Complex Trauma and Emotional Flashback

Pete Walker’s book, “Complex Ptsd: From Surviving to Thriving” is an invaluable, comprehensive resource for anyone with a childhood history of trauma. A few thought provoking ideas about complex trauma and emotional flashbacks are provided below.

·         Survivors of traumatising childhood abandonment suffer from Cptsd and are often burdened by the  hair-trigger susceptibility to painful emotional flashbacks. An emotional flashback is a sudden and often prolonged regression to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child.

 

·         When you are trapped in a flashback, you are reliving the worst emotional times of your childhood. Because there are rarely any visual components to a Cptsd flashback, you feel overwhelmed and confused. A sense of feeling small, fragile, powerless, and helpless is also commonly experienced during an emotional flashback, and its symptoms are typically overlaid with humiliating and crushing toxic shame.

 

·         The role of traumatized childhoods in most adult psychological disorders is enormous. Pete Walker has been a therapist for 35 years and has witnessed many clients with Cptsd who were misdiagnosed with many different psychological disorders. The key problem with these pathological labels is that they can be incomplete and unnecessarily shaming descriptions of what the survivor is actually afflicted with. More resources on Complex Trauma

SERVICES & SUPPORT

Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic: ACCEPT, ADAPT and FLOW

Surviving the COVID-19 Pandemic: ACCEPT, ADAPT and FLOW

One of the keys to surviving the pandemic is managing our emotional & mental health via Accept, Adapt and Flow. The continual impact of the pandemic in every aspect of our lives is immensely difficult for our Emotional & Mental Health because the pandemic robs our lives of a sense of safety and peace, and a sense of control and predictability. When we are faced with danger, our nervous system is on fight or flight mode. That is, our body is alert and providing inner resources and energy for us to act to prepare for the danger. Unfortunately, we cannot predict, plan, or know what to expect fully during the pandemic. Consequently, our nervous system is under immense stress as we battle with the uncertainty and the unknown. We are confronted with our mortality and existential limitations. Our nervous system can be constantly on alert and not getting a break to rest. This takes a huge toll on our emotional & mental health, especially if it is for a long time.

Toxic shame and extreme psychological pain

Toxic shame and extreme psychological pain

Toxic shame and extreme psychological pain What is shame? Like all emotions, shame is a natural that serves a function to move us to get our basic needs met. We feel the innate healthy shame when we have done something wrong, or when we are aware of our limitations as a finite human being. Shame develops in our psyche before our development of speech. For instance, it is not uncommon for a child to experience healthy innate shame as shyness in front of a stranger. The feeling of shame or shyness signals to the child to seek familiar faces for safety. However, when healthy shame becomes toxic shame, it can destroy lives. Toxic shame is primarily fostered in significant relationships and is passed from one generation to the next (“Healing the shame that binds us” by John Bradshaw).

Pondering on our understanding of sex

Our sexuality is pivotal to our sense of self. The list below from healthyplace.com on “How sexual abuse shapes our understanding of sex” is thought provoking and worthy to ponder on.


Sex as uncontrollable energy OR Sex as controllable energy
Sex is an obligation OR Sex is a choice
Sex is addictive OR Sex is a natural drive
Sex is hurtful OR Sex is nurturing, healing
Sex is a condition for receiving love OR Sex is an expression of love
Sex is a ‘doing to’ someone OR Sex is sharing with someone
Sex is a commodity OR Sex is part of who I am
Sex is absence of communication OR Sex involves communication
Sex is secretive OR Sex is private
Sex is exploitative OR Sex is respectful
Sex is deceitful OR Sex is honest
Sex benefits one person OR Sex is mutual
Sex is emotionally distant OR Sex is intimate
Sex is irresponsible OR Sex is responsible
Sex is unsafe OR Sex is safe
Sex has no limits OR Sex has boundaries
Sex is power over someone OR Sex is empowering

SERVICES & SUPPORT

Our Sense of Self and Internalised oppression

We are relational beings, having healthy relationships (Romantic, Family, Friends, Professional etc) is crucial to our survival. And we often think about relationships in terms of how one person relates to another person. However, the most important relationship that we have is our relationship with ourselves, as our relationship with ourselves affects all relationships in our lives.

How we relate to ourselves can feel quite abstract at times. Essentially how we relate to ourselves is greatly determined by our “sense of self”, that is, what do we believe about ourselves and how do we feel about ourselves. The messages that we pick up from the different interactions we have with other people in all types of relationships and the societies we live in (e.g. media, entertainment, social media) throughout our lifetime all contribute to our sense of self. Our sense of self continues to evolve as we change what we believe about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves.   

Even though our sense of self is an integral part of our human experience, not many people are aware of or have deep insights about their sense of self, or how our sense of self is being influenced or affected by others. In social justice, there is a phenomenon called internalised oppression. Due to many social and psychological reasons, the targeted oppressed individual or group gradually integrates the oppressive attitudes, values, and opinions as their own.

Some examples of oppressive messages: Women are not as smart and as capable as men (Sexism); Racial stereotypes are a reliable way to get to know someone (Racism); People who have any form of disability are not as worthy as people without it (Ableism); Elderly people cannot learn new things (Ageism). Most often, the same hidden toxic messages are communicated to the victims of abuse (e.g. Sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse). Such as, “You are worthless”, “You are inferior”, “You are ugly”, “Your needs and rights are not important”. When the victims of abuse or oppression have internalised these toxic messages as their own beliefs about themselves, or integrated it as their sense of self, they start to unknowingly perpetuate the oppression or abuse on themselves, or members of the same oppressed group.

Exploring this topic in a safe environment, gaining awareness of what your beliefs are about yourself, and recognising how you truly feel about yourself is one way to uncover toxic messages that you might have internalised or integrated as your own involuntarily. Examining the beliefs that you would rather disown, while being empowered and supported, can be helpful in building a stronger and healthier sense of self.

SERVICES & SUPPORT

Feelings of Emptiness, Despair, and Helplessness

Deeply distressing or disturbing events such as the loss of a loved one unexpectedly, loss of health, any form of abuse, betrayal from family or another intimate relationship, just to name a few, are traumatic and can overwhelm our nervous system and our ability to cope.

The psychological impacts can be especially long lasting and debilitating if the traumatic events were unexpected and shocking to us, or we felt a strong sense of being trapped. It can diminish our sense of self and our ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. In such circumstances when we feel empty, despair or helpless it might be because our nervous system is overwhelmed, our body feels heavy, we feel depleted and numb. This inactivity can be helpful for us to cope by resting and recovering.

A physical injury, such as a broken arm, makes us feel pain which encourages us not to move, this is the body helping us to get through the trauma in the best way that we can to aid recovery. Similarly, intense feelings of emptiness, despair and helplessness are pain signals indicating that our body is experiencing severe distress and we need to take notice. Ironically if we feel unbearable nothingness it is sometimes because we are overfull and overwhelmed.

One essential self-care practice during these difficult times is to learn how to breathe calmly and remain in a state of relative physical relaxation, even while accessing painful memories. Regular meditation, relaxing breathing, taking a bath, walking, or swimming are examples of activities that help to sooth our overwhelmed nervous system.

SERVICES & SUPPORT

Physical Pain and Emotional Pain

When our body is injured, the body bleeds or shows bruises, the body’s protective system kicks in to help us heal. Normally, we feel physical pain when we are injured, or the body is out of its normal state. The function of pain is to signal us to withdraw from the damaging situation, we protect our injury, we rest and heal and we avoid similar experiences in the future if possible.

In a similar way, our emotional pain is the body indicating to us that we might be injured, and something is out of the ordinary, and we need to take action to keep us safe, find refuge and healing.

When we feel sad, the body is signalling to us that we have lost something important and telling us to withdraw, slow down and heal.   

When we feel anxious or fearful, the body is warning us about danger, telling us to seek safety.

When we feel angry, the body is indicating to us that someone or something that we value is being taken away or violated and tells us to draw safe boundaries and take action to protect ourselves.     

When these feelings become intense and unresolved, it becomes emotional pain. Even though our emotional pain is from non-physical sources, it is real, and it affects our body physically. Our body is one unit, with the physical parts and psychological parts interconnected. Study has shown that when we feel emotional pain, it activates the same regions in our brain as the physical pain does (the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortexes).

The COVID-19 pandemic and Emotional Pain

The Covid-19 pandemic impacts our lives in many ways. Many people have lost their jobs and income, many people are cut off from friends and family or their loved one, or the ability to find and connect with people and build relationships. We can lose a sense of safety and stability that puts our body in alert and distress. We are not able to predict when the pandemic will be over. This uncertainty of not being able to expect and plan for the future affects us significantly. The emotional pain and distress caused by the pandemic can be intense because it is still ongoing, and our body is constantly assessing the environment and gathering information to keep us safe. Therefore, it is more important than ever to listen to our body to acknowledge and validate our emotional distress and look after ourselves.

Possible clarifying questions to ask ourselves:

What do you worry about?

What information do you not know that you want to?

What have you lost this year?

What has your body been telling you about your inner experience?

What can you expect and have control of in this period?

What do you need in order to help yourself to accept the current challenges?

What can you do to care for yourself in this challenging period?

What can you do to express and process the emotional pain you are experiencing?

Anxiety, clarity, and journaling

Anxiety is a vague and diffused sense of fear, a feeling of dread, weakness and fragility with no clear identifiable source, where our identity and our stories get called into question.
To conquer vague abstract attacks of anxiety, it is important to regain clarity on our identity and our stories, with a concrete sense of control in our lives! A good start is putting our abstract thoughts and non-physical feelings down on tangible paper, that is journaling.
While we are confronted with things that we cannot control and change in our lives, we can tap into our wisdom, and list out the things that we do have control of in our lives!
When we have regained a sense of control in some areas of our life, we can tap into the strong parts of us, gathering our courage to change what we can and adapt to the challenging times.
And finally with clarity, kindness, practicing self-care and being in community, we learn to accept the things that we cannot change and control.

Understanding Anxiety

Rollo May is an American psychologist who is largely responsible for our modern understanding of the word "anxiety" through his pioneering research. According to Rollo, human fear is complex and has many sources. He classified fear as an instinctive response to a very clear and a present identifiable source of danger or threat.
Fear is an instinct that floods our body with adrenaline, so we get a burst of energy to respond and take action which potentially saves our life.
Rollo separated this Fear from Anxiety, which is much more common and complex. Fear is temporary, it is a flood of intensity and energy. Anxiety is vague and diffused. Anxiety is a feeling of dread and weakness and fragility and it has no clear identifiable source. Essentially, it is a dread of death rather than a response to an identifiable threat. What is at stake with anxiety is not our physical well-being but our sense of who we are, our identity, the idea that we are a meaningful person whose story has meaning. All that gets called into question through this perpetual feeling of weakness and fragility.