Patricia Borlovan's Key Ideas from Complex PTSD
by Pete Walker

Emotional flashbacks are sudden and often prolonged regressions to the overwhelming feeling-states of being an abused/abandoned child. These feeling states can include overwhelming fear, shame, alienation, rage, grief and depression. They also include unnecessary triggering of our fight/flight instincts.

When fear is the dominant emotion in a flashback the person feels extremely anxious, panicky or even suicidal. When despair predominates, a sense of profound numbness, paralysis and desperation to hide may occur.

Tyrannical Inner &/or Outer Critic

Toxic Shame

Self-Abandonment

Social anxiety

Abject feelings of loneliness and abandonment

Fragile Self-esteem

Attachment disorder

Developmental Arrests Relationship difficulties

Radical mood vacillations

Dissociation via distracting activities or mental processes

Hair-triggered fight/flight response

Oversensitivity to stressful situations

Suicidal Ideation