Alters and flashbacks
<p>Feb 25, 2015 12:28 PM</p>
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<a href="http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic157214.html">http://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic157214.html</a></p>
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Alters and flashbacks
Postby Nondescript » Sat Feb 21, 2015 4:18 am</p>
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I feel really lucky that most of the time for the last 10 years, I don't have a big problem with flashbacks on a daily or even weekly basis. (Before that, I lived in constant flashbacks/overlays of the past.I just didn't really know that's what they were.)</p>
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Last night, after contact with my family of origin, I was having flashbacks that were did not include any kind of graphic memories or anything, but just images, sensations, feelings of a time/place I lived as a kid. I was describing to my therapist today that for me they are like. I stay in contact with the present, but a period/scene from the past is sort of put on top of it in a see through way, and my body feels a certain way, and all my senses get impressions from that past time, and I get images running through my mind. Or other times it will be feelings and a certain kind of bodily sensation that recalls a time in my life. Or a memory replaying with no emotion. I guess there is a lot of variation. The other part of them is that I usually feel more "presences" around me which I know are alters. So last night I thought, maybe they are trying to talk to me with the flashbacks. But I really couldn't contact them further. (The whole thing was complicated by my toddler waking up needing me several times.)</p>
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My therapist said a lot of the times alters will communicate this way through incomplete flashbacks. She said they are trying to tell you something but they don't know how to give you the information you need to understand what they are saying. If that is true, it's kind of like for much of my life, particularly after I was 15 and my system broke out of an ice age, they've been trying to get through...</p>
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This tidbit of information from the therapist is interesting because I recently had a dream in which an alter was left dangling over a warehouse of undelivered mail, and the postman was uninterested in her predicament.</p>
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How can I help them get through to me during those times I'm having flashbacks? I am open to what they have to say, whether it is feelings about things I already know happened, or other situations, or anything.</p>
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Does this kind of thing ever happen to you?</p>