It was Pete Walker, an M.A. in psychoanalysis, who first coined the phrase emotional flashback to describe the gut-wrenching experience of reliving the helplessness and dissociation caused by trauma. In his book, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, Walker describes many aspects of emotional flashbacks and how the inner critic holds people hostage. I shall be referencing this book throughout this work.
In this piece, we shall examine how the inner critic and toxic shame create the perfect environment for emotional flashbacks to occur.
A Review of the Definition of an Emotional Flashback
Unlike typical flashbacks experienced by people living with post-traumatic stress disorder, emotional flashbacks do not ordinarily have a visual factor. Instead, these types of flashbacks are, as the title suggests, is an emotionally charged response caused by stimuli in the present that causes the sufferer to “flash” to an abusive event of the past.
Walker gives this definition in his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (mentioned above), offers this definition of emotional flashbacks:
“Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feelings states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief, and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts.”
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