• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Flashbacks or memories

Status
Not open for further replies.

cntrymom08466

Confident
I was in chat and someone suggested I post and ask others what this could be? I'm not sure what it is or where it belongs on here, but here goes.

Today and yesterday I have been remembering a certain incident or day when my ex, my kids' father, got real angry and kicked our tv and broke the children's gingerbread houses that were sitting on top. Then proceeded to kick the high chair our youngest had been sitting in a short time before and then stormed out. I don't remember what set him off, but it usually didn't take much. I always remember walking on egg shells trying not to make him angry. He was bi-polar and didn't like to stay on medication. He didn't hit us..it did come out that he had been abusing our children in a different way, but months and months later. But my whole life with him was like walking in a mine field. It's just holidays seem to be bringing back more memories. Are these flashbacks? There was no "abuse/hitting". Or is it just memories?
 
For me, a flashback is like you are reliving some aspect of the memory. For example: I was driving the other day in the the daytime and saw the sky turn to night and rain pouring around me and water rising. This was after a stressor of seeing hurricane debri in front of house after house. Part of me knew it wasn't really happening, yet it felt real and my emotions were intense fear (the same from that night during the hurricane).

A bad memory: I can remember the time that I fell and broke my elbow. I remember how it felt to hit the ground and have the wind knocked out of me. I can remember how I felt in that moment. Afraid because I couldn't breathe easily and I had a young child with me who couldn't open the door to the building to get us some help.

For me, I can't control when flashbacks come over me. I can retrieve and control memories at will. I can "remember" or retrieve parts of my rape and look back on it at will, but a flashback of it usually comes from a trigger and is more intense and not necessarily something that I can turn off. Though, I am getting better at grounding skills for that.
 
Sorry, posted too soon. I am at work, so not easy to do this. I had a hard time getting out of bed this morning. Just like I used to, just not as bad, because I was able to make myself get up without extra medicine. I did end up crying and yelling on the way to work. I feel like I'm letting him control me again and I don't want that..:(
 
@cntrymom08466 I do not know whether you're experiencing flashbacks. All of my former flashbacks were about tthe myriad of terrorizing and paralyzing extreme trauma memories from my past.

And like @TexCat above-shared I too felt like I was being triggered by something or someone in my present day life then flashing back and reliving my past horrific memories. I would feel great anxiety and trepidation and crazy in my mind like you and I was afraid and I too could not control them.

They just came at will. And they began to occur only after several very traumatic events that occurred in my adult life.

So I do not know if you're having flashbacks or memories. I hope you find relief from them as I have. I had to go to EMDR Therapy to stop them. A good solid trauma therapist may be able to assist you in determining this and I wish you all the best.
 
It sounds more like intrusive memories than flashbacks. Flashbacks tend to be reliving experiences - they are a form of dissociative state.

Intrusive memories get misunderstood a bit as ‘just memories’, but they can be just as distressing, and they can replay in your mind’s eye over and over relentlessly.

Mindfulness can sometimes help get through it as an alternative to struggling with the memories and force them to stop. That doesn’t work - we can’t force our brain to stop thinking something. Trying to force our brain to stop tends to make the memories come back with a vengeance and cause us more distress as we struggle against them.

So, when they start up, notice they’re just those same memories again, acknowledge they’re there, and (as self compassionately as you can), remind Brain that “we don’t need to focus on that right now” and then re-engage your focus on the task at hand. This is something you may have to do over and over. The important part is to try not to force them away, because that’s the part that causes distress (the “I don’t want to think about this, stop it stop it stop it” self talk)

If you can, perhaps try and schedule time for self-soothing each day while you’re going through this difficult period?
 
:confused:@Ragdoll Circus boy..that was a mess up post from me. lol. Ok. thanks I like what you said. I'm going to try it. It is hard to find "any" time for myself, but I'm going to try.
 
I’ve never figured out the difference between a flashback or a trigger, or many of the other words I read in posts on here, all I know is, what happens when I get one.

For example something as simple as the smell of meat being cooked on a bar-b-q, it takes me right back to a horrible accident that I attended during my time in the ambulace service. Along with an incident that happened during my time in the Navy, when I was inside the funnel, with another bloke, above a working ships boiler.

A flash back to me, is something that jerks you’re mind back to events from youre past, that you really didnt want to remember or think about. Most of these come in my nightmares, which are complete re-enactment's of past events, that I wake up screaming from.

Call them what you want, I simply detest them!
 
I’ve never figured out the difference between a flashback or a trigger, or many of the other words I r...
@Gadgie I do too! And I have had anxiety all day on top of it. I just don't know what to do. I called my therapist and waiting on a call back. I don't know if need a med change, just started a new med a few months ago and had the last up on it a month and 1/2 ago. Last I seen psychiatrist I thought..I was doing pretty good, but now this. Maybe this will pass...I'm hoping. Coming up on the holiday makes it rough for me and for getting in touch with dr's and therapists probably. :(
 
Intrusive memories get misunderstood a bit as ‘just memories’, but they can be just as distressing, and they can replay in your mind’s eye over and over relentlessly.

That statement right there is why so many people don't think anything is wrong. I spent the last 20 years with intrusive memories. Not fun.

The label of what it's called isn't as important as how you can deal with them. I assume you're already diagnosed with PTSD?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top