Flashbacks? Or Weird Paranoia Response?

[Biz]

I was sexually assaulted by my ex gf. I am currently in therapy and receiving EMDR. I had a particularly intense EMDR session this week and I'm processing.

I'm one of these intellectualizing types, so (like many of ya'll I'm sure) I've read everything on PTSD, survivor's narratives, all that. I had never identified with or understood any associated memories/experiences as having flashbacks.

However, as I've been processing I realized that relatively regularly, when I'm out in public places with lots of noise/faces, I think I see my ex in the crowd (relatively impossible since she lives across the country). Once, a woman was looking at me from a bar stool and I was so certain it was my ex that I started walking toward her, fists clenched, ready to hit somebody. Just feet from her, I realized her face was similar but she wasn't my ex at all.

Are these flashbacks? Or is it just excess paranoia? I get pretty anxious and paranoid in crowds anyway, plus I have some weird visuals when I get sympathetic arousal. Has anyone else ever experienced this?

 

[eav]

Yeah, I do this too. When I talked about it with my therapist and psychiatrist, I called them hallucinations, and they did not correct me. I'm paranoid a lot, too, but I have abusers who wouldn't mind killing me.

 

[Hashi]

Welcome to the forum, K_Biz.

A flashback is reliving something that happened.

If you imagine you're seeing your ex girlfriend in places it could be a hallucination. But if it's an actual person and you think initially it's your ex then realise it isn't, I think this is probably just the mind playing recognition tricks. Like after a relationship breakup or a bereavement we can "see" the person everywhere, but it's only someone with a similar build, similar hair or similar coat etc.

I don't think it's flashbacks but I wouldn't call it paranoia either. I think it's just that the mind is very focussed on that person, and a lot of vision comes from our imagination/memory anyway. So it makes sense that we "recognise" them before we recognise that the person is a somewhat similar-looking stranger.

 

[Powder]

I don't know if it's similar, but hallucinations are a part of complex PTSD with splits, like in DID.

I also think having disorders is exhausting and half the time, we are not 100% awake. It's not all dissociation, I suppose. There are at least 100 states of consciousness between asleep and fully awake.

In such an awakening state, I was once staring at my oldest daughter as she was whispering to me. I saw a red-haired and bearded man in a plaid shirt, and it was several moments of terrified wondering how this strange man got in my house!? before I realized I was hallucinating and it was my child! This terrified me so much I told my T. similar, that I could have hurt my child if the hallucination lasted longer and she got near me. I'm sure I would have hit her.

I'm sorry this has happened. I am also troubled by crowds even though most of my trauma is not crowd related.

 

[Barconian]

Are these flashbacks? Or is it just excess paranoia? I get pretty anxious and paranoid in crowds anyway, plus I have some weird visuals when I get sympathetic arousal. Has anyone else ever experienced this?

Paranoia sux!