Wish I had taken the time to come read the carer section before my PTSD sec post. I can say yes. Apparently as I have to be told when mine happen I do not always express anything. I am just curled up throwing up at times and in the past day or two (I am having so little sleep and enough flashbacks I have lost major time). I have had more flashbacks since my last flashback posting/question. I have disassociated hard but I am so out there I do not fear not coming out. I want out but I am so out I don't fear it if that makes a bit of sense. So I cannot say I really know how bec feels as I only feel fear of it once out... Will I have an attack and not come back question. But back to the flashbacks which are very different you can be in a zone as I call it. You are very unaware and non responsive. I am sure it is horrifying to see. I would be horrified from what is described I do, or don't. What can you do? Let it happen. Once it happens there is nothing that can be done but let it play out. Be there after the fact.

Personally I think the non responsive flashback is better. I forget so much and I just feel the latter emotional drain. Losing time is no fun but IMO it is a lot easier than recalling the trauma and remembering reliving it. Boy it sucks hard.

She has had so much on her plate from the few post I do read of her life so I cannot pin point it. But please know she got a car for her birthday too! This is great right? I am sure she is totally loving it. And it is good stress. Good stress can cause a collapse just as fast as a bad one. You have to add in she probably really wants to drive the bugger out of it and is so happy she has it. Good stress but it still has the same reaction as bad. We just respond that way. So I hope you and other carers see when things are turning for the better we can still respond badly. Look at the stress cup of Anthony's and see what major improvements are going on too and add it to the cup. Everything has to be a snail pace good and bad. Any anniversary? Any unnoticed yellow? What is touching off the emotional response? Just things to think about. Hugs to Evie for me if she can handle it.

Thank you Veiled, I am not very talkative at the moment however I very much appreciate your thoughts on this. Good to read that yet another person has had a similar experience. It is indeed difficult to simply watch it happen and do nothing, however that is what we ended up doing. I believe there were a few triggers and different things all at once that caused it. Our household is in quite an upheaval at the moment in a few different respects, I'm certain that contributed. However it is thankfully past, for this round at least. That is an interesting point you make, that good stress may cause it as well. I will have to keep that in mind. Evie has had a few good things happen to her lately however it slipped my mind that they were also stress! Of course though you are correct. Thank you for pointing that out.

And yes Evie is in love with her car, though she is not permitted to drive it yet, it is still too soon after her surgery. Other members of the family have been taking her out in it almost daily and she has attempted several times to sneak past me to sleep in it at night but I don't permit that. It gets below freezing at night now!

Well, her being a young woman and needing to be one I do hope she succeeds in sneaking past you one night for a spin around the block! I imagine that would be an awesome feeling for her even if she got sick later... Call it exposure therapy :)

This is from my other posting, so I think I know what she is feeling. I forgot so much and shutdown I was just there. I cannot believe now that I never knew these were flashbacks. I know now since I do cry out at times and am told and no one should ever touch me since it gets way bad then. I just hope she is doing better as I hate any one having to go through the same things I do. No one should ever have to do this.

If she were physically healthy I would have no problem with her staying out all night if she wished it. However with the cancer and recent surgery I am concerned about her becoming ill. Additionally she is not permitted to drive her car at the moment as she has these "attacks" of passing out without warning, and could have an accident as a result. As soon as she's physically able to handle things I will loosen the reigns.

Kathy is the passing out from the cancer or the PTSD? Just wondering as I was told that most of my dizzy spells and passing out is from PTSD and not from a medical condition.

bec

Well Bec she has had passing out from anxiety in the past, and still does when she is very upset. So I believe that would be PTSD related. However these attacks are a different matter, she has only experienced them since the insertion of a cerebral shunt a few weeks back. Once the shunt is removed the symptom should hopefully disappear.

My friend just went through a flashback episode with me in the car with her. I was driving her home, when she asked me "Are we going home" in an inquisitive way even though she already knew where we were going. I could tell she was having a brain moment of some kind. She started fidgeting which she does when a flashback is about to start. Either fidgeting with no purpose or rocking motion back and forth. She asked again in that same unusually timid voice "Are we going home?" Then the flashback started. She verbalized during this one, saying over and over again, I have to make lunches, lots of lunches, a lot of lunches, I have to make lunches, she kept saying over an over again. I of course told her she didn't , she only had to make her own lunch, I tried to get her out of her trance like state, but she could only repeat the phrase about lunches. Then she switched to saying , "She is in trouble" I asked why, she said she didn't know, but she was in trouble, and then repeated about being in trouble. I kept talking to her, and she was able to tell me "She was stuck" I was trying to say things about what we were doing and what we were going to do, until she finally had to say to me....."Stop Talking, I have to work it out". She verbalized thinking that she was in trouble because of dirty windows, had to clean the windows, she was in trouble. This occured for about 10 minutes, and ended when she verbalized to me that all the windows had been taken out, and cleaned and been put back in, and they all fit back in perfectly. And as soon as she said that , and started talking again she was out of it, and I could tell because she was talking in her regular voice. She had some wicked type headache right afterwards. We talked about it, and she asked me to try and find out if there is anything she can do to help herself get out of the flashback when it starts, or if there is anything that I could do to help her through it. Obviously , I was interfering in her flashback by talking , and I wasn't saying the right things , when she told me to stop talking. I have witnessed two or three flashbacks, such as this, but I can always tell by her fidgeting, or rocking back and forth, that something is about to take place, or she is starting to feel upset about something that happened in her past. A flashback does not always occur when she is rocking, but it's more that she is thinking about past things and it bothers her. It seems to help when she is rocking, that I bring her back to reality by saying something, even saying her name and what is wrong helps. Once the flashback starts , this no longer works. As she says, she gets stuck, or her brain and thought process is stuck, like waking up from a dream and trying to figure out what was happening to you, before you realize it was only a dream.

Welcome to the forum Maxhal, lovely to have you. It sounds as though you are quite in tune to your friend and what to do during a flashback, well done.