing 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)

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

Avoidancy - a wish to avoid certain places, situations, things, types of people etc that are strongly associated with your trauma; discomfort when forced to interact with them anyway (note: things that are strongly associated with your trauma will probably always have trauma cooties, but it's possible that those cooties increase in power from a low background hum to a screaming alarm while you're having a flashback)

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

Urge to self-harm, 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,...

[Annegirl]

Thank you so much for that SC i get the depersonalization, derealisation ones a lot.

[Rrecovery]

Hi SC, Really appreciate you putting this list together and updating it as you've gotten feedback.  My vote is to keep it as it is