Flashbacks/involuntary memories

[Man]

Does anyone get random thoughts from the past? For me, these come out of nowhere, and they're not even relevant to the present moment. How do you deal with them? Most of them seem to be related to emotionally traumatic events.

[rei]

I'd suggest finding someone near you who can do EMDR.

Find EMDR Therapists in Your City

NLP Practitioners can help too.

I get those sometimes, shortly after a really wild event. If it's intrusive, I recommend one of the above.

[sorter]

I don't deal with them.
I think they're great.
What is the issue?
.

[Man]

Originally Posted by rei

I'd suggest finding someone near you who can do EMDR.

Find EMDR Therapists in Your City

NLP Practitioners can help too.

I get those sometimes, shortly after a really wild event. If it's intrusive, I recommend one of the above.

darn, don't have an EMDR therapist in my area. i think I'll stick with my therapist if needed.

sorter--to me "positive" flashbacks are great, but negative flashbacks (emotionally traumatic ones) are not so great. they impede my ability to focus on the task at hand.

[sorter]

Originally Posted by Man

darn, don't have an EMDR therapist in my area. i think I'll stick with my therapist if needed.

sorter--to me "positive" flashbacks are great, but negative flashbacks (emotionally traumatic ones) are not so great. they impede my ability to focus on the task at hand.

Make the "negative" flashbacks your task at hand.
That's pretty much EMDR anyway.
Positive or negative, your flashbacks are you. Enjoy yourself.
.

[elucidate]

Have you been diagnosed with ptsd?

What you have described is a common symptom of trauma. I've experienced it myself.

[supertom]

The trauma exists in your body ... your nervous system, not in your thoughts. You body can naturally heal the trauma, you jus need to sit with it for a while and allow the body do it for you.

[MiBeloved]

Flashbacks may be triggered by energy coming from others. Even though it may be a memory of an event which you experienced, it may still flash back because of another memory or thought which came from somebody else.

What I do is to meditate on it and try to reach the source of the flash. In other words, to find out what caused it. If you get to that, then you can figure it out and usually it makes sense in some way or the other.

Sometimes if you trace it to someone else you can give that person a call or send an email and resolve some issue which is pending in that person's life.

[Angela]

They are the unconscious mind presenting something to me, either for resolution or for insight into something that's going on in the present.

I deal with them by shifting my perspective on them if necessary, getting the learnings from them, and letting go of whatever there is to let go of (bad feeling emotion or limiting decision). Then, in the space that arises, I take action.

At least, I do that when I do that. Sometimes I don't; and when I don't heed the call of my unconscious mind to resolve or get a message from something, it almost always comes back later -- and usually knocks on the door louder and louder until I let it in.