Overcoming Emotional Flashbacks

Overcoming Emotional Flashbacks with Self-Compassion

Photo by Hisu lee on Unsplash

Emotional flashbacks are a common symptom for people living with the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. Because of this fact, I thought it vital to delve into how to overcome them.

Emotional flashbacks take a horrendous toll on those who experience them. To feel like you are in danger with all the emotions that accompany it, fear, anxiety, startle, and a myriad of other feelings without understanding where they are coming from is both frightening and debilitating.

This piece will examine emotional flashbacks and methods to defeat them.

CPTSD and Emotional Flashbacks

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) afflicts many people who were traumatized in childhood through more than one type of neglect or abuse (including narcissistic abuse). One of the defining features of CPTSD is emotional flashbacks.

Indeed, trauma theorists Judith Herman and PTSD researcher Bessel van der Kolk describe complex post-traumatic stress disorder as being “caused by prolonged, repeated trauma.”

Pete Walker, an M.A. in psychoanalysis, first coined the phrase emotional flashback to explain the horrific experience of feeling emotions that…