Emotional flashbacks

Unlike the vivid, visual flashbacks people usually associate with PTSD, an emotional flashback often has no image or memory at all. Instead you're suddenly underwater in the feelings of an earlier time — fear, shame, hopelessness, feeling small or worthless — with no clear reason why. Because there's no picture attached, it doesn't feel like a flashback. It feels like the present, and like the truth. Pete Walker, who named these, says recognizing one is the first and most important step.

• a flood that feels far bigger than whatever set it off
• feeling suddenly small, young, or helpless
• racing heart, tight chest — or going numb and far away
• dread with no source you can point to

• “everything is wrong / I'm in danger / this will never end”
• “I'm worthless” — arriving fast and total
• the urge to hide, run, or lash out
• a certainty that the awful feeling is permanent and true

Something — often subtle, a tone of voice, a kind of look, the feeling of being dismissed — matches something old, and your nervous system time-travels. It floods you with the emotional state of the past as if it were happening now. The feeling is real; the danger is not current. The reason it feels like forever is that the part of your brain that knows “this will pass” goes quiet when you're flooded.

• believing the feeling is the truth about you or your life
• trying to argue yourself out of it with logic (it bounces off)
• shaming yourself for “overreacting”

• naming it: “I'm having an emotional flashback. This is old, and it passes.” The naming begins to break the spell
• reminding yourself you're an adult now, with a body and a life you can return to
• grounding the body — a long exhale, feet on the floor, eyes slowly finding the room
• the Grounding companion in the app will walk you through it, step by step