Flashbacks or memories

[cntrymom08466]

Yes my therapist diagnosed me with PTSD this year. I had only been diagnosed with MDD and anxiety before.

 

[Friday]

Intrusive memories get misunderstood a bit as ‘just memories’, but they can be just as distressing, and they can replay in your mind’s eye over and over relentlessly.

Yep.

For some reason people seem to get stuck in flashbacks = worse, so if I'm gutted by something it has to be a flashback. Which is a pity, because dealing with flashbacks and dealing with memories are 2 entirely different tool boxes.

@cntrymom08466

My rule of thumb:

Flashbacks = Relived
Memories = Remembered

I will walk around smelling smoke all day (flashback) being basically fine, and spend 3 days shredded, gutted, in uncontrollable grief and inconsolable pain from "just" a memory. I'm not reliving it, I'm wracked by it.

^^^
Is that the normal? Eh. Depends on the flashback & on the memory. Just using it as an example of how they're not a pain-scale. Similar to how nightmares & night-terrors aren't a pain scale (one you remember & stay asleep for, one you don't remember and tend to "seem" awake to others). Sometimes flashbacks are infinitely worse than memories, sometimes memories are infinitely worse than flashbacks.

As a word of caution : Some people don't remember pain. Others -like me, although we appear to be a minority- remember pain just fine. :wtf: Sometimes those 2 groups of people can make flashbacks vs memories even more clear as mud, because people who don't remember pain -or other sensations- use that as a guide. Which doesn't work on those of us who do remember pain, emotion, & other sensations.

 

[Gadgie]

Quote............”Man I need to learn how to post here. Geez. I feel like a real newbie. Sorry guys”

You don’t need to learn anything to post, just write what you feel, every one will know what you mean, we are all in the same boat.

 

[Friday]

How to Quote is found here >>> MyPTSD - How To Use The Quote Function Correctly

Which is under the FAQs on the forum list page

Please open a help ticket for any further assistance :tup: :D

-We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread-

 

[MyWillow]

Flashbacks for me are a physiological reliving. I start to dissociate, feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck and either my therapist can keep me present by engaging my frontal lobe and breathing and imagery or it’s too late and I’m suddenly gone with no recollection afterwards. So no memory of any traumatic event. But a sense of feeling absolutely shattered afterwards. Other times I’ve just had an image literally flash right in front of me. I can’t predict or control or come close to understanding flashbacks. I’ve tried to fight off a flashback. Probably not the brightest thing I’ve ever done. Hopefully I’ll have the sense not to do it again. It took most of the rest of the hour to get me to a point of being able to walk out. And even then I had to sit in my car for a while, walk for a while, sit some more, walk some more before I was capable of driving 20 min home.