Chapter 42: Emotional Flashback

And I don't even know how this episode, I don't know what I'm going to title it or anything like that, but I just feel like this week I had, I don't know if it was like an emotional flashback.

I feel like I had an emotional flashback.

It just completely disrupted my, uh, my nervous system this week where i was all types of things ranging from or had all types of feelings where i'm ranging from like worried sad embarrassed some insecurities some panic all this stuff and i'm gonna dive into it but i don't know if like maybe it's just an emotional flashback And for those who don't know, like an emotional flashback when it comes to complex PTSD is a very sudden and it's involuntary regression to the overwhelming or helpless emotional states of either anything from your childhood, adulthood, anytime where you've had some type of like trauma happen, where it's like it can lead to intense fear, shame of abandonment.

And it doesn't really have like a visual memory.

It's just like, oh, this is the last time I felt this.

And usually there's no visual images like, oh, like, you feel the emotion, but you don't see it in a specific memory.

Or like, oh, yeah, I remember, like, because you feel that good and bad.

Like, oh, I had a bad memory of, I told a story yesterday.

I was like, I don't really like small, like miniature dogs, man.

One attacked me when I was a kid and I crashed my bike because it was just gnawing at my ankle.

I was riding my bike and I crashed into a ditch.

Like, that's a very visual image.

But I don't have, like, an emotional, like, flashback to it.

And then there's, like, physical distress where, like, your heart's racing.

You have some shallow breathing.

Like, muscles are tight.

Or you're just feeling, like, I don't know, small.

Like, where you just go back to, like, childhood moments where I'm like, oh.

Or whenever it happened, you just go back to feeling that moment.

And there's also your nervous system locks up.

where it goes into fight, flight, or freeze, and you're just trying to find a way to get out of it, and the only way you know how is, like, I don't know how y'all are, but for me, it's like, oh, like, I go into multiple different ways.

I can go into overdrive, and I don't have a way to, like, calm myself out of it.

There's also toxic shame where it's like the internal critic starts going off saying, yeah, well, you're flawed.

You're not safe.

You're in trouble.