How I Stop a Flashback Before It Wrecks My Day
Some days I’m fine until I’m not.
No warning. No obvious trigger. Just a split second of nothing turning into too much.
It feels like drowning in a memory I can’t name.
Like rage without a target. Shame without context.
It’s not emotional. It’s biological.
My body remembers before my brain catches up.
That’s what an emotional flashback feels like.
And it’s taken over more days than I want to admit.
I’ve had them in the middle of work. While sending emails. While brushing my teeth.
I’ve had them at 2am. Soaked in sweat. Heart pounding. No idea why.
I’ve had them while trying to explain something that should’ve been easy but wasn’t because my nervous system was trying to survive a war that already ended.
I got tired of white-knuckling it.
So I built something I could use when it hits.
It’s called The Emotional Flashback Interrupt Protocol
And I made it for me
But I’m giving it to you
Not because I figured it all out
But because sometimes I can’t even get through a Tuesday without my body trying to shut down
I don’t care what the label is.
PTSD. CPTSD. Survival mode.
Whatever name you want to give it, the experience is the same
You freeze
You flood
You spin
You vanish
And the world around you keeps asking you to be normal
This is how I stop that spiral.
Ninety seconds
That’s what it takes to interrupt it if you catch it in time
This isn’t mindset
It’s a tactical nervous system intervention
It’s breath and body and reorientation
It’s what I reach for when nothing else works
And now it’s yours
Free
Pay what you want
Like everything I build
I don’t want your email
I don’t want your praise
I don’t even want you to tell me it worked
I just want you to get your clarity back
So you can survive the moment
And maybe the next one after that
This isn’t about healing
It’s about holding the line when everything in you wants to collapse
So if you’ve ever sat in a frozen body while the rest of the world kept moving
This one’s for you
I built it because I had no one else to build it for me
Now you don’t have to do it alone
— Cody Taymore
Kill The Silence
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Thank you so very much for offering these tools, Cody. You probably have no idea the impact that you are making on so many people.
I am sorry you have to go through these things. I can relate so much. I personally realized that I can't keep waking up in terror, having paranoia and attacks and finding ways to cope so I started learning how to release the trauma by finishing the processes that are stuck in our body. For that I needed to learn how to build up capacity of my nervous system since I have developmental trauma as well. I am still in the process but it is helping so much in comparison to how it was. Irene Lyon talks a lot about this, if you want to check it out. If this doesn't relate to you than just ignore it or delete it.