triggers.

ok i am i guess looking for some insight here. i know flashbacks will probably always be a part of my life. they happen and you try to get through it. but i have been having one flashback over and over and over and i cant figure out why. its driving me crazy. so heres the short story.

when i was a kid my family had a cabin about an hour away on a lake. anyway we used to go there a lot. after my brother and sister left home, me and my dad would go. once i got older i hated it because i knew what time alone with him meant. anyway. there was a guy with a cabin near ours, him and his family became friends of our family. i remember at night laying in bed and all the adults would hang out by the fire outside. and i always knew when i heard the door open they had all left and i knew what was going to happen. the sound of that door opening was the worst sound in the world. and id just lay there and wait. id bury my face in my pillow and pretend to sleep and try not to make a sound. but he almost always came in my room and 'it' happened.

so heres what i dont get. this happened several times. i cant even guess how many. a lot. over many summers. but one time in particular keeps coming to me in flashbacks. and i remember the entire incident clearly like it was yesterday. it wasnt the first time or the last that it happened. probably one of the more traumatic. but i remember it all. so why the flashbacks. out of nowhere they happen and im reliving little pieces of that night. sometimes it hits me really hard and i cant do anything but cry. other times i sit there and think through the entire incident with little emoiton and wonder why im still haveing flashbacks about it. so i dont know. im going to mention it to my therapist. i just thought someone might have some insight into why. or have a similar experience. i understand that flashbacks are usually pieces of buried memories. but i remember it all. so why does it keep happening.

I think that you are in an ultra-sensitive space. Maybe your mind is trying to make some sense out of the situation by playing it over and over. Sometimes that is the way our memories have to work until we come to some sort of resolve or acceptance that it really did happen. We try to make sense out of the senseless - and what you went through was incomprehensible.

Maybe try the NLP technique with that memory - remember that one? Picture yourself in a theater and you're watching yourself on a movie screen in full color. As the movie repeats, change it to black and white and eventually to fade away with the sounds getting like a scratchy old 78 RPM record. Another thing can be to cover everything with a sound track of marching band music.

And don't forget the self-talk. That was then... you are an adult now capable of saying "no". You are in reality right now - give your dog a hug and feel his breathing. Feel the unconditional love of a dog and try to bathe yourself in it.

Those memories of childhood will eventually become nothing more than they are - just memories. The pain associated with them will eventually start to be less and less traumatic.

What you're going through is very "normal". You're a good and sensitive man who deserves good things to happen to him. You deserve to work through this and lead a relatively happy life. YOu deserve to find someone to love and who loves you back. You deserve all the good things in life - it just takes time.

SD

I'm sorry to hear about the flashbacks. I hate those. It's not just buried memories. It could be something is just reminding you of them in some way. We've talked about triggers here. Sometimes a noise or a smell or even the pillow you have now--who knows? I'm just pulling things out of the air. Like for me, I remember this one episode of abuse. That's not the problem. But when the wind blows a certain way, the trees hiss a certain way, I'm there. It's happening. The trauma was so bad that the even is ready to pop out at any HINT that it may happen again. That's PTSD. It's the soldier under the table at the grocery store when a car backfires.

I use what SD said. I say over and over again--in fact I used to carry a note in my wallet that said, "It's not happening now." I could pull the note out of my wallet and read it if the flashback got too bad. I also know to stay indoors when there's a certain type of rain storm blowing outside. It's hard, because part of me so wants to go out in that storm, like I'm almost drawn to the flashback, but I know "It's not happening now." So I plant myself in a chair inside the house until the storm passes.

I hope it gets better for you. My therapist would say that there's something about that memory that we haven't dealt with yet, some emotional reaction we haven't confronted. I don't know if he's right or wrong on that one. I something think I'll always have them if I'm triggered in just the wrong way.

Hang in there. I hope your flashbacks do get fewer and weaken in intensity. You deserve some peace.