Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
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I am just sharing my flashback. I started having them a couple of weeks into therapy. I guess we all experience them differently. I remember most, if not all, of the bad things but what I didn't remember for years ...actually until the past few months are the feelings.
When I have a flashback now I suddenly remember how I was feeling when the incident happened. I become a child again. It can be pretty intense.
When it first starting happening I would try to stop those feelings. Now I just let the experience happen. I mean it must be happening for a reason, right?
This last one started with a song on the radio as I was driving home. It was "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace. It came out in 1974.
I was 9. It was dinner time and it was just me and my dad. My mom worked evenings and my brothers and sister were older and would try to be gone from the house before dad got home from work. One brother was home. He was upstairs in his room listening to music. This song came on and I saw my dad tense up. I had already learned to watch his body language very carefully. Next thing I knew he flew out of his chair, knocking it over and ran up the stairs to my brother's room. I think I stopped breathing. I just froze. I was so scared. I heard him bust through the bedroom door. He was screaming....I couldn't make out the words or don't remember them. I heard lots of crashing and my brother yelling for him to stop...please stop..... I'm sorry. Eventually the crashing and screaming ended and my father came downstairs and went outside. I was still at the table. By that time I had shut down.
During that flashback I got the full effect of all the emotions I had forgotten about. My 9 year old mind thought my father was going to kill my brother. My brother sounded so scared. It is hard to hear someone beg and plead even if it was the brother who abused me.
I am not sure what I should do with these emotional memories if anything. I try not to worry about it to much because I know that I don't live there anymore and I am a lot older than 9 now. I know that the flashback will stop. If I have the same flashback again and again it is a bit easier each time. Still ...they tire me out.
When I have a flashback now I suddenly remember how I was feeling when the incident happened. I become a child again. It can be pretty intense.
When it first starting happening I would try to stop those feelings. Now I just let the experience happen. I mean it must be happening for a reason, right?
This last one started with a song on the radio as I was driving home. It was "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace. It came out in 1974.
I was 9. It was dinner time and it was just me and my dad. My mom worked evenings and my brothers and sister were older and would try to be gone from the house before dad got home from work. One brother was home. He was upstairs in his room listening to music. This song came on and I saw my dad tense up. I had already learned to watch his body language very carefully. Next thing I knew he flew out of his chair, knocking it over and ran up the stairs to my brother's room. I think I stopped breathing. I just froze. I was so scared. I heard him bust through the bedroom door. He was screaming....I couldn't make out the words or don't remember them. I heard lots of crashing and my brother yelling for him to stop...please stop..... I'm sorry. Eventually the crashing and screaming ended and my father came downstairs and went outside. I was still at the table. By that time I had shut down.
During that flashback I got the full effect of all the emotions I had forgotten about. My 9 year old mind thought my father was going to kill my brother. My brother sounded so scared. It is hard to hear someone beg and plead even if it was the brother who abused me.
I am not sure what I should do with these emotional memories if anything. I try not to worry about it to much because I know that I don't live there anymore and I am a lot older than 9 now. I know that the flashback will stop. If I have the same flashback again and again it is a bit easier each time. Still ...they tire me out.
The thought that if your dad did not do this type of thing would your brother have done those things to you,n He was getting control over you because of not having control where your father was concerned, brain washed that this is a man thing.
My heart just pains, this cycle of abuse. It is how many of us are here. I try to understand what drove those, including my brothers to their actions. The training started young. Sooth that 9 year old now. I can only hope your brother can sooth his as well. because it was conditional brainwashing from the Father that put it on him, and then he on to you.
You stuck with the memories so painful they take the things that make us human just to survive.
Gentle hug, this was a big one.
Jewells.
I am watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and remembering how much I loved that movie and how much I wanted Dick Van Dyke to be my dad. I escaped into that movie so often.
Therapy will bring all those memories to the surface. Then you can shed those tears, mourn those times since back then that may have been something you weren't allowed to do.
I grieved many of my past traumas and what use to be flashbacks are more just bad memories minus the fangs that use to tear into my soul. Just keep go to therapy and you'll work through those memories and come to terms with them.
I sure can relate to your brother. My door got kicked in and repaired some much, I actually started to feel sorry for it.
It will wear you down quite often and just keep doing that self care like watching that movie or doing something you really enjoy. I truly believe you'll get through this just fine!
It feels like it will be good for me to know, but maybe startling at first. Anyway it woke me this morning after 3 1/2 hours sleep. Like a breakthrough...just out of reach.
jewells, I am not sure if this will work for you but when I had dreams that would repeat like that I would say them out loud. I slept with a stuffed animal for years just so when I woke from a dream that I could tell someone what the dream was. This worked for stopping a recurring bad dream or to move past a "stuck" dream. Maybe writing it down will work as well.
When I got home he was waiting up for me, kicked in my bedroom door after I locked it, and beat me bloody for being "uppity" and "sinful." My blood traced an arc the length of my bedroom wall above my bed. He had put bars on my bedroom window so I couldn't escape whenever he wanted to do that. I ran away from home not long after that.
Sorry your therapy is triggering this flashback. My therapy did that for a time, too. Meds helped the through, and it ended up being really worth it in the long run for my recovery. Hope it is for you, too.
My sister became sadistic under the stress of our family. She enjoyed the beating I got and still likes bullying and consorting with men who bullly. Needless to say her kids are a sad mess.
You are a much better, more caring sister. Good for you.
That brother turned to drugs. His brain is fried. He can't hold a job and at 56 he still lives with my father. The father who had the nerve to say i should have expected my daughter to have problems because I had problems and all but 2 of his kids had mental problems. He can't figure out why.......