Flashback

How do you handle a flashback? My reaction will vary, as I suppose everyone's does. The type of flashback also makes a difference.

At this point in the journey I have pretty much recovered every detail I am going to get. I can see what happened and have written all I know about the abuse. Most of it returned at once and it was horrifying. Lately I have discovered the emotional flashbacks are probably harder to get through. 

A couple of days ago I had an emotional flashback. Honestly, I think this kind of flashback is worse. I was watching a movie with my husband and there was a scene where the main character was hiding under her sheets, not wanting to see the thing terrifying her. The movie was suspenseful and normally I would enjoy it. This particular scene terrified me and I was done with the movie at that point. It was a scene that was all too familiar. 

When I was a senior in high school I wrote an essay about hiding from my abuser in a similar fashion. I really wish I could find that essay now. I do remember the gist of it. 

I was 4 and had a problem wetting my bed. My father put me to bed and said he was going to get my some Lifesavers as a reward for not wetting the bed. I knew that meant he was going to leave the apartment. I guess my mother was not there because I knew "that man" was in the house with me alone. I pulled my covers over my head and used my little arms to hold them down. I cannot tell you how long I stayed like that, listening for him, and hoping he did not come in. I started to feel a tug at the covers and immediately started to panic. I held them down just as hard as I could while kicking at the body that had sat down at the end of my bed. I imagine the struggle did not last long but I remember fighting so hard to keep the covers over me. Eventually the covers were pulled off; however, instead of it being my abuser, it was my father. He had returned with the Lifesavers. I remember the look on my dad's face. He had a puzzled look on his face. I felt an enormous sense of relief. He placed the Lifesavers on my bookshelf and turned off the light on his way out of the room. I still wet my bed that night but climbed up the bookshelf and got the Lifesavers, as any 4-year-old would. 

Watching the woman in the movie place the covers over her head to avoid something terrifying tossed me back into the above moment. I have known the details for years and years. I had written it at least twice, once in high school and another in college. This time I felt the memory. My stomach started to churn, my chest felt tight, and I had my husband stop the movie. I grabbed my favorite stuffed animal and tried to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night I started screaming and woke up my husband. I could not tell him what caused the scream. 

If the screaming in the middle of the night was a new thing, I could have easily blamed it on the movie. Unfortunately I have been doing this at least twice a week since I was discharged from the hospital. I originally thought it had something to do with the medication withdrawal but it has continued. 

I have to face the fact that a majority of the cause is probably emotional flashbacks. How many times did I want to scream and just could not? Even when awake, I am feeling the sense of helplessness, being overwhelmed, and terrified out of my mind. I am experiencing it on 3 levels. I am remembering the emotions as a little girl, as the high-school senior who wrote the original essay, and as the adult now having to go back through it again. 

I was waiting to post this. I wanted a way to sum it up and write about how I got through it. The truth is, while it is not completely occupying my mind and has faded into the background a little, I have not moved all the way past it. This only proves recovery will never be wrapped up tightly with a bow. It is a process. Our job is to continue the process. 

Free Speech

At the second group meeting I attended we were instructed to “write our story.” We were told to write it again if we had already written it. It could be a specific incident or a summary. The idea of this terrified me to my core for a couple of reasons. I had written down the bits and pieces I had remembered and had emailed these to my therapist. Other than when I was being questioned by the police at the age of 16, I could not recall ever saying the words out loud. I may have said some things out loud to my therapist but I certainly had never written my complete story or read it out loud. Besides the terror the suggestion caused, my thought was “when hell freezes over.”

I saw my therapist the next morning. I mentioned the group “homework” and he encouraged me to write it also but to take it slow and not force it. It took me 2 days to start. I had stared at blank paper several times with a pen in my hand during those 2 days. I made the decision to just write about one specific incident, the first one.

As I started to write what I remembered about the first time more details started to pour out. Way more detail than I wanted. Halfway through writing it I started to feel it happening all over again. I felt panicked, sick to my stomach, and could hardly breathe. As I looked at the 3 pages I had written I felt sad and guilty. I closed the notebook and started to watch something goofy on TV to distract myself and hopefully make it possible to sleep. The next day I typed it up and sent it in an email to my therapist. I was still dazed and overwhelmed but also relieved I had gotten it out of the way. In a sense, I felt free from that memory. It was out on paper, partially out of my system. I was giving myself the voice I never had as a child.

Eph 5:11 Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them

My abuser may never hear my words or even realize I never forgot. He may not even care. I have to learn to live with that. Writing the small part of my story released it. It exposed what I had gone through and I came out victorious. I survived.

Reading my story to the group turned out to be agonizing. Saying the words out loud, realizing people were listening to them and opening myself up was so difficult to say the least. The story was out there and I could not bring it back in. I was exposed and raw. What is the most aggravating thing about all of it is that my abusers needed to be exposed and raw, not me. They should be feeling the shame and guilt, the panic of being discovered, and the insomnia from reliving the incidents.

I still have so much of the story to tell. I have written down every incident that came out in a flood during group. I have typed them and sent them to my therapist. Now I am facing reading my story out loud again. I have yet to determine what I am going to share. I want to face it this time without the shame, embarrassment, and panic. I want my abusers to be exposed, may be not publically but certainly for what they did.

The best part of sharing my story with others is that I am also sharing it with God. He already knows what happened, but when I write it down and say it out loud I am admitting it really happened and that I need help to deal with it. He is with me always. Just like I have to confess my sins out loud to him, I have to tell him what is troubling me, to seek His help. I need Him to take care of those who need to be held responsible. It is out of my hands. The Psalm below speaks of this. He can vindicate me from the shame and guilt I have carried for years that never belonged to me. He is a breath away. He is my champion.

Psalm 35:22-26 Oh Lord, you have seen this; be not silent. Do not be far from me, O Lord. Awake, and rise to my defense! Contend for me , my God and Lord. Vindicate me in your righteousness, O Lord my God. Do not let them think, “Aha, just what we wanted!” or say “We have swallowed him up” May all who gloat over my distress be put to shame and confusion; may all who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and disgrace.