I got sucked into an emotional flashback tonight.
I’m packing up my apartment, preparing for a cross country move. And in doing so, I’ve been going through documents in my personal files, shredding ones that are no longer useful to keep.
I found a bunch of documents related to one of my first jobs as a therapist, even before I was licensed, working in the private practice of my then-mentor.
In the years since that professional relationship ended, I’ve come to believe that many aspects of it were toxic— to the point that, in retrospect, I wish I’d not chosen to work for her.
For all she introduced me to in trauma work (she didn’t really “teach” me much, but she did provide opportunities to work with complex trauma and dissociation that few early career psychologists get), she also impeded my professional growth in multiple ways— and I’ve come to believe our dynamic on a personal level was ultimately destructive to my own trauma and addiction recovery.
That said: the relationship ended, I built my own career, and we’ve not spoken in fifteen years. Neither she, nor that early career experience, has much of anything to do with what I do now.
Anyway, in clearing out my files tonight, I came across multiple documents that triggered not just memories of working for her— but brought my nervous system right back to patterns of feeling and responding exactly like it was 2011.
I’ve worked hard to develop tools that help me stay out of headspace I associate with growing up— but as it turns out, it took me a minute to realize I was actually in an emotional flashback, not just experiencing memories.
As I went through my files, I was feeling incompetent.
I was feeling “in trouble.”
I was feeling insecure.
And I wanted, very very much, to salve those feelings by using substances.
Mind you: there was no “rational” reason for why I was feeling these things. There was nothing in those files that “should” have made me feel incompetent, in trouble, insecure, or at risk of relapse.
That’s how we know it’s a flashback, not just a memory.
I wasn’t REMEMBERING feeling those ways. I was feeling them viscerally, here, now.
Emotional flashbacks are real good at making us forget who we are and where we are in our recovery arc.
It’s only when we realize what’s going on— as I finally did— that we can actually use our trauma recovery tools to reassert ourselves in the here and now.
I used the tools we all have, the tools that I believe comprise the basics of recovery— self talk, mental focus, and physiology— to remind myself of who I am and what my life is all about.
I sought support from people— and a cat— who know me now, who know of my life’s passion and priorities, and who could help me feel like myself again.
I asked Recovery Supporting Questions (RSQ’s) and reviewed my Recovery Mission Statement to manage the risk of relapse in particular.
That’s how we do this, gang.
When we get freaked out, when a trigger hits us, we back up, we name what’s happening, and we don’t try to just “white knuckle” our way through it— we use the tools we’ve developed in working our recovery.
Flashbacks of any kind are not fun.
But we don’t have to just let them run their course.
We can interrupt them, as surely as we can scratch a record or CD so it doesn’t play the same way.
Breathe. Blink. Focus.
And bring it back to improving this minute by .01%.
Your future has f*ck all to do with your past.
Remember who the f*ck you are.
Use Your Damn Skills 