[Orion]

has anyone come up with any ways to deal with these?

they are really starting to interfere with stuff now... flashbacks are being triggered by the tniest thing...

as for the dreams, they arn't exactly ptsd as they are stuff my mind has repressed which are deciding to attack me now... but I assume simmilar methods could be used?

anything would be most apretiated

[obsids]

For me, it was new meds, sleep meds, Prazosin (an alpha-blocker), and very intensive cognitive behavioral mod therapy. The meds helped me sleep and reduce how reactive I was. The therapy helped me change the way I reacted to things when I was awake.

But it is one step at a time... one day at a time.

I still trigger a lot, sometimes worse than other times. But I have learned a lot of coping and calming methods in therapy. The key to a lot of my coping is finding ways to distract myself from the things that bother me.

[Soidhonia]

Hello I hope things are better for you at this time. One of the things that helps me with flashbacks is taking medicaiton on time and going to bed at the same time, or close to it everyday. The dr can possbly help adjust your medication now that you are having flashbacks medication adjustment is important so that the brain chemicals do not become disrupted and cause further depression, or psychotic problems, or phobias. Therapy is also sometimes very helpful. I want to leave you the hotline number as well in case you need to call someone to talk to 1-800-273 TALK. Take care Sincerely soidhonia

[Orion]

i am already on medication... I have psychotic depression along with the PTSD, so am no stranger to pyshotic problems and medications...

The flashbacks arn't really a new thing either... just becoming more regular and intense resently

I guess I should tell someone about them really... just kind of hoped there'd be a way of dealing with them that wouldn't involve my having to discuss the events in them with anyone...

My therapist LL and I do relaxation visualizations by Belleruth Naparstak and when we do them we record them onto a cassette so that I can have the cassettes here at home. when I wake from a nightmare all I have to do is push play and theres LL's voice calming and relaxing me.

The same for having flashbaks, I also write my flashbacks out, draw them and so on so that I learn more and more about that flashback. once I remember everything about that flashback it usually (but not always) fades away.

In any case it makes it alot easier having the recorded voice of my therapist.

Hang in there

[Orion]

writing down your flashbacks sounds like an interesting aproach... I may have to try that... thanks

Yea sometimes it is interesting and other times it can be scarey depending on what I am seeing, hearing and so on. But it works which is why I do it.

Yea give it a try - hey whats the worse thing that can happen - it doesn't work for you - well that just means you are no worse off then where you are now right.

Hang in there

[(JD)]

When you have a flashback, and realize that you did have a flashback, try and recall what you were doing, what was on the radio, or what someone had just said, or you had just been thinking about, and how you feel. Write it all down and you might begin to see a pattern... good fodder for therapy sessions btw.

They say that once you have had enough therapy to where the flashbacks diminish or disappear, that you go through mourning from the loss of them..they become so "part" of you. I look forward to that mourning time I think.

There is documentation that occasionally survivors did go through a grieving process because they were healing but from personal experience of my real time friends and I and the real time survivors that I have met in support and therapy groups and when I was doing my public speaking days - there was no one that grieved for healing beyond having a round (any round) of flashbacks.

we (my friends and I and those that I met in groups and going public and so on) were just so glad not to experiencing the flashbacks -

the physical pains of our bodys reacting the same way it did during the rapes including feeling ripped apart and so on.

We were so glad to not be seeing shadows of abusers before our eyes every time we went anywhere and happened to see someone who looked like our abusers or reminded our brains of the rapes,

we were glad not to be smelling the stale booze, cigarrettes, cigars and body odors that our abusers had drank and smelled like when they had abused us in the past,

We were glad not to be hearing our abusers calling us names and talking sexually to us just because someone in the back of a city bus said one word that remineded us of what had happened,

We were so glad not to be feeling our abusers hands all over us like they had done when they abused us.

We were glad not to be coming out of a flashback cut because our brains did not understand we were experiencing a past memory that was not happening at that moment of when we had to cut ourselves free from whatever was used to tie us up and so on.

me and my real time friends and real time survivors that I have met in therapy and support groups and when I went publicMiss it - no not one bit