The flashback do just happen, which is hard. I try to get myself back to the present, generally through techniques my therapist has taught me. The frontal lobe must connect with the amygdala again.

I try to meditate or go for a walk. Sometimes I use the the 5, 4 3 ,2 ,1 technique. Pick 5 things you see, 5 things you hear, 5 things you feel in your body etc

They still happen the flashbacks but it helps the scary feeling

Hi, Chanty. Welcome to the forum.

I don't know any quick and easy cures, but you just took a solid step by joining a peer support group. *Just* finding the courage to talk about ^it^ and seek support in the healing process is quite a bit. When you are ready for the next step, it will be obvious to you.

You are not alone, Chanty. Welcome aboard. Hope you find healing companionship here.

On occasion I utilize the VA crisis chat line but I clicked on the national suicide prevention site instead and on there they have a safe place to go with three choices of techniques to defuse the triggers and anxiety that is part of it too with a side helping of fear. We are all given choices of things to care about or make a conscious decision they are harmful to us and we dismiss even caring about before triggers go off. Blessings of peace.....

Hi Chanty, welcome and I hope you will be helped and not feel so alone. For me, I used meditations to help me sleep and guided meditations as well for healing. Here are two that maybe helpful....there are many to choose from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfNln981Dic, This is a guided meditation for letting go of toxic relationships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JivdU-qZHQA Best to you

Hi Chanty, welcome to the group. I am very sorry for what you have experienced. It sounds horrifying.

I think therapy would be my most recommended first step. They would be able to give you some great coping skills and a way to release some of the emotion face to face. Opening up is also a good step as Arfie has mentioned. I have been doing EMDR and it has helped with a lot of automated brain and body responses. Here is a helpful link on that and a few other coping strategies

https://www.emdrhap.org/content/what-is-emdr/

https://www.verywell.com/coping-with-flashbacks-2797574

Dear Chanty,
Therapy is amazing (let the therapy carry you along, for the support therapy really is). They have practical little phrases that cause tremendous relief. There's a reason they're named "professionals" because they do NOT do what the abuser did. At your most vulnerable, they fill you with good, healthy, practical (very easy to remember) tools, and they're so easy, so very easy, you can breathe easy, you can function (I feel for you, when you said even daily things like shower have efforts) and I tell you, I'm even proud of therapists and the good they provide to communities (because I was suffering much worse than today, oh me oh my, I was suffering so much worse, is how I know the little practical phrases therapists provide are because they are "trained" and "useful.") They're also deeply caring, where even the usual routine (their normal routine of validating your emotions) are automatically healing you along the way, merely having "normal interactions with people" is healing and you'll start saying "thank you" for the most routine "non- medal-earning behavior." As time progresses, you'll learn you started "agreeing with your abuser" is something that will release a lot for you. You're not alone, dear! Patterns can be disrupted and new patterns can be made, and you'll feel so surprised when you see therapists are automatically healing you along the way, by merely validating your emotions are real (first emotions are validated, in order to sort them, and tormentors (TORMENTORS) primary assault is to de-validate (INvalidate) your perspective, which is how merely having healthy relationships is also a match for automatic healing along the way, but a therapist will really demonstrate a desire "to not fail you," with concrete demonstrations of their desire "to not fail you" (concrete demonstrations your biology cannot ignore, at time spent with you, your biology cannot trick your mind with PTSD of tricking your mind into believing you're not displacing torment with automatically healing "validations.")) Do have a good day, dear. Create vivid memories, vivid (use incense maybe, and bright colors for a few vivid memories). Vivid memories are helpful even months later, or years later, as you stack (stack) the new vivid memories.

Oh, this sounds crippling and very scary for you. I hope you're doing ok today. Your friends are so right about seeing a trauma therapist, it usually is not enough to try to work through it yourself. Therapy is a wonderful thing and you learn very useful tools to cope not only with trauma, but every day life. You are an over comer and a survivor and you deserve to be freed from the abuse and the affects it has left on you. This is a totally normal response after abuse, your brain holds on and so does your body; it doesn't forget, it can only be healed. Then it will put the memories to rest. God Bless you. I understand. Have you tried praying? My PTSD began healing when I began walking with God and seeking counseling. The two together have been essential. Keeping you in my prayers.

I lost a job because I had panic attacks I couldn't control and I'm a Christian minister and prayer alone wasn't enough until a PTSD specialist in therapy from my church took me on as his patient at night. That was the answer to my prayers. It changed my life and I became a hospital chaplain in an ER in Chicago to help people who just-now were traumatized from the moment they sought help at our doors so nobody would have to lose a job like I did.

Here's a link in the meantime to the kind of therapist specializing in PTSD like mine:
http://pete-walker.com/13StepsManageFlashbacks.htm

A bona fide PTSD therapist was the answer to my prayers. I'm back to preaching two Sundays a month, I have a good full time job, and the only medication I have to take is Prazosin at night for nightmares, thank God.

Thank you very much for all of you who were so kind and supportive and have given me suggestions about how to overcome this trauma. I still have difficulties falling asleep and when I do fall asleep I have nighmares of being choked and suffocated. I am relieving my abuse and my mind is replaying it over and over again when I am awake and the violence I have experienced reappear in my dreams as nightmares. How can I ease my mind and how can I avoid having nighmares and flashbacks?
It has been terrible and it is not getting better affecting my daily functioning.
Thank you very much

Have you looked into the trauma release therapy? I have been hearing good reports about the EMDR.