Are Your Flashbacks Confused?

[Venusian]

I have had flashbacks that put me right back into being a very young child. In my active memory, the ones that were not interrupted by trauma, there was only one incident that happened that the flashbacks lead to. Everything that I have remembered in the past 2 years, the actual memory that have more than one sense come back in little, almost postcards of the trauma, ones that I wanted to remember and once they came back ones I wanted to forget again. Reading through my diary some of what I wrote about has already been reburied but is not far from the surface.

What I remember, sometimes I can't reconcile what I know happened and what my life was like back then as a five year old. Can all of that have happened in such a relatively short time and how could I have hid all that from people that knew me? There are times when I wonder if there were separate traumas that are getting mixed together. Most of the flashbacks are one sense and all I know is pain and terror. But there are times that I flashback to the beginning, when he was joking with me and making me laugh and the times he tried to comfort me after he hurt me so badly when I must have been in shock and thinking things were back to normal again. That is what sticks in my brain more than the pain. It is the bits of normalcy when he isn't being a monster. Then there were the flashbacks that brought new levels of pain and something that all I can feel is a sensation, there is nothing else but that. These are the ones that last for days until something in my mind now can accept that I did experience it at some point in my life and once I do that it places it back then, the same incident. It is strange that the painful flashbacks can hide away so quickly and the normal ones are the ones that cause so much distress, these are the ones that keep me awake all through the night. The other ones wake me up but I can usually fall back asleep once I know I am safe and not a child anymore.

I was gone somewhere between 3 and 4 hours and some of that time was what I always remembered but that part is only less than a half an hour. Can what I remember in slices of time have all been done in that amount of time? I also remember that I was taken to a bathroom to be cleaned up. He took me she didn't. I never saw her face but I saw his and sometimes I begin to wonder if there were two separate traumas and my mind is now melding them together creating something that is fiction but is based in truth. It happened so long ago I don't think it even matters now, whatever happened it caused the PTSD and I have to deal with it but...

I guess I am asking if there is anyone else that wonders about what really happened and if their memory even though the bits are accurate, if the memory of how it all fits together is correct?

 

[bell]

My flashbacks are confused, too, so you're not alone. I also don't know what my triggers are (although I'm learning), so when they come without warning, I get super confused by them!

To me, I think that remembering the good stuff shows that you want to believe in the good in the world. But, I also know what it's like to be betrayed by someone who is also good to you, and how unsettling and confusing that is.

Not much help, really, but wanted to say that I understand, to at least some degree, of what you're going through, and that it is no fun. Take care of yourself today and whenever those memories pop up. :)

 

[ashdawn8287]

Mine are confused as well. One time I was taking bath. When I was 4-5 years old I experienced a lot of trauma. My flashback jumped from one to another in that time frame. I just cried and cried and cried after words, because that is all I could do. I felt so sorry for what I had gone through and grieved and honestly still am grieving.

That year I got sexual abused, a guy tried to kidnap me out of the front yard, and a 6th grader bullied me-he tied me up to a pole and left me there as I was screaming and crying. An old lady saw me and didn't even do anything, she just left me there. I am not sure how long I was there but I remember feeling terrified. It happened when it was daylight out and my parents didn't find me until it was dark time. I have a scar on my right wrist from the rope he used to tie me up. I am not sure if he did anything else to me as I can't remember. All those feelings of fear, hopelessness, sorrow, neglect, abuse, came flooding back to me while I was taking a bath. It really CONFUSED me and was very overwhelming. Thinking about this has now I am thinking about how I thought that stuff was normal and how the world worked. How terrifying for a young girl. How sad.

I get scared thinking about what the guy in the red truck did to other children after he tried kidnapping me. How my next door neighbor play mate got on his bike and left me. I see the guy getting out of his truck coming after me. He was old and very creepy you could just sense the evilness around him. I remember screaming as LOUD as I could and just freezing up. I have looked up kidnapping cases in my area and surround states based on the highway I use to live by. I have found stories around that time of a red truck-particular a case in another next door state where she was sexual abused and then murdered that same year, and the only clue the found was it was a guy in a red truck. My parents reported it to the cops and I do remember getting a couple of letters/number from his license plate. I use to be scared walking alone after that or just in general being by myself in public. I had severe anxiety.

I remember what it felt like when that 6th grade picked me up against my will and carried me and tied me to the pole as I tried fighting really hard, but just couldn't. I remember the crying exhaustingly and being so mad at my parents for not finding me sooner. I remember hugging my dad afterwards.. I remember them yelling at me making me feel worse. I remember the 6th grader had an asthma attack a couple of weeks later and the ambulance was outside of his house. I remember going up to the ambulance and screaming at the 6th grader. I remember feeling so happy he had an asthma attack and letting him know that he deserved it.

I remember being woken up to strange touches. I remember the silence and pretending I was asleep. I remember my funny fish and neon tshirt I was wearing that night. I remember being touched and as soon as the hands hit my underwear I blacked out. I remember being really confused about who was in my bed with me. I remember dissociating and looking at myself from a different angle-it is hard to explain that. I remember the next morning getting made fun of by my cousins for noises I was making that night. (We were at a cabin, the cabin had about 12-15 beds, most of the children slept on the beds in the cabin while some of the adults slept downstairs or in a hotel close by). I am not sure who it as and it bothers me a LOT. I know it was a family member and it was a male. I remember spacing out at breakfast and not eating. The feelings I felt made me shut down completely.

All that stuff jumped from one to the next when I was taking a bath. I cried for abut 4 days straight.

 

[Seasounds]

Yes, the process can be frustrating. You are amidst a good worthy investigation, and articulate the process, of how the puzzle pieces come together. My trauma memories revealed themselves, mostly, in bits, at a time. Even though I wanted all of the details 'right now', my unconscious had its own timing. I'm not in control of that process. I'm not sure anyone is.

However, I can influence the process. As I have continually built my community of safety, internalized safety, explored body awareness, and held the intention to know more, the memories have become clearer. Since it took two decades, it was a good decision to live life, build living skills, and trust the details would come.

Good luck in your journey!

 

[Seasounds]

You raised the interesting question about memory: to trust, or not to trust, that memories are real? The subject is so controversial, I rally the courage, to share my opinion.

Internally, I hold my 'felt' and 'perceived' experience of the memory, and the 'real' experience, to be true. I expect my providers to do the same. This allows me the psychic space to explore, not judge, my psychological material.

Since providers can get concerned about lawsuits regarding memory, I let them know that I do not expect the abuser's memory to agree with mine. This perspective has helped me trust myself, and work through trauma, from my perspective, amidst a profession that is being educated to not trust memories.

 

[stephanie44]

My memories can be a bit mixed up as well. I think I finally decided that whatever happened to me did happen. Although I cannot change that, I can try to manage my symptoms in the present. This is not always easy. I think I wanted to know all of the answers and remember everything but I am not sure that will happen. I will be thinking of you!

 

[Venusian]

Sometimes I just don't have the words. I have been writing and rewriting a response and everything comes out jumbled. No one has told me that they don't believe me. It is myself that sometimes has doubts but I know it happened. The thing that keeps the confusion going is that no one noticed. I have children, I noticed things. Sometimes I knew before they did that they were sick. I knew when they were hiding something. My parents weren't abusive and I never thought of them as neglectful but I have the scars to prove that belief wrong. There is physical evidence that something traumatic happened when I was a child, something I wasn't treated for and something my parents missed. It isn't just my memory. I haven't been able to talk to my parents since the doctor told me that. I guess it is easier to believe that my memory is wrong rather than my parents were that neglectful when I was young.

I took a college course on organizational behavior and the instructor said something that really stuck in my mind. He said that people only see in other people what they see in themselves. It is how people get away with things like fraud.

 

[Venusian]

To me, I think that remembering the good stuff shows that you want to believe in the good in the world. But, I also know what it's like to be betrayed by someone who is also good to you, and how unsettling and confusing that is.

Thanks for putting it like that. I sometimes feel that it is a disadvantage, I don't always see the bad in people until it is too late. A lot of people take advantage of that, more than I want to admit. I want to believe that there are more good people than bad, just not ones that want to be around me. It is something I have to work on. I have to put up boundaries for myself, learn how to give without making myself a doormat. I have a hard time making friends or letting people close.

Internally, I hold my 'felt' and 'perceived' experience of the memory, and the 'real' experience, to be true. I expect my providers to do the same. This allows me the psychic space to explore, not judge, my psychological material.

This is great advice. I know that what the flashbacks have shown me are real memory, when I am in the midst of them, I know it and I know when they happened. Some of them remain in my memory and others get reburied. I write most of them down when they happen or shortly afterwards and I am sometimes surprised when I go back and read them a few months later. It is one of the reasons that sometimes I doubt myself. I can only look at bits of it and when I see it written down, all of it, it is too much. It is hard to believe that much happened to me and there were no outward signs. I sometimes feel like I am just starting to understand it all and other times like I am a fraud and shouldn't be here. Then something happens and triggers a memory and it all comes crashing back. I am trying to get past what was done and try to figure out who I am again. I guess with this post I am just admitting I am not quite there yet, accepting that it was all real even at the same time knowing it is.., if that makes sense.

think I wanted to know all of the answers and remember everything but I am not sure that will happen.

That is exactly what I wanted, for years. I could remember so much and then nothing. It was a wall that I couldn't get through but I could never let it go. Two years ago it started coming back, someone said something and it was there, not everything, just a little more of it and then there was more and every little piece of the puzzle got worse and worse. I think there is more there but I am not sure if I could handle anymore, not right now.

 

[Venusian]

I don't know what is happening to my post, there is a big chunk of it not showing up and yet it is there when I open the edit screen.

 

[Nicolette]

Fixed - there were talking marks " missing on the first quote :) After the number 8.....

 

[Venusian]

Thank you @Nicolette :)

 

[SnowJo]

I have had flashbacks that put me right back into being a very young child. In my active memory, the o...

I hear you and I hope you find solice in your journey. be kind to yourself as often as you can.
There's a feeling of unreality that I can't shake about my life. Like a broken puzzle. I have developed an ecosystem of parts to look after myself.
There are so many broken links in my memory but enough horrid memories to last a lifetime, so not sure I want them all anymore.