flashbacks

[SophieH85]

would love to know if anyone has experienced flash backs/scary memories of being around someone who has suffered traumatic brain injury?

My dad had an accident 35 years ago and I have memories of him shouting and being completely incoherent and having to visit him as a child and not knowing how to be ok in that situation.

I was told to hug and kiss my dad but i found the visits very uncomfortable and scary and didn’t want to be there.

as an adult I now have compassion and understanding for him, but the memories I have of visiting him as a child are very scary.

Would love to hear similar experiences.

[cat3]

I sympathise Sophie, but from a slightly different perspective. My father suffered badly from manic depression and was hospitalised for long periods at a mental health hospital in Macclesfield, Cheshire.

As a child it seemed a massive, foreboding place in enormous grounds with patients wandering aimlessly around accompanied by nurses. It was only years later that I came to understand how their (& my dad's) 'zombified' state was due to medication. But as a child those images and my dad's strangeness was haunting.

20 years on I put those 'ghosts' to rest. After he overdosed I needed to take control ; regularly driving my mum to that same place. I was fearful, obviously, for my dad's mental health and my mum's own state of mind but on seeing, through adult eyes, what was actually an amazingly beautiful building, and speaking with compassionate staff, the childhood trauma was replaced by rational, down to earth concerns.

I hope there's a way you can revisit your past m'love, if only by talking in detail of your emotions, fears and sensations from that period in your life. Reliving old traumas from the position of 'here & now' safety can be highly therapeutic. We're always here ; msg me if you feel it could help... Cat x

[SophieH85 in reply to cat3]

thank you for this beautiful message.

I have similar memories of the nursing home, the noises, dullness of it all.

Thank you for sharing ❤️

[cat3 in reply to SophieH85]

Keep talking Sophie ; it can be a powerful tool...😏 x