2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Cautions: If you have experienced an extreme event and experience symptoms of PTSD, you should consult a doctor.
Even as time passes after the danger has passed, traumatized people relive the situation as if it were being repeated in present tense. People cannot resume the normal course of life, because it is constantly interrupted by trauma.
Most often, intrusions take the form of pictures of tense fragments of a traumatic event. Most intrusions are fairly realistic, although their realism depends on factors such as the severity of the PTSD, the context, and how they are triggered. In general, people have many different intrusions that are repeated over and over again.
Flashbacks - can manifest themselves in the form of visual images, sounds, smells, tactile and taste sensations that took place at the time of the injury.
Martina Müller offers helpful methods in overcoming the difficulties that often accompany PTSD.
Try not to suppress intrusions. Let them happen without "pushing away" pictures, thoughts and feelings. To learn how to do this, imagine yourself standing on a station platform and watching a train pass by the station without stopping. You watch him come and go, but don't get in. You can think of your intrusions in the same way. Just let them pass in your mind, be aware that they are happening, but do not try to change them in any way. Remember that trying not to think increases the likelihood that these thoughts will enter your head. Displacement can lead to an increase in "pressure", so after a while the intrusion will become so strong that it will be impossible to push it away. The result will be even brighter intrusions and extremely uncomfortable this process can lead to massive flashbacks.
You should do the same with flashbacks. But since they tend to return you to the past, you will need to penetrate into the here and now.
There are three main ways to do this:
1. Try to understand the differences between when the injury occurred and the here and now.
This may sound silly because, in general, you already know that you are no longer experiencing a traumatic event. But remember that traumatic memory is different from other types of memory and does not distinguish between the fact that the event has already ended. To help you distinguish between then and the here and now, it can be helpful to describe in detail to yourself where you are now and how it differs from what it was then. You might say to yourself something like, “I know the trauma is no longer happening because I’m sitting in the kitchen and reading the newspaper.” “I'm in my car, not in a fast one”, “Now I have a small child, which was not there then,” and the like. It can help you understand the boundaries of the flashback and become rooted in reality.
2. If your flashbacks are exceptionally flamboyant, it can be helpful to make sure you have something that engages you in the here and now. Sounds and smells are good for this. For example, a patient smelled a strong smell of blood when they had flashbacks of a particular traumatic event. The smell was very intense and made the memories especially vivid. To help him control this, we experienced many different odors in one of the sessions, finally settling on cough drops, had an expressive taste and a strong aroma. Obviously they are not cures for flashbacks, but these drops helped it take root in reality. The expressive taste and aroma of these drops were not part of the traumatic memories, so they became a signal that the traumatic event does not occur again. As a result, flashbacks have become shorter, less bright and uncomfortable.
3. Try to find what is causing the flashbacks. This will not stop their repetition, but it will help you understand what is happening to you and feel less frightened (according to Martina Müller, "Yaksho vi experienced a traumatic experience").
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