I am not expert in this area, but I have done a lot of reading on PTSD since my diagnosis. It seems that some people who have dealt with PTSD in their past are more likely to have it affect their lives again if another traumatic event happens in their life. I know in my own life, any smaller traumatic event effects me more than other friends and I end up having to talk it out with my therapist for a while.

Hope this helps. Sorry you are going through a rough time.

Thanks for your response emsoreangel, I have thought of going back to therapy as it has leftme reallyunsettled to be backinthis place even though its no were near as bad as last time I guess just being reminded of that time isn't nice and i know i developed somebad habits in that time that i don't want to come back,however maybe this will allblow over in a few days,i guess i will just have to wait and see

What emsoreo said seems right to me too. Talking it through with a therapist who is sympathetic and understanding will help. No one else has commented so I could be wrong, but what you described as a flashback seems more like just being triggered. You know about triggers? They are painful and can disrupt your life. Hope you feel better soon.

I am not sure if you ever really recover from PTSD. As a child I was abused and basically blocked it all out until a few years ago, in my early 40's. I was diagnosed with ptsd. I had falsh backs, panic attacks agoraphobia , claustrophobia, severe depression and so many other symptoms it was rediculous. I worked very hard to overcome it all and thought I was cured. No one had told me that it would come back. Late last year after a trip overseas, with all the people, hussle and bussle and lack of sleep it came back again. In some ways it was worse, but mostly not quite as bad. I am still struggling with it almost a year later. What is making it so hard this time is the depression that comes with it. I have all the tools that should help to make it go away but this time they are not working. Sometimes after being with even a small group of people I go home and cry for hours. I hope yours does not become as debilitating as mine has become. But be assured it is quite normal and I have since been told that some people will need counselling on and off for the rest of their lives because of it.. All the best and I hope you improve soon .

Thanks for all your comments. StKevin, I don't think I have ever had flasbacks in the traditional sense, I alway use the word 'trigger' in terms of what caused the reaction rather than the actual reaction. I have heard of 'emotional flashbacks' so it could be that or maybe its called something else i don't know, when it happened in the past once i had been triggered by something(which would happen a lot) i would often stay triggered for hours after and become really paranoid, at times I would think people were trying to kill me or break into my house, once I was convinced a pack of dogs was going to run out of the train tunnel, although i knew on some level that they wouldn't and recently it was starting to fel like it was starting to happen again although i have been fine for the last few days although a bit unsettled. Ihave looked into counselling again but so far haven't been ableto find anyone with avaliability! I am slightly concerned as I maybe exposed to similar situations next week as it is related to my job (I work with young people who can sometimes be agressive) but I guess I will just try to look after myself and see how I get on. 51percent in a way it does help to know that its normal and not a sign that I haven't processed the original trauma properly, it gives me a bit more hope that I'm not going crazy!Anyway thanks again, M

Mayday, you seem to know a lot about PTSD already.

reminds me of what happened and provokes a strong fear reaction and confusion, this has only really lasted for a few seconds

I've been told that Americans always want to turn verbs into nouns. So I used trigger as a noun. My experience was that flashbacks lasted longer than a few seconds, but that's only my limited experience. You seem to know about PTSD and know what's happening to you. I hope you feel better soon.

Maybe we just use different words cause I'm English! In the past these reactions would last a lot longer but not recently just a bit unnerving as I haven't had anything like this for about 2 years and even then it was a one off,this time I've had quite a few in quick sucession and unfortuently I have a histroy (and a present to a lesser extent) of employing bad coping habits so just wanted to nip it in the bud before I go into freefall but I always find the support on here really useful so maybe thats enough for now I'll keep you posted!

It's been like that with me, flashbacks and memories of the childhood trauma surfacing, regressing to past destructive behaviors.

For me it was trauma over losing my father while I was his caregiver and a series of very unsettling events connected with my really bad financial and medical situation. It seemed to jar it all loose, all the things I'd buried so deeply that I no longer remembered them.

It's good to read the posts here and understand why I'm remembering the nightmare of my childhood life when that seems so irrelevant to the challenges I'm dealing with currently. I've heard it compared to a wound which never really healed, a wound which reopens when you get new injuries...or a broken bone that remains weak and breaks more easily when it's stressed decades later.

Looking back on my life I can see now that growing up in a severely dysfunctional family and getting severely bullied in school at a very young age made me vulnerable to stress. My mother was the same, she suffered abuse in an orphanage at a very young age and she could not take anything stressful without bad panic attacks. She took her refuge in alcohol, lots of it. That was tough on me, of course. Dad couldn't or wouldn't deal with it, so he worked a lot of overtime.

I keep thinking of the old homily "As the twig is bent so grows the tree." At least we know why stress and trauma makes all this bad stuff bubble up to the surface again. That's a lot better than thinking you are just a weak person or you are going crazy.

If it was me, they would be related and closely. I was assaulted by a person in authority who targeted me using a laser light. I was not taken seriously by anyone. Years later, I was in a handgun safety class that showed how laser lights are used for accurate bullet placement. During the demonstration, I was mentally and emotionally reliving the experience. This triggered a setback that un-did much of what I had worked so hard to rebuild in a new location after the initial incident and subsequent brain rot from having been assaulted and ignored and subtley threatened for years after. I was dx w/ PTSD. In the class, I was with people who recognized my PTSD flashback. Two months later I sought relief w/ EMDR and have been much better able to continue rebuilding and was unstuck in many ways. Able to recognize my need to find self approval to reconstitue my self esteem. Unfortunately, the class I am taking has an instructor who uses a laser light. I don't have a total flashback, but it brings on anxiety and difficult concentrating in the class. I want to run and cry, but I am not as out of control as I have been in the past. Also, my blanking out times have returned, but seem to be lessening. Working through these recent bouts has been good, but has put my paranoia through the roof. Am returning to EMDR. Have to work hard to censor my thought life or I end up hopeless. Have to keep moving forward and keeping faith that I will be employable...there's no point in thinking otherwise. I do believe planning, rehearsing, and preparation are the key to coping so that the triggers can be a bump in the road and easily passed rather than a life stopping reason to isolate.