![]() Flashbacks are a common experience for many people who are grieving. ![]() They are most often described as a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder.īut sitting there, listening to Thompson describe how the brain produces them, something clicked. ![]() Most people know about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – popularised by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, but there is much less talk about flashbacks and the role they play in helping us move through pain. A flashback is our brain trying to process what happened.” “These traumatic memories haven’t been processed in the normal way. Photograph: Courtesy of Ann LeeĪt the same time, the blood that flows to the part of the brain that stores these memories and puts a “time stamp” on them decreases, she says. “It’s trying to capture as much as possible to keep us safe, so that, if we were in the same situation again, we’d know what to do.”Īnn with her mum in Finsbury Park, north London, in 2014. Blood flow increases to this area.” Like the camera in her metaphor, it starts taking lots of snapshots. The part of the brain that is trying to capture what happens – the limbic system – goes into overdrive. ![]() “The brain changes quite dramatically when we’re in a traumatic moment,” Thompson says now. That is why, when painful memories drift back, they remain so raw and vivid. This is how flashbacks are produced when something traumatic is happening, explained Dr Erin Hope Thompson, a clinical psychologist and the founder of the Loss Foundation. On the board was a crude drawing of a brain with lots of little cameras surrounding it. I had signed up to a 10-week grief workshop, which was almost over. Then, one day, I found myself in a community centre in King’s Cross, London, talking to a group of strangers. They helped in small ways, but they did nothing to lighten the suffocating weight of my loss. I tried counselling, read grief message boards late into the night, attended support groups.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |