If there are trauma memories, they will come back when you are safe & ready. There is no way to force them back, & trying to make them come back might only repress it more.
This.
I also don't think flashbacks are the magical answer to help you remember - I have flashbacks and am no closer to knowing much that happened that left me traumatized. For about a period of 6 months (until very recently) I had one recurring flashback, over and over and over - snippets of it at a time, lasting 1-2 seconds at most. Hundreds of times a day, sometimes. By writing them down, drawing them, mapping them out, I can put together what I think happened, and how I felt. but the memory is not of the traumatic indecent itself - it's the aftermath and the trauma of THAT, that was in the flashbacks.
My experience of uncovering what happened (so far):
All I know from that day in childhood is -
something happened to cause me to be absolutely terrified and incredibly overwhelmed. The flashbacks start as I reach my bedroom door, where I am feeling too in response to the Whatever Happened. I go put myself in the bedroom cupboard, and feel so incredibly alone, and hopeless. I start to think 'this is my life for the rest of my life - I will never have someone there to 'save me', there is no escape and no different outcome'. I started to feel incredibly hopeless, suicidal. I got out of my coward, walked around the room, sat on the end of the bed. I was suicidal and wanted to die in order to escape. I was about 9 or 10 years old, had no idea or knowledge of 'how to die' so I closed my eyes, and wished myself dead. I imagined flying away up very high, into 'heaven' and not returning. when it didn't work, my hopelessness only intensified. That particular set of flashbacks have more or less stopped. I still don't know What Happened. I can remember quite a few things my mother did to me that were abusive and terrifying, but I am not in touch with the feelings of those situations. It seems the things I
can't remember are the ones that I am
feeling.
I also didn't realize that it
was flashbacks I was having. I thought flashbacks were of entire sequences, and you 'had a video' of what happened. But that is not necessarily the case. My flashbacks only ever last for a second, two at the most. More often than not, they are so brief, or don't even have a strong image with them, that th sonly clue I even had one is a sudden wondering as to why I am where I am, and what am I doing (example - the clouds and the way the sun was hidden behind them the other day, triggered off a flashback, where I was back in childhood - there was no image with it, just a sudden fear, and temporary dissociation feeling, and then I was thinking '
what am I doing driving a car - children don't drive cars? Why am I in this city - I didn't live here growing up?!'
Imagine you are in childhood, then in a split second, you have been transported into a a different reality, in which you are suddenly an adult, driving a car, living in a city you didn't live in when your were a child. The only other way I can explain it is "its' as if the past and present TOUCH; they are not separated by time (i.e. 30 years in my case) - but a mere second, and a blink of an eye. One second, back in childhood, feeling intensely scared, and hopeless; the next - back in the present. It can be the most mundane and innocent think that triggers it for me
- the sun shining, a closer, a smell, the light rays in the sky, or the angle of the sun or clouds - nothing I can pinpoint to one particular episode of trauma, but back to my childhood (full of trauma) in general. And it is very different form an 'intense memory' of different things - because in a flashback, I really do feel as if I am THERE, not just remembering. (Hence the
time confusion as to what is my dog doing in the 'now' when I did not have that dog growing up' - just as another example).
It took months and months of micro-second flashbacks going back to that day in childhood where I was in my bedroom cupboard, in order for me to 'get the sequence' and put it together. It was literally, one 'screenshot' at a time,
never in order, and often the same 'shot' (flashback) - from all different angles, just to make it more confusing :confused: - and over and over again. I had to literally draw out what I 'saw' in each 'freeze-frame' but it still took months to put together what happened, let alone what I was feeling at the time it happened.
It sounds like you are able to, at times, work out what upset you - 'connect the dots' as you say. This would be worth exploring with your new T. If you are able to identify WHAT triggers you, it might help you process your panic.
I don't believe you have to know what happened in order to be helped or healed.
I think our minds will only reveal what we are able to cope with, and somethings might not ever be remembered. I would DEFINITELY stay AWAY form anyone trained or not, who tries to 'get you to remember' - I think the worst thing you (or anyone with trauma) could do would be hypnosis, but that is my view, based on what a very trusted T said to me once. Our minds, confusing as they are, are the way they are, to PROTECT us. It can be dangerous to mess with it, frustrating as it might be to 'not know'.
What you can start with, with your T, is making a list of all the things that terrify you the most. Even if you can't work out WHY they do, you can at least work on making them NOT terrify you anymore.
