Adoption Under One Roof

I just had another flashback this morning, so I thought today would be a good day to blog about what it feels like. In a nutshell, it feels awful.

The thing is … having a flashback is actually a very healing experience, which is something it has taken me a long time to appreciate. Although my head is hurting and I have taken Xanax to calm my anxiety, I know in the moment that experiencing this flashback is a big step toward emotional health. Now that I have recovered this piece of my life’s puzzle, I am one step closer to understanding myself. I can also nurture and love the wounded little girl inside that has been holding onto this pain for decades.

Sometimes all of the information you need for a flashback comes at once, but other times (for the more traumatizing memories), it can come in pieces. That is what happened to me with this memory. I have suspected the “what” for several months, but the kicker was the “who.” This was yet another person in my life who I did not trust but who I did not consciously remember violating me, too.

It takes a lot of courage to recover all of the pieces of a repressed memories, especially one that is stored in pieces like this one was.

I had to “force” myself to “see” the “who,” and I had an internal struggle while I did this. It made my head hurt, and I have had a bad headache ever since. I feel a bit lightheaded and disoriented. This is a pretty typical reaction for me.

The hardest part of experiencing a flashback is the accompanying emotions. The knowledge itself, while painful, actually helps me understand myself better. I have always had a bunch of questions about my junior year of high school, including what triggered my suicidal urges that were strong enough for me to write my junior term paper on the topic of teen suicide. Now I know.

It is the emotions that really rock me. Recovering a memory (having a flashback) uncorks the emotions that were not safe for me to express when the traumatizing event happened. I am shaking, anxious, angry, and sad. I have powerful emotions swirling around inside of me that I have to let run their course. I have been through this process enough times to know that it is going to suck for a while but that this pain won’t last forever.

I hope this post gives you some idea about what your traumatized foster or adopted child goes through after having a flashback. Unless the child has been in therapy for a while, she probably won’t have the same analytical view in the moment that I do – that has come from years of healing from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the physical and emotional reactions are probably very similar to what I have shared.

Photo credit: JulieC