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Can your brain make up flashbacks ?

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NM45

so i have had many flashbacks and intrusive memories and night mares about my father sexually abusing me when i was quite young around 4 yrs old, i have had flashbacks to my brother also and nightmares. but i really don’t know more about it or have any clear memory of it. could it just be my mind making it up? i dissociate quite a bit could that be holding me back from fully remembering? i have absolutely no memories of my brother and barely any of my father from childhood. it’s just scary and uncomfortable to know this has happened but i barely even know anything about it and it seems like it didn’t even happen to me , like i’m an outside watcher???
 
That's how it was for me in the beginning of my healing journey. Everything you describe sounds about right. Denial is a healthy mechanism. Don't discount it. You need it in order to heal. I found I vacillated between acceptance and denial quite often in the beginning of my journey. I no longer find denial is the number one thing I do. It's starts that way and quickly transforms to acceptance, a knowing that whatever flashbacks, intrusive memories, and nightmares I have are real.

I've had problems with depersonalization or derealization when remembering, either separately or together. With depersonalization I feel as if I have no self. With derealization I feel as if everything around me or memories are unreal or I am detached from them. Other times I feel as if I'm in a deep fog or a dreamy state.
 
sexually abusing me when i was quite young around 4 yrs old
I have a feeling, although no proof, that I was sexually abused in foster care. 11 years after my first flashback, I still don`t know the truth.

I think what I learned from my T is that dreams especially and flashbacks sometimes can provide a general idea of what the feeling of said event was. That that is what to garner out of the clues being given to you. So for instance, perhaps your soul was raped by your father. Or you felt raped. Dreams aren`t necessarily a verbatim account -- especially at the beginning of recovering memories.
 
I feel I need to clarify something about my nightmares and flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. Not everyone who has nightmares has them about what happened to them. I do. Some PTSD sufferers don't get clues from nightmares. I do. Some PTSD sufferers flashback's don't give them any hints about what happened. Mine do. The same goes for intrusive thoughts. It happened.

It takes me a while to put the pieces together from all of the clues I receive from nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts. It's not an instantaneous revelation. I've been working on my healing journey for 29 plus years.
 
I can relate to that @Freida . Yes, I want to deny and my body remembers then if my brain doesn't kick in with the memories. If not through either of those ways, my universe around me kicks in next in subtle ways at first and then louder and louder until I get. The latest one was the pizza oven part of my memory.
 
Yep - just had a killer one happen today. Crap. And I'm far enough along in the process to know that like it or not - it's real
@nm45 the good news is that with therapy they do get a bit easier to handle when they happen
 
So....I hope I’m not taking this OT but has anyone had nightmares that are more like flashbacks? I’m watching myself as a child in a scene - like a snapshot. I always know how old I am by what my hair looks like (curly, straight, short etc). I realise very quickly exactly what’s happening then I wake in a panic. The first time it was something I KNOW happened but then everything else I have no memory of but hints that they make sense. Some of them are incredibly distressing. I can’t verbalise them in case that lends them more truth.

I just wonder if I’ve got an overactive imagination.
 
That's how it was for me in the beginning of my healing journey. Everything you describe sounds about...
yeah i really go back and forth to denial and acceptance. and all the dissociative symptoms you said i have to. thanks for the response

I have a feeling, although no proof, that I was sexually abused in foster care. 11 years after my fir...
yeah i have more flashbacks and intrusive memories rather than dreams /nightmares and my dreams are usually always correlated to entrapment or being taken over by a man. i have a strong feeling that yes this has happened but it’s hard

I feel I need to clarify something about my nightmares and flashbacks and intrusive thoughts. Not eve...
yeah i so badly just want the full picture but also don’t. i don’t have nightmares of exactly what happened more stuff related and sometimes exactly related where i am a little girl and my father and brother look like they did 14 years ago so idk. my flashbacks /intrusive memories are so vague but they are giving me hints like you said and each time it like okay this happened, but i’m so against wanting to believe at the same time

Not according to my t. I keep trying to deny they are real...she says its my body remembering things my...
that’s what my therapist says too

Yep - just had a killer one happen today. Crap. And I'm far enough along in the process to know that li...
i’m sorry. i do need to speak more in therapy because i really haven’t said much around it. it’s like everytime i do i have another flashback or body memory and it just gets too much

yeah i have had hat kind of nightmare as well i saw myself as a four year old girl and my father and brother as they look 14 yrs ago because of pictures that i looked at after.i always feel like i’m imagining it all but like so many people have told me that’s denial and it’s rare that your brain/body can make up something like this ya know. there is false memory but that’s when a therapist like suggested that it happened over and over but that wasn’t the case for me i remember things on my own
 
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My T is almost anti-memory if that makes sense. It’s like she is ultra careful not to implant ideas. I used to get angry that she was so apparently dismissive but I suspect she’s doing it for my long term good.
 
I've had problems with depersonalization or derealization when remembering, either separately or together. With depersonalization I feel as if I have no self. With derealization I feel as if everything around me or memories are unreal or I am detached from them. Other times I feel as if I'm in a deep fog or a dreamy state.

That resonates with me a lot - when I come across the really scary, intense stuff in EMDR (read: basically upon scratching the surface at the moment >.<) I derealize and depersonalize. Same when I come across it randomly through being triggered and such things.
 
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