Emotional Flashbacks

[globetrotter]

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.

[Annegirl]

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.

[schrödinger's cat]

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 . 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.

[pam]

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.

[schrödinger's cat]

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?

[Annegirl]

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.

[Kizzie]

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  ) 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.

[globetrotter]

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.

[Butterfly]

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.

[schrödinger's cat]

Congratulations on standing up to your uPDm! 

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.

[Kizzie]

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!      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?

[Kizzie]

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)?   

[schrödinger's cat]

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."

[Kizzie]

     I love the quote Cat!

[Rain]

    I agree on the quotes, Cat!