Flashbacks can be incredibly frightening and disorienting, whether they are emotional flashbacks or related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If you experience flashbacks as a result of past trauma, you may find that their disruptive and often unpredictable nature affects your daily life. The flashbacks themselves can be very traumatic, and not knowing when they may occur can make life more challenging, with stress and anxiety prevailing.
Dealing with past trauma and flashbacks involves finding solutions to cope with feelings and experiences constructively. In this blog, we will discuss some ways to cope with flashbacks and overcome them effectively.
What are Flashbacks?
First and foremost, it’s important to understand what a flashback is. Flashbacks are typically associated with PTSD, and you may feel like you are reliving a traumatic experience because you experience intense emotions from painful memories. Sometimes you may manage to maintain some awareness of the present situation, and the flashbacks are only temporary. However, in other cases, you may not be aware of the current situation and become fully immersed in the flashback.
What is Dissociation?
Dissociation can sometimes be a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder and involves a sense of detachment from oneself or the surrounding environment. Dissociation and flashbacks are somewhat different from each other. With dissociation, some people experience episodes akin to daydreams that are brief and temporary, while others may feel like they are not in their body and may lose memory for a period of time, experiencing a dissociative episode.
How to Cope with Trauma-related Flashbacks?
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to coping with flashbacks of past traumatic events because each person experiences them differently. However, there are several different methods that many people find helpful in coping with flashbacks, and some of them may help prevent their occurrence.
Identify Your Triggers
The first step is to identify what your triggers are. Most flashbacks and dissociative episodes are triggered by external stimuli. This depends on the traumatic event you experienced, but some common triggers include specific people, places, and even smells.
Once you know what your triggers are, you can work on reducing the impact of these triggers: for example, by avoiding places that remind you of the event. Sometimes avoiding triggers is not possible, either because it’s something like a smell that you can’t control or because the trigger can occur unconsciously. In such cases, it’s helpful to try to develop a plan for managing your reaction to the trigger. Seeking PTSD therapy can be beneficial and will help you navigate through challenging situations and triggers and cope with them as best as possible.
Learn the Early Warning Signs
Flashbacks are usually unpredictable, but there are often some early signs that you are about to experience a flashback, such as blurred vision. Generally, flashbacks that are caught early are easier to cope with, so it’s helpful to try to recognize the early signs that you’re about to have a flashback.To do this, you can keep a journal and record what you experienced before the flashback began, noting as many symptoms as possible. When your body starts to feel like it’s about to have another flashback, you’ll be able to recognize it and use coping strategies to minimize its impact.
Grounding Techniques
Grounding is a type of survival mechanism aimed at keeping you connected to reality. It means you can stay connected to your immediate surroundings without becoming too immersed in the flashback. Grounding techniques use your five senses, and many trauma survivors find them helpful when dealing with flashbacks.The first step is to look around your environment and note what you see. You can list all the colors you see or even the furniture you’re looking at. Then you can try something with a strong smell, like mint. Strong smells are hard to ignore, and that means your brain will want to focus on them instead.
Thirdly, think about sounds. If necessary, play very loud music. Like strong smells, loud noises are hard to ignore. The same goes for taste and touch. Extreme sensory experiences are good for keeping you in the moment, so think about eating something strong, like a slice of lemon, or touching something cold, like an ice cube.
Ask Friends for Help
Dealing with trauma can make it difficult to form and maintain strong relationships, but research shows that social support helps alleviate the severity of flashbacks and dissociation. If you have a close friend or family member you can trust, talk to them about your triggers and early signs so they know what to look out for and how to help you.
Seek Professional Help
Sometimes seeking help can be the most difficult step, but there is nothing shameful about it. In fact, seeking PTSD therapy can be one of the best treatment options and provide you with the most qualified information on how to cope with flashbacks and resist trauma. In a controlled and professional setting, you can undergo a series of therapeutic procedures that will help alleviate symptoms, including cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR).
If you have complex PTSD, you may also find medications such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors helpful in alleviating some of your symptoms.
