September 13, 2021
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 delve deeper into 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 seem disconnected and out of place in the adult survivor’s current situation. He recognized the connection between CPTSD and emotional flashbacks.
Walker describes an emotional flashback as an “amygdala hijacking” forcing the survivor to relive the emotions they once felt in the past during a traumatic event without the benefit of knowing or remembering the memory associated with it. These emotions may include fear, despair, rage, sorrow, grief, and other strong emotions that emerge suddenly without warning after being triggered by something in the environment. Often survivors are clueless as to what these triggers are.
The intense emotions felt during an emotional flashback are often accompanied by toxic shame.
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