The very first 'flashbacks' I has WERE of old dreams. I'd be sitting there and one after another after another, dreams I had had years and years ago hit me - like I was dreaming them for the first time, right then (I was awake).., It was very frightening.
After a while, they went away. A year? later, I started having flashbacks for real, of previous trauma.
Nowdays I think why I was having the 'dream' flashbacks was to check to see if I could cope' with them - kind of like a practice run before the real thing. Once I 'got used' to the concept of sudden, intrusive, flashbacks (initially of dreams I had had), the real thing followed.
Not saying that will happen to you - but more that it is very possible to have flashbacks of DREAMS, rather than flashbacks of traumatic things - the 'dreams' you are remembering might just be dreams and not actual memories.
I am realizing also that 'flashbacks' and 'memories' seem (for me anyway) to be on a continuum - Sometimes the flashes are just memories, other times they are flashbacks, and more often lately, I am aware they are ALMOST flashbacks - they stop just short of a full blown flashback with all senses involved.
Our minds are complicated things, that's for sure - what helps me is to remind myself that they very mind that has kept me safe mentally and emotionally all these years is the same mind that is now trying to HELP me deal with the trauma. I try to see the PTSD as a way of my mind still trying to protect me - even though it often feels my mind is 'against' me.
