Indirect Flashbacks are triggered by things in the inside world, like vulnerability. I tell a story about debriefing a group where someone died of an aneurysm who was married to someone in the company. The kind of person you would meet once a year at a company December party. Nevertheless in a town of 2,000 people her sudden death had a big impact on the people. So in the debrief I asked people what was the part that is most difficult for them, the part that intrudes on them. The first person said.. “She was only 50. I feel everyone was robbed. Her daughter had just gotten married and they were looking forward to grandchildren. Everyone, her, her daughter, the baby, everyone got a raw deal. I am having trouble with that.” We talked about it for awhile. The next person said… “She died in a drug store parking lot, for gawd sakes. She went in for an asprin because she had a terrible headache, sat in her car.. and died. She could have been there for hours before anyone noticed. That really haunts me.” We talked about that for awhile too. The next person said… “I hate to say this, but I can’t stop thinking about my divorce. I so want to be present to the family here. Yet, when I close my eyes – boom, there it is again.” Traumatic divorce? I ask? Very.
Its the even that is most important that comes back, not necessarily the one going on at the moment. A chronic event (like a stressful job) can trigger a state of vulnerability. When that happens, things stored in that state poke us on the shoulder and says… “Hi! Remember Me??” The impact of an event that happened when we were 6 follows a memory from when we were 21, and precedes a memory from when we were 30. Not logic or chronological, sorted according to impact.
The guy sitting next to her says.. thank you for answering a question I have had for the past 40 years. My brother’s suicide happened when I was 15. I am now 55. I can’t tell you how many times that event came back at me in the past 40 years.
The Role of the Consciousness in Healing Indirect Flashbacks.
Triggers are recordings. They are not objects in the outside world, they are objects in the inside world. An internal trigger starts the playback of a flashback. The conscious mind is like an incident commander at a fire scene, or like a ring master at a circus. Its job is much simpler and tougher than what first appears. The incident commander must be aware, set intention and communicate by listening and speaking. The incident commander does not put out the fire. If the incident commander decided to go and hook up a fire hydrant, the whole operation may be at risk because the commander is no longer paying attention. The conscious mind does not do the healing. It doesn’t know how. But it knows parts that does know how to heal, and sets the intention with will and voice, and stands back to let the part do the job, and looks for inconsistencies, communication miscues, and issues that block or interfere with the intention. In another part of this website I describe the human psyche using the metaphor of the circus. The Ring Master doesn’t know how to turn somersaults on a high wire, nor how to tame animals. The ring master may have a good sense of humour, but his/her role is not to become a clown. The Ring Master makes room for the other circus performers, coordinates and integrates those skills into a narrative. The most skilled Ring Master is a keen observer and knows how to communicate with the crowd what is going on while the performer does the work. An indirect flashback is not the same as a direct flashback, it may take some detective work to recognize the vulnerable state, and to trace the link from the event to the vulnerability and back to the event again. One asks how the experience is unfolding and what is the nature of the perspective of the seer? How old do you feel? Are you experiencing this through the eyes of a child, a teen, or an adult? This approach is a gateway to the next section on dynamic flashbacks.
Indirect Flashbacks and The Shift
The shift technique, using the observation powers of the consciousness, focuses on which sense is being triggered, and how the experience is happening in the here and now. A woman once told me of her sister coming to visit. Her sister was rather high maintenance, and my friend was finding it difficult in feeling taken for granted. The stress from the situation was not high, but the vulnerability state which was accessed contained a lot of flashbacks of being abused as a kid. The shift technique then addresses what to do with the energy invested in those images and where the energy should go. The Shift is not self talk. It is not Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. It is not a matter of willing the impact to go away. Those approaches only create a duality and focuses on pushing past the intrusion. The shift focuses on what is happening at the moment, and not focused past the moment to the future outcome. I offer training in this technique and will offer an online course on its approach.
