#somatic flashbacks

[almostpsyche]

yippee!1!! it's another night of somatic flashbacks, my least favourite kind

[imtheworst-imsorry]

If i’m going to have flashbacks can i at least have some fucking context or any memory at all or anything besides the physical somatic flashback bits? It’s so fucking horrible, and it’s even worse bc i have no clue what my body is remembering, i just have to wait for the feeling of them on me to go away even though i can’t remember what happened, i can just feel it. I’d genuinely rather have a full-on all 5 senses vivid memory to go along with this so i at least know what happened. I just want to know what happened. And why was i so stupid that night why did i do all that stupid shit it was so out of character for me like genuinely what was going on?

[dissociative-system-advice-vents]

just venting

somatic flashbacks are just fucking awful, and we literally don't even remember what the flashback is of

.

[nightmaredxydreams]

we're having flashbacks on the form of somatic symptoms and its painfully annoying to the point we wanna crawl out of our skin

[lilacs-world]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA >:((

-Nova, 5 , done with life

[pilotofstarshipfables]

Some things I use to sooth the body when the somatic flashbacks hit

Heating Pad: Put it anywhere on the body where it relieves pain for you. Bonus points if the cover has some something nice on it. Ours has unicorns 🦄

Sippy cups with a soft opening: gives me something to bite on without the suffocation other oral stim toys sometimes give me. This is also a good one if you have jaw pain. 🍼

Your favorite candy: Helps ground and dispels taste flashbacks 🍬

Soft blanket: If you have to feel unwell at least the bed can be a pleasant sensory experience 🛏️

Calming music: Here’s a playlist to get you started but feel free to do whatever regulates you best

Flashcards with affirmations and grounding techniques: These should be kept wherever you are most likely to be when you experience flashbacks, eg. purse, nightstand 📝

Stuffed toys: Yes even adults can benefit from this! And if you age regress or are a system this will help the little ones feel safe 🧸 Hugging them distracts from other more unpleasant sensations

Ice packs: These can help ground you. Can also help with trauma related pain flairs 🧊

Most importantly remember that you will get through this. The sun always rises, the pain always lets go eventually. You deserve to live and see brighter days 💜

[ghostlyschizophrenic]

i’m having a severe emotional and somatic flashback. i’m trying to sleep but every time i lay down my body freaks out because the fan in my townhouse (that i can’t turn off) makes me feel unsafe because i can’t hear my parents arguing (they are 182 miles away from my house). my body is aching with neuropathy all over and my right hand hurts with pressure from having my wrist grabbed and yanked in my trauma.

i feel like everything is out of my control and i have to make sure no one gets hurt but i don’t know what to fix to begin with because the height of my trauma was almost exactly 4 years ago. the pain i feel feels like sleep deprivation but i slept beautifully last night.

none of it is visual, but the rest of my body feels like it’s january of 2021 and i don’t know what to do. i’ve tried temperature (hot AND cold shower), texture with a bunch of stim toys, guided meditations, turning on lights, cleaning, making food, and so on and so forth and i think im fine and the moment i lay down everything crashes back in and i feel like im drowning again

[unwelcome-ozian]

[imtheworst-imsorry]

I needed to do stuff today i needed to do schoolwork and other real life stuff and i needed to exercise and try to burn enough cals to let myself eat something but i’ve just been stuck on my chair in the living room having flashbacks and being so tense and shaking so hard i physically can’t get up and do anything, helpful or otherwise. At this point if i could get up and get myself upstairs and crawl back into bed and just write the whole day off i’d do it, even tho i wanted to get stuff done, but i can’t even do that rn. This just really fucking sucks.

[sonofsin]

sometimes the only defense I have against trauma denial is that this system would not be this way if none of it happened. these trauma responses and behaviors and triggers are spread across a massive amount of parts and fragments, even if visual memory is blocked. it's supposed to be, that's how dissociative barriers work. the trauma only existed while it was happening as a child, which kept us alive. no shit it's still blocked now, even for those of us who directly experienced it.

[c0rpseductor]

im okay. but hoooly shit. being a star wars fan with a really bad choking trigger is a bit like your favorite hobby is touching the stove with no gloves on palms fully flat

[canis-constellate]

"man, why do we feel like such shit? hardly anything's even happened."

...

"oh wait this is an emotional flashback isn't it?"

[sickgraymeat]

Me: hey brain can we PLEASE try to be less crazy or at least keep it to one kind of crazy at a time I really like th—

My amygdala:

[its-ticsticstics]

this is my favourite time of the year but the Trauma is making shit so hard

[anendoandfriendo]

We've had discussions about this as a system, because even those of us who aren't multiversal have a sense of detachment from just, like, everything.

A lot of what people perceive as autism is just what autism would be when you traumatize autistic people and try to beat the autism out of them, so, where the discussion lies in in that for us (how much of that is a genuinely misanthropic point of view and how much if it has been like, just one of our system-wide neurotypes, besides plurality lol).

None of these things are important to our identity, "national" or whatever, and we also tend to actively revile anyone who has ever tried to appeal to the masses with "BUT HUMANS ARE A 💫SOCIAL SPECIES💫" as if they do not arrest and kill people for being different. Please use a different argument with us. If we were a so-called social species we wouldn't be so easily manipulated into fucking each other over lmao.

So like, if someone wants to clump us into USian that might be accurate insofar as where our brainbody has been raised and such, but on the other hand we see no such thing as a culture.

Kind of the same way people use, like, "culturally christian" or "christian hegemony" when talking about religion.

Remaking an earlier post to clarify some of the wording

Note that strength in sense of identity doesn't necessarily mean you love living in your country, state, region, etc. nor does it mean you uncritically agree with the government of your government, state, municipality, only that you find it important to your understanding of who you are culturally.

Please reblog this version instead, the notes have gone insane on the earlier version with clumsier wording and I really do want to learn more about this. Also I will be making a non-U.S. specific version of this post soon. As usual, if you're not from the U.S. please don't vote on this poll but feel free to shoot me a DM for a screenshot of the results in progress!

[sonofsin]

every time I notice again that the ceiling fan's blades are identical in every way but color to the ones in my bedroom when I was... very young. it makes me feel very panicked, nauseous and dizzy for a moment, then shaky and weak and so numb. still nauseous.

I hate it. thank god they're painted white. if they were the same color, I don't think we could live here.