10 Tips For Coping With Flashbacks

Flashbacks are one of the hardest thing to deal with, I think. Any kind of trauma aftermath is difficult of course, but flashbacks impact your daily living, make you relive events and can be hard to shake. Here are ten tips produced by the Bristol Crisis Service For Women that I have found incredibly helpful:


  1. Tell yourself you are having a flashback and that this is okay and very normal in people who have been traumatized.
  2. Remind yourself that the worst is over- it happened in the past, but it is not happening now. The child inside you who was abused is giving you these memories to use in your healing and, however terrible you feel, you survived the awfulness then, which means you can survive and get through what you are remembering now.
  3. Call on the adult part of yourself to tell your child that she is not alone, is no longer in danger and that you will help her get through this. Let your child self know it's okay to remember to feel what she feels and that this will help her in healing from what has happened to her. How hard it is for you, she is communicating in the only way she can.
  4. Try some of these ways of grounding yourself and becoming more aware of the present: * Stamp your feet, grind them around on the floor to remind yourself where you are now * Look around the room, noticing the colours, the people and the shapes of things * Listen to the sounds around you: the traffic, voices, the washing machine, etc * Feel your body, the boundary of your skin, your clothes, the chair or floor supporting you * Wear a loose elastic band around your wrist and ping it against your skin * Tell yourself that the things you are re-experiencing were in the past
  5. Take care of your breathing: breathe deeply down to your diaphragm; put your hands on your chest and breathe so that you hand gets pushed up and down. Count slowly to 5 as you breathe.
  6. If you have lost a sense of where you end and the rest of the world begins, rub your body so you can feel its edges, the boundary of you. Wrap yourself in a blanket, feel it around you.
  7. Get support if you would like it. Let people close to you know about your flashbacks so they can help if you ask them to. This might mean holding you, talking to you, helping you to reconnect with the present and caring for you.
  8. Flashbacks are powerful experiences which drain your energy. Take time to look after yourself when you have had a flashback. You could do some of the following: Take a warm bath, drink a warm drink, listen to soothing music, take quiet time for yourself.
  9. When you feel ready, write down all you can remember about the flashback and how you got through it. This will help you to remember information for your healing and to remind you that you have gotten through flashbacks in the past.
  10. Remember that you are not crazy-flashbacks are normal and you are healing

2 comments:

  1. City Girl says
    August 24, 2009 8:35 AM  

    This is a great post. Thanks so much for sharing.


    Ellecubed says
    August 24, 2009 9:33 PM  

    Thank you very much for your lovely comment City Girl.