Understanding and Coping with Emotional Flashbacks

What is an emotional flashback? Posttraumatic emotional flashbacks go by several different names including: emotional “triggers”, flashbacks or simply “triggered.” Emotional flashbacks are intrusive thoughts or mental images of a lived traumatic experience where it may feel like a replay button is causing you to relive the trauma over and over. Certain scents, noises, tastes, images, places, situations or people may create a flashback of the emotional or psychological trauma, making it feel as if it were happening all over again. For example, if you were at an airport awaiting your flight and witnessed an active shooter situation, you may experience mental or emotional flashbacks of that event if traveling to another airport or when hearing loud noises (i.e. fireworks, explosions in movies, or a clap of thunder). Similarly, if you experienced a traumatic death of a loved one, certain people, songs, scents or places can trigger those painful memories.  Oftentimes, the feelings associated with an emotional flashback leave a person feeling anxious, scared, overwhelmed, angry or with an intense feeling of dread or sadness. Feelings of shame can also accompany those who are re-experiencing emotional flashbacks as they may struggle to control their thoughts or emotions while reliving the memory. Perhaps most distressing for the person experiencing an emotional flashback is that they often do not know when or if a flashback will happen until it does, leaving them ill-prepa...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Memory and Perception PTSD Trauma emotional flashbacks traumatic experience Source Type: blogs