How are you meant to process distressing emotionbal flashbacks?

[BewilderedBelinda]

What does processing mean exactly? How do I do it?

After talking in therapy about something that distressed me a lot as a small child, I keep getting waves of that afraid feeling like as a memory. It is very unpleasant and it's hard to just ignore it to be honest, it's pushing to the front of my brain.

The whole thing came up because of an aggressive male neighbour who scared me yesterday, which brought the memory back up.

Apparently I should 'process' this but how can I do that, what does it involve?

Have you tried writing about it?

I second EFT tapping, it's helped me shift a lot of crap.

I was going to suggest Irene Lyon too, she has loads of free resources on social media that might help you to work through things and understand what's going on.

I found EMDR moderately helpful and certainly not damaging, but it didn’t get rid of the flashbacks in the longer term. The thing that has really helped me is trauma focussed cbt, the type where you relive the experience with the therapist and then go over it in detail. Took a little while and quite a few sessions but worked like magic in terms of stopping the flashbacks.

I will say, though, that I empathise with the sense that grief and anxiety are always there in the background. I don’t think you’re feeling them wrong. Or that it is always possible to ‘process’ then out of existence. This is where mindfulness and meditation do help me - I try sometimes to sit and compassionately feel what I’m feeling without trying to push it away or change it. Compassion focussed mindfulness helped me with this, but I think those feelings will always be there and for me it’s about learning to accept and live with them.

I know it sounds obvious but it’s best to talk to your therapist about it.
CBT has a good evidence base for working with these things, but obviously it doesn’t have 100% success rate. Obviously without knowing the nature of the traumatic memory it is impossible to say whether CBT would be suitable.
However some NHS services will not work with childhood trauma because it can make things worse in short term therapy.
EMDR usually has fairly quick results which means if you’re accessing it privately the cost does not become prohibitive.

In the long term therapy reduced the flashbacks for me.

In the short term, when I was having one, I tried to ground myself.

I had a pet rock (it was a small rock) that I carried in my pocket and would just touch to remind myself that I was here, and I was In the present day, and nothing was going to hurt me.

Part of my therapy was to write down everything I could remember as it came to me - what I felt, what I smelled, what I saw - so I was constantly adding to the account I made of what happened to me. I also made a tape. At the time it was excruciating - I would gladly have jumped out of a plane rather than play back the tape - but I do think it helped. I rarely think of what happened to me any more and I haven't had a real flashback since I completed therapy.

I also used to ground myself in the present when they were happening - I would make a point of noticing my feet connecting with the floor and then go through all five of my senses and what they were currently picking up.

there's an excellent and renowned book about CPTSD which goes into so much detail about how to deal with emotional flashbacks and lists practical steps for dealing with them:

https://www.amazon.com/Complex-PTSD-Surviving-RECOVERING-CHILDHOOD/dp/1492871842/

The many positive reviews give good testimony as to its helpfulness and having read it I can also vouch for how helpful it is. In a way because it is quite a "to the point" book about a difficult subject it can make for difficult reading at times but it is so worth the time and healing in and of itself to be able to read it.

Imagery Rescripting is a technique used across various modalities of therapy. It looks to help reduce the distress associated with specific (usually childhood) memories, helpful when we find that in the here-and-now certain specific situations have us feeling and responding as though we're back in that helpless childlike state from that memory. When you read about it, it can sound very abstract and wishy-washy but it has a significant evidence base within CBT practice.

If you have PTSD, and are 'reliving' memories as though you are back in the moment, evidence recommends trauma focused CBT or EMDR.

Meditation does not help when I'm in an emotional flashback with a physical reaction.

Regular meditation practice gives you the tools to come back to the present and ground yourself when emotions (anxiety, trauma reliving) threaten to overwhelm you.

Outside of medication it's been the only thing that helped me get on top of my anxiety and panic attack flashbacks - anxiety for me can come with severe physical symptoms that become life-threatening in themselves.

I can now go back to the places where my trauma took place and nothing happens. I just see them as places instead of avoiding them or having a panic attack. I look back and see myself with compassion and understanding. I can now talk about my experience to anyone without crying or starting to shake or getting lost in memories.

I'm still angry about the way my GP treated me but that's a whole other story!

Good luck all

If therapy isn’t working you could try the 8 keys to Trauma recovery book, it suggests some gentler methods that don’t all involve going over the trauma again.

Wow. This resonated with me, as I feel exactly the same about childhood memories I have. I did attend CBT once, but I’m not sure how much it actually improved tbh. So many years later, and here I am.. still ruminating and feeling all the feelings intensely.

I hope things improve for you OP. I have tried to accept the way things have been, and acknowledge that it isn’t my fault. I try to understand that I am now out of my childhood, and the experiences from when I was little don’t define me. That I can move on, and although, they will always sting, I am in a better place such that I can admit certain things and feelings, and know that I deserve to feel better and happier. If it helps, I distanced myself from those who caused these issues, and if need me, I cry and cry, and often speak to myself about things. It will get better, wish you all the best.

pete-walker.com/pdf/13StepsManageFlashbacks.pdf