CPTSD Fight, flight, freeze, fawn. The four Fs by Peter Walker
Emotional flashbacks do you get them? Do you even know what they are?
I have had them all my life but was not always aware of what they were. I knew what flashbacks were because I saw, felt and heard a whole episode of something that happened in my childhood as if it were happening at that moment. I had four years of them and they ripped my life apart. I undertood those, eventually. But emotional flashbacks were at that time an unknown to me. I would just get really bad feelings as if something were going to happen, feelings of foreboding. Or I would feel overwhelmed and about to cry and yet I didn't understand why. I was a workaholic(my coping device) so I got this feeling a lot. I just thought that there was something wrong with me. I put it down to depression.
Many of the feelings that I have like this I see as pre-verbal and then it makes sense that abuse before I could talk would only have a feeling without words. I also think it was to do with being in horrendous situations as a child that I could not escape from and was struck dumb by the terror of it all. Knowing this did not stop it but seeing how it appears helps. Whenever I am stressed, tired or overworked it comes on. Now I know to stop, not overwork and to take care of myself. I don't need to 'push though it' I did that forever and it made me ill.
I know I have CPTSD complex post traumatic stress disorder and that it will not be going away but I know how to manage the emotional flashbacks. It is a disabling condition but yet despite having it I was a what they call a high achiever. In itself this high achieving and pushing myself beyond my limits made me ill. I don't do that now. I chose a partner early on in my life who also pushed me beyond my limits and who further created stress in my life on top of the abuse by my family of origin. Once I escaped all the abusive people in my life I began on a road to recovery by creating a very peacefull life in which to heal myself. This life is so far removed from my past life that it took some getting used to. I had to learn to stop being busy all the time. I had to learn to sit with myself and be ok with that. I had to change my habits.
If you have left a narcissist family or an abusive narcissist partner it is likely that you have PTSD if not, also like me, CPTSD. As well as educating yourself about narcissists and narcissism it is important to study these two disorders because they will help you to understand yourself and your condition and why you are behaving or feeling a certain way. It explains a lot. I have linked a few sites within this text should you wish to explore further.
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