In our first piece in the four part series on emotional flashbacks, we discussed the definition of emotional flashbacks and how they change survivors by interrupting their daily lives.

This article will attempt to explore what it is like to have an emotional flashback and the 13 steps to manage them proposed by Dr. Pete Walker.

A Short Recap

Before we delve deeper into our topics for this piece, we must take a moment to recap the definition of emotional flashbacks.

Flashbacks are definable and connectable to a singular traumatic event and include a reliving of the event through the five senses. …

Everybody forgets that is a fact of life. You might forget where you placed your car keys or where you last saw the dog’s leash; that is ordinary forgetting.

Dissociative amnesia is different. It is a condition that is trauma-based and can disrupt a person’s life.

This article shall examine dissociative amnesia, its causes, and treatments, plus how to cope with this dissociative disorder.

In Brief, What is Dissociative Amnesia

Dissociative amnesia (DA), once known as psychogenic amnesia, is a dissociative disorder where a survivor loses or does not retain information into long-term memory, such as autobiographical memories that happened in the last hour or perhaps important events from their past. …

You walk into your living room after getting out of bed in the morning feeling apprehensive and afraid, but there is nothing to be afraid of that you can observe. An overwhelming sense that something terrible is about to happen permeates your thoughts, and you do not feel at all safe.

You have just experienced an emotional flashback.

This article will examine the definition of emotional flashbacks, their causes, and some grounding techniques to help you when they attack.

What are Emotional Flashbacks?

To explain the definition of emotional flashbacks, it is first necessary to define what are flashbacks.

Flashbacks are what we all think of when we think of the term flashback from the movies or television where veterans of war relive the memories they have of combat. They see, hear, smell, feel, and even taste what was going on at that moment in the past where they became traumatized. …

The brain is a very complicated organ that rules over our lives engendering how we move, think, and feel. The way our brain cells (neurons) communicate with one another is by the use of chemicals known as neurotransmitters which they pass from one to the other.

We have briefly discussed in a previous article about neurotransmitters and a little of their vital functions. In this article, we shall explore them deeper and see how neurotransmitters can be our friend or foe when it comes to expressing the pain of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD).

A Recap on the Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder

We cannot go any further into our discussion about neurotransmitters and the brain until we recap the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder as stated on our first post on this subject. …

In the last article in this series of four posts written for the CPTSD Foundation on seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and complex trauma, we examined together with the definitions and each of their symptoms.

As a short recap, seasonal affective disorder is a form of major depression that affects people in the wintertime, although it can also strike in spring. For our purposes, we shall concentrate on wintertime SAD.

Complex trauma is repeated abuse or neglect, usually in childhood, committed against survivors whose symptoms linger long into adulthood.

This article shall delve deeper into how seasonal affective disorder and complex relational trauma affect how we feel and function when the days grow dark and cold. …

Everyone experiences some version of the winter blues when they are caught inside and unable to move about as much as they would like because of the cold and snow. But some people experience a type of major depression that affects them in the fall and winter called seasonal affective disorder that is highly impairing and disruptive to their lives.

What is this strange form of depression and how does it relate to other forms of mental health problems?

This article will focus on answering these questions about the relationships between seasonal affective disorder (SAD), complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), and complex relational trauma. …

Thanksgiving and Christmas time have once again descended upon us, bringing unique challenges for those who have experienced trauma. It doesn’t matter whether the trauma happened yesterday or decades in the past; it has a habit of coloring how we see the holidays.

In this article, we shall explore how trauma affects the enjoyment of the holiday season and ways to alleviate the pain we are feeling.

Ho, Ho, Hell

Life after trauma is full of problems, many of which come from inside us. …

Survivors who struggle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder or any trauma-based mental health problem often fight feelings of being inferior or not good enough. We focus so much on our downfalls and mistakes that we lose sight of the good things we do and the positive traits we bear.

In this piece, we shall examine what it is that makes a person good enough.

Why Don’t We Feel Good Enough?

Many times, the reason we spend so much time feeling not good enough is that we have so much negative self-talk going on in our minds.

Not only does our inner critic put us down, but it also replays the messages we heard during the trauma we survived. If we were told we were ugly, we internalized those words and thus began to believe that we were unattractive and not good enough. …