1. Jessica Lowe – https://www.instagram.com/cptsd.hope/
2. Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving: A Guide and Map for Recovering from Childhood Trauma – Pete Walker – Book
Discovered the term “Emotional Flashbacks” from this book. Names have been useful to me, to ‘make sense’ of thoughts and feelings.
Emotional Flashbacks are a key element of CPTSD. Due to the lack of awareness about it, emotional flashbacks are often mistaken for character faults, tantrums and arrogance.
When emotional flashbacks aren’t understood for what they are – trauma trigger responses – it can create highly charged inter-personal incidents, often between a person who experiences the emotional flashbacks (but who isn’t aware of it) and another person who witnesses the flashbacks (who isn’t aware of it either).
Understanding Emotional Flashbacks can help avoid so much of repeating emotional pain in relationships. It can be a blessing as the emotional flashbacks themselves are very painful and you can now avoid an additional layer of pain arising from inter-personal conflict with someone (usually a close, significant other).
The close, significant someone can themselves learn about it and help in avoiding second-level and third-level conflicts and pain that can happen if that person responds to unidentified emotional flashbacks with a lack of awareness of what’s happening.
It can help personal relationships to not be fraught with intense highs and lows, to not feel like a minefield, to not feel like someone is malicious, manipulative or abusive.
While operating with a lack of awareness about trauma responses and emotional flashbacks, relationships often feel as a string of struggles and never at peace. Because the lack of understanding of what’s happening is missing at both sides, thereby creating a limbo scenario where there is total frustration and no sign of a solution.
Knowledge of what’s happening is always a key. Learning about Emotional Flashbacks and their nature can be deeply helpful.
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The book also tells that recovery from trauma is fundamentally about ‘discovering your true self and growing into it’.
3. Freedom from CPTSD & Anxiety – Hope For Trauma Recovery
Podcast – https://anchor.fm/monique34
Suggested episode:
https://anchor.fm/monique34/episodes/CPTSD-and-Emotional-Flashbacks-e2tn09
4. Lisa McCormick – https://www.instagram.com/earlychildhoodtherapist/
5. CPTSD Foundation – https://cptsdfoundation.org/
It provides a tertiary means of support with online, group settings such as:
- Daily Recovery Support – Group Calls ($50 per month)
- Daily Group Calls Replay ($25 per month)
- Healing Book Club ($7 per month)
- Secret Safe Support Group on Facebook (free, but subject to application/verification)
- Supportive daily text messages to phone (US only, $4.99 per month)
6. When searching for therapists, try to find ones that are trauma-informed or experienced with CPTSD.
I understand CPTSD as a relatively new structuring and thus not learned-about as much as mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety etc. So, there is a possibility that a lot of existing therapists might just be unaware of it.
Also, the underlying element of CPTSD, is trauma – which I have seen differentiated from mental illnesses and instead called ‘a psychological injury’. Yes, the injury can lead to infections/illnesses, but trauma in itself is not an illness. Just like a cut or another injury is not an illness in itself.
Trauma-informed approaches seem to operate much more on a source-level or complete level than the pathological/symptoms-based/diagnostic methods of treatments (which are very effective and helpful for their intended applications).
Trauma-informed approaches can be seen as safety-ensuring, strengths-based approaches towards recovery from psychological injuries. Psychological injuries that can create symptoms that can range in their intensity from mildly troubling to disabling.
Also, in addition to directly observable traumatic events like instances of physical abuse, a substantial amount of traumatization happens in invisible, relational, inter-personal realms. These invisible injuries often go unidentified and unacknowledged even by the sufferer themselves. These invisible injuries can then be at the core of painful relational incidents/patterns and unhelpful behaviors later in life.
At that point, chances are that the sufferers will be vilified with those patterns and behaviors held against them as character flaws and deviant behaviors. It is to this unfortunate setting, that trauma-informed approaches try to respond with kindness, non-judgement and paths to recovery.
The trauma-informed approach then proceeds to do the best thing it can do – to prevent traumatization in the first place. And that inevitably focuses on attachment-aware, trauma-informed parenting and early childhood care and education.
Note: I am not well-versed in CPTSD or mental health care nor am I a professional resource on these topics. These are personal observations and notes made in good interest and with an educational intent. I myself am in continued learning and still discovering the depth and nuances of trauma and mental health. I apologize if any of my words offended you or made you feel unsafe. If possible, let me know about it and I will make changes. Also, if you feel that any of the notes I made in the post are untrue or potentially harmful, please let me know.