Normalizing symptoms - is this dissociation?

[Deleted member 42783]

My diagnosis is relatively new and because I have had stretches of time where I've been relatively okay, I wonder if it is correct. A couple sessions ago my T asked me if I was experiencing flashbacks and I told him no. The thing is, I'm not sure what constitutes a flash back. I often feel the emotions and stress response when triggered but don't necessarily have visual images come to mind. So, does that count as a flashback?

Last night it occurred to me that I do have visuals. I have them often. I had sex last night and I had a lot of dissociation which is common but I also realized (because I was paying attention) that yeah, images are frequently popping into my head. They are so quick that I guess I don't pay attention to them much. Today I realize that they pop in quite a bit. Just quick little glimpses of a specific image. They happen all the time. I'm just not noticing any feelings that go with them. So my latest question is. . .Is it possible that I've become so used to them that I've normalized them? Can that happen with PTSD symptoms. Is it even a symptom at that point?

 

[EveHarrington]

Maybe you are numb to the images? Not so much normalized?

It sounds like you are having emotional flashbacks which are not uncommon. Not everyone with PTSD has visual flashbacks.

It's also VERY common to have periods of normalcy where you are symptom free. There is no diagnostic criteria saying you must experience symptoms X hours of the day, etc. (Of course if you go a very long amount of time a doc may say you no longer fit the diagnostic criteria but I think this would be measured in years, not months or weeks or days.)

 

[Deleted member 37474]

Mine started with visual flashes and sort of reexperiencing very specific small parts of the event. Kind of life disrupting and I didn't understand what was happening. I think some happen so often that you get used to it and it doesn't affect you quite so strongly. It is the new ones that I hate the most.

 

[Deleted member 42783]

Mine started with visual flashes and sort of reexperiencing very specific small parts of the event

I think over time, the visual has become separated from the emotional/sensational which is kinda weird. It hasn't been life disrupting in a long time probably because I removed myself from all work situations that triggered one event and sex with my husband has become more of a safe place and I refuse to give up my sex life. Hmmmm. Numbness may not always be bad. Except that it really makes it hard to feel and express good feelings along with the bad.

I find that when I do have visuals and dreams that they often incorporate violence that didn't specifically happen to me. It is ramped up to be so much worse than what actually happened to me. If I catch a glimpse of something awful on TV or a movie I can guarantee that my brain will add it to it's repertoire later. Actually, I don't even have to see an image. If I hear or read about something particularly awful, my brain is quite good and sending that back to me in images when I least expect it. It's very strange to me that this happens all the time now and I'm not really noticing it.

 

[Deleted member 37474]

I think over time, the visual has become separated from the emotional/sensational which is kinda wei...

Since my memories were partially blocked I sometimes wonder if my flashes or body sensations are even real? Like how would someone not remember that? But my therapist thinks the flashes are real memories and that even if they aren't they are my perception of the rape and I still have to process it in order to deal.

 

[Deleted member 42783]

@TexCat I struggle thinking my memories aren't real too. Like, if I get that wrong, everything else must be wrong too. Like it's all a big lie. So are the flashes sometimes just feelings for you?

 

[Sideways]

Flashbacks are very often not visual, despite what Hollywood might have us believe! Flashbacks can be any of your senses, reexperiencing the traumatic event much like it's happening again. Once memories have been processed? They often stop altogether.

Images are tricky. If you're seeing it happen again, that's a flashback. But if the visual images are in your mind? That's intrusive thoughts and memories. Sometimes it helps to understand the difference, because what we're experiencing each time is quite different.

My flashbacks tend to happen in phases, and I'll go through a period of months where particular events are just recurring as flashbacks until I work through those events with my T. When I experience visual flashbacks, as opposed tonmy intrusive memories which happen all the time, it's actually hard to believe that no one else can see what I'm seeing...

 

[Deleted member 42783]

Images are tricky. If you're seeing it happen again, that's a flashback. But if the visual images are in your mind? That's intrusive thoughts and memories. Sometimes it helps to understand the difference, because what we're experiencing each time is quite different.

This is getting hard for me to wrap my head around. So a visual flashback is much like a hallucination? I understand intrusive thoughts. I get them all the time. The image blips I get are probably those. There have been a few times where I have seen things out of the corner of my eye that have stopped me cold but I don't know what to call those. One time I felt a hand over my mouth when I was in bed, but again, my rape didn't involve that so I don't know why I experienced it. Everything is such a tangled mess.

 

[Sideways]

I'm not gonna pretend I know the first thing about hallucinations - I'd make an idiot of myself!

So, you know how when you experience a tactile flashback (you used the word 'sensation' earlier), you can feel it happening again? A vidial flashback is the same experience, but you're seeing it again rather than feeling it again!

 

[Deleted member 42783]

@Ragdoll Circus
You wouldn't make an idiot of yourself. A hallucination can involve any of the senses and essentially when when something that is not real is perceived as real. Which sounds a lot like how you explain a flash back.

 

[Sideways]

Which sounds a lot like how you explain

Scary similar actually.

When a doctor asks me "Have you ever had hallucinations?", I have no qualms in saying no, just the once as a medication side effect.

Do I hear voices, though? See things that aren't there? Feel someone touching me when there's no one there? No, never... Except I do, when I'm having a flashback, that's pretty much exactly what's happening.