 What's going on here? Welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, hi, hello, my name is Lydia and today I want to talk a little bit about how to help someone who's experiencing a flashback. Now as you guys know, I'm daily used to PTSD among other mental health conditions. I don't want to get too into that right now, but focusing on the PTSD, I struggle a lot with flashback. I haven't gone a day where I haven't had a flashback in, I don't know how long, and I wanted to make this video because I know a lot of you also struggle with PTSD, flashback. I'm only learning coping skills now and I thought I'd share them along the journey that I'm on with my recovery. First and foremost, the best thing you can do when you're experiencing a flashback, just yourself, is grounding technique. I find if someone's with me and I'm having a flashback, I breathe really heavily, like I'm kind of ventilating, basically having a panic attack, and the best thing someone can do with me is sit in front of me, make me look at them, keep my eyes open, and just breathe in, breathe out. I found it to be a really effective thing when someone, look at uni, when I was last in uni for a lecture, someone in my lecture could see I was having a flashback and she sat in front of me and she was like, just breathe and just look at me. Because the thing that I do when I have flashbacks is I close my eyes and it makes it more vivid and worse, I don't know what I do, but I can't control it. But if someone's like literally like holding my eyes open, I can't see it as much, I can't see bits, but I can't see the whole thing and it makes it last a shorter time as well, so that's one really helpful thing. Knowing what positive triggers are, I'm going to make an entire video about positive triggers, another thing that's important is knowing, is letting those around you know what won't help you and what will make you worse. For me it is physical contact, the worst thing you can do when I'm having a flashback is put a hand on me. One, it triggers me anyway. If I am in a flashback I do not, I am not aware of my surroundings and it's where I did dissociative disorders kind of cross over here. I'm not in that moment, so you touch me makes me feel like I'm at risk and quite often or not, this is an open the case, is I'll just swing and punch because I feel like I'm under attack. So yeah, make sure people around you know what not to do because you don't want to accidentally knock someone's tooth out. So some more tips on how you can help someone who's having a flashback. These things also applies if you're having a panic attack. So these things could be helpful with anxiety, with PTSD, so tell them in that moment they are having a flashback or a panic attack and even though it feels real, it's not. Make sure, tell them the date, tell them the time, tell them where they are. When I know that I have flashbacks, the entire surroundings around me just disappear. I said I couldn't place myself where I am. So having someone tell me where I am, what's going on, what date, what time, it's a really big grounding thing. Moving forward with the surroundings thing is you have to help them like remind them what's around. So for me, right now, my laptop's here, gave my friends in, the decay makeup thing is here. Just telling them like you're on your bed, you've got your way of blanket, the light, the small lights are not the big light, you're in your flat, that really helps. Encouragement to take deep breaths as well because you are hyperventilating and it actually increases the feeling of panic and fear. So the sooner you can calm someone down and calm yourself down, the better it is. And the big thing, I have to put this in there, I have to throw this in there. Please, please, please don't make physical contact, don't be fast moving, don't do anything that could wait worse in the situation. Unless physical contact helps, for me it makes me a lot worse. If you do want to make physical contact, ask them. The big thing for me is when I have a flashback is I try and I say I try. I do try and wrap myself up in my weight blanket because it's physical contact but it's not a person. And if it's a person, it makes me a lot more agitated. And when I'm agitated, I don't even know what comes over me because I'm not a violent person on the whole. Like, I'm really not. So for me, the big thing is medication. Medication helps me out and I'm having a flashback that calms me down. Hence why I take benzodiazepines. So as you always know, I have my regular benzos and I have my PRN benzos. When I'm having a flashback, the best thing that anyone could do for me would be to give me my medication. So I don't want to talk about medication I take at the moment. Just because last time I talked about my meds, I got a lot of hope for it. So I don't want to talk about that right now. But what you could do is make a PTSD plan. And I do plan on making a video about this and showing you what the process is because I think that could be a really helpful tool for you guys. There are a lot of things you can do to help someone having a flashback. It's just about knowing the person, knowing their triggers, knowing how to be there without setting them up. Like I said, people around me didn't know how to help me and they unintentionally triggered me into a very agitated and aggressive vision and I ended up getting medicated because I was in hospital. That's where I was last month, by the way. I was in hospital. I hope this video has been helpful in some way. Probably not, it is me. But these are some things that I use in my own life and have helped me. Okay, I think I'm done. Yeah, bye. The camera was way too far away from me.