Are these flashbacks?

[oakleaves]

Hi, I am new(ish) here and I have only recently started to face/confront my past experiences. To be honest saying face it might be an exaggeration but I had an assessment for EMDR last week even though I don't think my experiences were bad enough for me to call it 'trauma'.

I have been having some experiences and I don't know if they are normal, make sense or whatever so I didn't tell the therapist about them at assessment. I don't want her to think I am strange. She is a really experienced trauma therapist and I'm terrified of telling her something and her thinking, that is really strange I've never heard that before. I am terrified she won't believe me.

I fluctuate between feeling really distressed - wanting to scratch my skin off distressed, numb, and also at other times (at work, for example) managing to function quite well. That in itself makes me think I'm strange.

The things that happen that I don't know whether they are flashbacks or just intrusive memories are: memories/images of things that happened in the past - things coming towards me (sorry I can't use words so you'll have to assume), feelings of hands on me, a sense of pressure, a very physical, bodily memory to do with my mouth which is horrible. Sometimes I get flashes of things during sex with my partner and it is horrible but I either push it away as quickly as I can and continue or dig my nails into my skin to sort of ground myself, or I float off and I just carry on. Is it weird that I can carry on with sex when all this is going on internally for me?

I sometimes think I see the person from my past and or hear words and I know it's not him but it feels so real.

Is this normal?

I also get very spaced out and dissociative - just floaty, not fully cut off - and it feels like this can last for hours. Is this normal?

Sorry.

 

[Deleted member 42783]

I also suffer from the fear that my traumas aren't Big Enough to be real but then I suffer incidents like you do during sex (I would say that they constitute flash backs) and I know that something is messed up. I can also function very well at work or in social situations but then have to completely isolate at home to recover.
Your therapist is not going to tell you that this is abnormal. A good one will tell you that this is common for someone who experienced trauma.

 

[oakleaves]

Thank you. That makes sense. I don't think I can tell her about the sex stuff but I will tell her about the other stuff. Thanks.

 

[The Albatross]

I think it's significant to acknowledge that you minimized and skewed your assessment. Hope you can see your way clear to honesty and candidness. After all, what are you risking really that outweighs jeopardizing your own healing?

 

[oakleaves]

I think it's significant to acknowledge that you minimized and skewed your assessment. Hope you c...

She did acknowledge that there would be things I might not want to share at assessment and said that was ok. I physically can't talk about things sometimes. But yes maybe I did minimise but I am scared of being overdramatic which is why I struggle to say some things in case they sound more dramatic than they are. I wasn't deliberately being dishonest.