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furiousgoldfish · 2 years

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signs you’re not doing well:

you’re stress-scrolling social media hoping to find a distraction

you’re struggling just to get to the end of the day

you’ve dropped your daily routine, you’re only doing the bare minimum

you’re forgetting to eat, or feel too tense and nauseous to eat

you’re feeling too weak or too stressed to get/make food

all you can manage is to watch a show or play a video game

all you can manage is to indulge in your favourite media and if it’s not available you feel like you’ll break down immediately

your thoughts are racing in distress and you can’t think clearly

you feel pressure like you should be doing something but you can’t remember what

you feel like you’re in the wrong place, or a wrong time

you can’t tell if something bad is going on right now or if you’re re-living past

your own head feels like a hostile place and you want to get out

any chore you have to do feels impossible and unachievable

interaction with others feels dangerous

your emotions shift from fear, pain, anger, frustration, anxiety, sorrow

you feel like you need to stay distracted no matter what, you shuffle multiple media trying to stop yourself from having thoughts

you’re starting to feel physical pain in your head, joints, limbs, stomach

you can no longer digest food and your stomach is tense and hard

your appetite is a mess and you can’t tell if you need to eat or not

you’re too tired to get up, or to stay up for longer than 30 seconds

any detail is sending you into the dark thoughts, you’re drawn to spiraling

you’re spiraling and everything feels like it will never be okay

you’re overwhelmed with shame you’re not doing something you feel you’re supposed to be getting done

you’re scared you won’t be able to complete a chore or a task even if it’s days/weeks from now

it’s hard to take a deep breath or to calm your breathing

you feel like you won’t be able to take this for a long time

your thoughts start leaning closer to suicidal

If you’re feeling these, know that you’re currently not obliged to do anything but to focus on yourself and feeling better. Whatever chores or responsibilities there are, you can drop them. Your mental and emotional well being is more important than whatever else is going on. You are struggling and you deserve rest, compassion, love, kindness, and support. Life is not supposed to feel this way, you’re going trough something difficult and traumatic. Also, you will not feel this forever, good times will come around, all you need to do is survive right now. Do whatever makes you feel a little more willing to be alive right now.

#cptsd #trauma #furiousgoldfish #ptsd #chronic illness #chronic exhaustion #emotional flashbacks #trauma episodes #struggling with trauma #cptsd symptoms

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starfishinthedistance · 1 year

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My last post on PTSD being more than flashbacks and nightmares kinda took off, so I wanted to talk about something many people mentioned in the reblogs: flashbacks are probably not what you think they are.

The depiction you see in movies where someone is suddenly thrust into this vivid hallucination where they see everything in extreme detail and completely forget where they are is possible, but certainly uncommon.

For a lot of people, it's kind of like a mental image. Like your brain just involuntarily starts strongly daydreaming the trauma, and you're seeing it in the back of your mind. Sometime it's an "I close my eyes and see it again" that kind of thing. But there's also other kinds than visual.

There's auditory, but that can happen without a visual component. And it can feel like a hallucination, but again it can feel like your brain is playing the audio from the back on your mind, like a vivid daydream.

There's also somatic (sometimes called tactile or physical) flashbacks, which is where you physically feel yourself being touch like how you were again (very common in assualt and physical/sexual abuse survivors), sometimes as a hallucination, sometimes as the same sort of back of the mind daydream thing.

And then there's emotional flashbacks, really common in abuse survivors and C-PTSD, where you feel like you're emotionally back where you were when the trauma happened. You're feeling what you felt when the trauma happened vidily enough for it to feel like you're back there. This is different from emotional reactivity after being reminded of trauma, because it's this exact sort of re-experiencing of the emotions you felt. Emotional flashbacks actually feel like you're back there, emotional reactivity doesn't, it feels like you're reacting to it but it's not happening again.

All of these can occur together in the same flashbacks, or separately. So you can have an auditory-somatic flashback or just an emotional one, etc.

People also said this is similar with nightmares, but I don't experience them myself so I can't say (people with PTSD nightmares feel free to share your experiences!)

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mental-ch-illness · 1 year

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emotional flashbacks are like running up a hill but you never make any progress. you’re not even running, you’re feet are glued to the floor. but goddamn are you still trying to fucking run.

#emotional flashbacks #bpd #ptsd

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lefluoritesys · 8 months

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I don't front for long, but I front often. And the reason for that is my system could do literally anything, but very specific situations, poses, words, phrases, might make them snap into a weird state where they feel like despite being here, they mentally and emotionally never go out of the situation we were in many, many years ago. Sometimes, it feels like they go back to it. They understand they're still in the present, but their emotions and mindset is back.

For the longest time we didn't know that was an emotional flashback. And honestly, don't see people talking about it much, so let me make it clear:

Emotional flashbacks can be anything if your emotions, mental state, or mindset are back to your past.

That could include getting triggered, and instead of a flashback, you only feel emotions you felt during that situation. And sometimes, you feel like it's not right, why are you having those emotions? Start looking for it, and only then get a flashback.

That could mean accidentally gaining your mindset back for a few seconds due to very specific triggers. And you may not even get a flashback, the memories might be heavily suppressed! And you'll be confused about why it happened and why it passed so quickly.

Sometimes, when memories are suppressed so much, you can't get flashbacks, but you're still triggered, it's the emotions that are being brought back. Imagine your memory like an orange (fruit). And your brain is suppressing it, so it's squeezing it as much as possible, and all you get from it is juice. The juice is your emotions.

They happen more often than you realize! Every trigger you experience that isn't followed by a flashback could be counted as an emotional flashback.

Most important thing to realize is, when registering you are having an emotional flashback – don't go looking for memories. It's not worth it! More often than not, it's easier to deal with an emotional flashback rather than a memory one! It's not the full scale of what bothers you (because you have only the orange juice and not the orange itself, which is heavier, and while the juice is sticky and nasty sometimes, there are ways of washing it off) and your soothers, caretakers, and/or protectors would probably take care of it quicker.

You got this!

-sexual protector

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purpiemountain · 2 years

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cw: suicidal thoughts

"yeah im doing alright, just really stressed at the moment"

*catches myself fantasising about my suicide*

#childhood ptsd #complex ptsd #cptsd problems #cptsd thoughts #emotional flashbacks #living with cptsd #did osdd #emotional neglect #tw cptsd #did osdd memes #tw sucidal ideation #tw sui ideation #tw sui implied

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karrenseely · 2 months

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Emotional Regulation

So I have CPTSD. Everything I've read mostly points to this being a lifelong condition (yay :P) that is incredibly difficult for all of us whom suffer from it. I know it has been for me. I honestly don't know if I'd have developed it if my parents had been loving, supportive, and understanding like they should have. Because, even if they had been, I would still have likely had many many years of gas lighting from society, them, and my extended family to be a gender other than what I was. And that takes its toll on anyone's psyche.

But who knows, maybe if they'd been really supportive, then I wouldn't have had years of thinking I was crazy or shameful, maybe I would have transitioned really young as soon as I could tell them they were wrong. Then all I'd have to deal with is some body dysphoria. But then even that can take its toll as well. So I really couldn't say if I was destined to have this incredibly difficult mental health condition or not.

Either way, I really wish I'd had the loving supportive family every child deserves. I really wish I didn't find my psyche shattering as I grew up, getting stuck repeatedly at every traumatic event that I can remember, and actively forgetting everything I couldn't along with most of my other memories. Such that now, my memories consist of shattered disorganized shards scattered over the floor, most of those shards long since missing. It's really difficult to live when all you really have is now.

People talk about their childhoods like there's this linear well established timeline in their memories. It was a long time before I realized this was the typical way people remember their past. That for most people, they can remember approximately when such a memory occurred, in sequence with another. Even now, this is so foreign to me. I remember things in disjointed pieces, any one memory is not connected to any other. And few, if any, are connected to a specific time that I can locate.

Then there is the ability to remember what you did yesterday, or last week, or even last month in day to day life. That it's hard to know what's happened and what's been done recently. This was particularly bad when I was dissociating all the time, fortunately, therapy has helped with that part, and I don't do it as much and I can remember more of my day to day life. But even now, there are still significant holes in my memories of adult life. And admittedly as I struggle through my current flare of CPTSD symptoms, I sometimes wish I could dissociate like I used to so that I don't have to feel all of this horrible stuff. It hurts like hell.

If someone created the universe, they must be one of the most sadistic assholes to have ever existed, making it so healing is so effing painful, much less making thinking feeling beings feed off of one another.

In this journey of trying to heal, I've encountered many people talking about how, when we were abused as children we didn't develop our emotional regulation skills like normal loved, unabused kids do. I always found these comments or suppositions confusing. In large part due to the fact that I don't really understand what emotional regulation means. As a child, trying to survive, the only thing that worked, that made things even remotely bearable was dampening down on emotions until I didn't feel hardly anything at all. I wasn't particularly good at this, I still had feelings but they were distorted hazy half hearted things that would escape out, usually as anger, irritability, sadness, often fear, sometimes even joy would get out. But none were fully formed, or fully embraced, because if I did, then the pain would be in full force, the shame, the horror I constantly felt at what I was going through. So I did my best to damp down my emotions to almost nothing, and dissociate as much as I could so that I didn't have to feel or atleast remember feeling all those horrible things I felt. And the plus side to dissociation is that you truly only live in the moment. You can forget so much that way. You can ride the bus to school, but not remember any of it, just one moment you're at home and the next, poof, you're at school, and the next, poof, it's time to go home again and get on the bus, and poof the next you're at home again... you get the idea.

Emotions when all of the above were unsuccessful and I felt them anyway, usually it was the really really bad ones. And they were felt at 120% full blast. It was either 10 mph, or 120 mph. No inbetween. But people who talk about the ability to regulate emotions describe it as having inbetweens. Not having to feel the full blast, but not suppressing it completely either.

For the longest time when I encountered that phrase around emotional regulation, my mind just skittered past it, as it didn't make any sense to me. But I found myself thinking about it a couple months ago. And some kind fellow people with CPTSD pointed me to links that helped to explain the concept... except, those links were mostly just confusing. And unfortunately, my brain interpreted them as, "you are deficient, you're inability to regulate is your fault." Which didn't help. I honestly don't know if those explanations actually implied that, but it's what it felt like. Maybe because I didn't understand what they were saying.

Then... recently I returned to work, full time. And an interesting, if sucky, thing happened. I was fine at work, I could joke, I could laugh and have fun with coworkers and feel empathy for my patients and basically function somewhat like a typical human being in what I imagine is a healthy fashion. But as soon as I left work and went home, I had no energy left to keep the intrusive memories and emotions in check. And I would immediately start to crash. Spiraling down the rabbit hole of all those horrible memories. Nothing had specifically triggered them, it's just I ran out of spoons and they took over. I'd used up all my spoons at work.

Obviously, I'd overestimated my ability to return to full time work, but also it felt like there was an insight here. And it came down to my emotional bandwidth. If I had enough emotional energy, enough spoons, then minor triggers that normally would have lead me back down that lovely negative spiral, wouldn't actually set me off, and I could continue to function. And this was the neat part, I could continue to function without having all my walls slam down and turn everything numb. But, if I run out of that energy, if I run out of those spoons, then any little thing can set me down that self destructive spiral.

And the more I've thought about this, the more I think this is what people mean when they talk about emotional regulation. That most people have a large fount of this emotional energy to buffer against the extremes. And thus can handle day to day joys, stresses and hurtful things without completely falling apart. If this is the case then I guess I've developed some emotional regulation after all, though it's limited.

But why is it so limited? Why didn't I have any before? And the more I look at it. I see it in terms of bandwidth, energy, and/or spoons. Before, when I was having to live in survival mode, all of my emotional energy was being used to just survive. I was constantly in fight or flight. There was no energy to spare for nuance. My bandwidth was incredibly limited because so much of it was taken up with just surviving from one day to the next, with constant vigilance. But when we are no longer in those situations, and just as importantly, when we are not constantly flashing back to those situations, we start to have that bandwidth become available for the nuance. We can start feeling things in between because we have the energy to do so. It's no longer entirely about survive or die.

And that's the worst part about flashbacks. Even though I'm no longer in that constant life or death situation, those flashbacks have me believing I am. And contrary to popular media's depiction of flashbacks, most of the time it's not getting stuck in a living visual memory of an event. No, the vast majority of those flashbacks are emotional flashbacks. Getting stuck in the feelings of the event, the feelings I couldn't suppress anymore, the constant feeling of being in danger, of having my life, my very existence threatened, which brings on the constant sense of danger, of fight or flight. Which means, no emotional energy for anything else, except the extremes. Everything in my life currently can be perfectly fine, safe, wonderful even. But if I'm stuck in an emotional flashback, none of the current circumstances matter, because I'm emotionally back in survival mode, feeling constantly threatened, trying to survive, trying to decide if I need to fight or run. And if I'm stuck there... then there isn't any emotional energy left for anything else.

The really effing sucky part, is that often I don't know I'm in an emotional flashback until after it's gone away, and I can see looking back that how I was feeling didn't fit at all with what was actually happening at the time. I reacted to an outside observer in a rather extreme, or worse in a completely irrational manner. But then when I'm in the middle of it, I guess it's understandable that I have a hard time recognizing it, as all my energy is directed towards surviving, towards keeping the pain and my fears at bay.

So maybe emotional regulation is just having enough emotional energy to filter the experiences you're having into a much more nuanced pattern, rather than having to sort things into binary extremes of bad, not bad. And if that's the case, then maybe, just maybe, I am healing, because I'm starting to free up some of my bandwidth to start sorting out the nuances... even if I can't quite identify what those nuances are yet.

#trans #transgender #lgbt+#lgbtqia #lgbt #trans kids #childhood trauma #complex ptsd #trauma #family #Emotional regulation #mental health #coping #emotional flashbacks #flashbacks #emotional energy #emotional bandwidth #lgbtqia+#queer

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