Article

Grounding After Flashbacks

Trauma-informed strategies for stabilising after triggers, including sensory grounding, narrative reframing, and what to expect from trauma-focused CBT.

---

What Flashbacks Actually Are

If you've experienced a flashback, you already know the disorienting quality of it — the way reality seems to thin, the way your body reacts to something that isn't happening now as though it absolutely is. What you may not know is why that happens, and understanding the "why" can take some of the terror out of it.

A flashback is not a sign that you're losing your mind. It's a sign that your mind is doing exactly what it evolved to do — just at the wrong time.

When we experience trauma, the memory of that event gets stored differently from ordinary memories. Under extreme threat, the brain's alarm system (the amygdala) takes over from the parts that normally process and file experiences in an orderly, time-stamped way (primarily the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex). The result is a memory that hasn't been properly processed — it's fragmented, vivid, sensory, and critically, it lacks a clear "this was then, not now" tag.

So when something in the present — a sound, a smell, a particular quality of light, someone's tone of voice — matches a fragment of that unprocessed memory, your brain doesn't think "that reminds me of something that happened." It thinks "that is happening." Your nervous system responds accordingly: full threat mode, present tense.

This is not weakness. This is neurobiology. Your brain is trying to protect you using the only filing system it had available during the worst moments of your life.

Flashbacks Aren't Always Visual

When people hear "flashback," they often picture a cinematic replay — a full visual scene, like a film playing behind the eyes. That does happen. But flashbacks come in many forms:

• Emotional flashbacks: A sudden wave of terror, shame, helplessness, or rage that seems to come from nowhere and feels completely disproportionate to the current situation.
• Somatic flashbacks: Physical sensations — nausea, pain, tension, the feeling of being held down or unable to breathe — without any current physical cause.
• Sensory fragments: A smell, a taste, a particular sound that floods you with distress you can't quite place.
• Behavioural re-enactments: Suddenly freezing, becoming very small and quiet, or responding to a safe person as though they're dangerous.

If any of these are familiar, you're not being dramatic. You're experiencing the echoes of something real that your nervous system hasn't finished processing.

When a Flashback Hits: First Response

The single most important thing to do during or immediately after a flashback is to orient yourself to the present. Your brain is stuck in the past — your job is to give it evidence that you're here, now, safe.

This is easier said than done when your heart is hammering and your body is convinced you're in danger. So we use the senses. The body can't argue with direct sensory input, and that makes it our best anchor.

The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique

This is the most widely used sensory grounding exercise, and for good reason — it's simple, portable, and effective.

Work through your senses systematically:

5 things you can SEE. Name them out loud if possible. "I can see the blue cushion. The crack in the ceiling. The light from the window. My hands on my knees. The mug on the table." Be specific. Specific means present.

4 things you can TOUCH. Feel the texture of the chair. The weight of your feet on the floor. The fabric of your sleeve. The temperature of the air on your skin. Notice the physical sensations deliberately.

3 things you can HEAR. The hum of the fridge. Traffic outside. A bird. Your own breathing. Sounds anchor you in real time — they can't come from the past.

2 things you can SMELL. This might take effort. Smell your coffee, your sleeve, a candle, or simply the air in the room. Olfactory input is powerful because it goes directly to the brain's emotional processing centres — used deliberately, it can override the trauma memory's grip.

1 thing you can TASTE. Take a sip of water. Notice the temperature and the feeling of it in your mouth. If you don't have a drink, run your tongue along your teeth and notice what that feels like.

The point isn't to make the distress vanish. It's to bring your awareness back into your body, in this room, at this moment. Even a partial shift — from "I'm completely there" to "I'm partly here" — is a meaningful victory.

Additional Grounding Strategies

Different things work for different people, and what works may vary depending on the day. Build a toolkit rather than relying on a single technique.

Temperature change. Hold an ice cube. Splash cold water on your face. Step outside into cold air. The shock of temperature change activates the vagus nerve and can shift your nervous system out of threat mode remarkably quickly.

Grounding statement. Have a prepared statement ready. Something like: "My name is [name]. I am [age] years old. I am in [location]. Today is [day and date]. I am safe right now." Say it out loud. The act of speaking uses your prefrontal cortex — the rational brain that the flashback is trying to bypass.

Bilateral movement. Walk. Alternate tapping your knees. Cross your arms and tap alternating shoulders (the "butterfly hug"). Bilateral stimulation activates both hemispheres of the brain and can help the memory system process what's been triggered.

Strong sensory input. Bite into a lemon. Snap a hair band on your wrist. Smell something pungent like peppermint oil or coffee grounds. Stamp your feet hard on the floor. These aren't subtle, and that's the point. Subtle doesn't always cut through.

Describe your environment in detail. Narrate what you see as though describing it to someone who's never been there. "I'm in a kitchen. The walls are white. There's a clock above the door that says 14:47. The tap is dripping slightly." This engages the language and observation centres of your brain, pulling resources away from the alarm system.

After the Storm: Narrative Reframing

Once you're grounded and the acute distress has eased, there's a second layer of work that can help over time. This isn't about doing anything during a flashback — it's about what you do in the calmer moments between them.

Trauma memories are stored in a fragmented, sensory, present-tense way. Recovery involves gradually helping those memories become past-tense narratives — stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories that your brain can file under "things that happened to me" rather than "things that are happening to me."

This is the core mechanism of evidence-based trauma therapies like Trauma-Focused CBT, EMDR, and Cognitive Processing Therapy. But there are aspects of narrative reframing you can begin gently on your own:

Name the trigger. After a flashback, when you're calm enough, try to identify what triggered it. Was it a sound? A situation? Someone's behaviour? Understanding your triggers isn't about avoiding them forever — it's about making the connection conscious. When you know why your brain sounded the alarm, the alarm becomes less frightening. It's the difference between a smoke alarm going off with no explanation and a smoke alarm going off because you burnt the toast.

Separate "then" from "now." Practise saying — out loud if it helps — "That was then. This is now. I felt [feeling] because [trigger] reminded my brain of [past event]. But I am here, and that is over." This sounds simplistic. It is also, over time, profoundly retraining.

Write it down (if it feels safe). Some people find journalling about their experience helpful — not the trauma itself, necessarily, but the flashback. What triggered it. What you felt. How you grounded yourself. What helped. This creates a narrative about the flashback, which gives you a sense of agency. You're no longer just the person it happened to. You're the person who noticed it, understood it, and responded to it.

Challenge the meaning. Trauma has a way of leaving behind beliefs that feel like facts: "I'm not safe anywhere." "It was my fault." "I should have been able to stop it." "I'm broken." These beliefs are understandable — they're the mind's attempt to make sense of something senseless. But they are beliefs, not facts. And beliefs can be examined, tested, and revised. This is best done with professional support, but even noticing the belief — "There's that thought again: it was my fault" — creates a crucial sliver of distance between you and it.

What to Expect from Trauma-Focused CBT

If flashbacks are significantly affecting your daily life, trauma-focused therapy may be the right next step. Here's what it typically involves, so you know what you're walking into.

Assessment first. A good trauma therapist won't dive straight into the trauma narrative. You'll start with a thorough assessment — understanding your history, your symptoms, your strengths, and your current stability. If you need more stabilisation before processing (and some people do), that's where you'll begin.

Stabilisation and skills. Before any direct trauma work, you'll build a toolkit of grounding and emotional regulation skills — many of which you've read about above, plus others tailored to your specific needs. This isn't busywork. It's laying the foundation.

Processing the memory. This is the part people are often most nervous about, and understandably so. In Trauma-Focused CBT, you'll work with your therapist to gradually approach the trauma memory — understanding it, putting it into words, and processing the meanings you've attached to it. This is done at your pace, with your therapist monitoring your distress and helping you stay within a manageable range.

The goal isn't to forget what happened. It's to help your brain file the memory properly — with a time stamp, a narrative structure, and an updated set of meanings. After processing, most people find that the memory is still there but it's lost its present-tense, sensory, overwhelming quality. It becomes something that happened to them, rather than something that's still happening.

It's not comfortable, but it works. Trauma processing is hard. There are sessions where you'll feel worse before you feel better. A skilled therapist will prepare you for this and will never push you beyond what you can manage. The evidence base for Trauma-Focused CBT is robust — it's recommended by NICE as a frontline treatment for PTSD, and most people experience significant improvement within 8–20 sessions.

When to Seek Help

Self-help grounding techniques are valuable. They can reduce the intensity and duration of flashbacks, help you feel more in control, and make daily life more manageable. But they're not a substitute for therapy when the trauma is significantly impacting your life.

Consider seeking professional support if:

• Flashbacks are frequent (several times a week or more)
• You're avoiding significant parts of your life because of triggers
• Sleep is severely disrupted by nightmares or hyperarousal
• You're using alcohol, drugs, or self-harm to manage the distress
• You feel emotionally numb or disconnected from people you care about
• The symptoms have lasted longer than a month and aren't improving
• You simply feel ready to address what happened — that in itself is enough

You don't need to be in crisis to deserve support. You don't need to have experienced a "bad enough" trauma. If it's affecting you, it's enough.

A Final Thought

Flashbacks are your brain's attempt to keep you safe using outdated information. They are not evidence that you are broken, weak, or unable to recover. They are evidence that something happened to you that was overwhelming, and that your nervous system is still carrying it.

With the right support, trauma memories can be processed, filed, and integrated. The flashbacks can reduce in frequency and intensity. The hypervigilance can ease. You can reclaim the parts of your life that trauma has occupied.

Recovery isn't linear, and it isn't quick. But it is real, and it is possible.

---