NovemberStar
Platinum Member
I am so sad to read of everyone's suffering with this :(.
I relate in that I have very brief, but very real flashbacks. Thankfully the whole thing lasts only a few seconds - but I can have hundreds of them a day. Every single time, I am BACK THERE, back to childhood and the traumatic thing I can't fully remember (the flahsbacks are of how. Felt immediatley afterwards, when alone in my room where I fled in terror).
I describe it as 'time travelling' becssue literally one second I'm in the present, thn in the past, back to the present, then the past. Back and forth up to a couple of times a minute (although mostly a few minutes apart).
It's the disorientation that tells me I've HAD the flashback. I might be driving along the road, have a flashback, then a confusing as to 'why am I driving a car and livng in this city????' I think 'But I'm 10 years old, I don't have the ability to drive' and I get confused and feel the city I'm in is foreign - it's vaguely familiar but I dont recognise it at the same time, becasue it's not related to the past.
It's that it doesn't make sense (how can I be driving a car????' That brings me back to reality.
It doesn't matter how many thousands and thousands of times I've had it happen, it feels so damn real and it really IS like I'm 'back there'. And I find NO comfort in telling myself 'but that's not happening now, it's 30 years later'. It's not comforting becssue it's so vivid, I'm more in the past than the present and it IS happening again
I relate in that I have very brief, but very real flashbacks. Thankfully the whole thing lasts only a few seconds - but I can have hundreds of them a day. Every single time, I am BACK THERE, back to childhood and the traumatic thing I can't fully remember (the flahsbacks are of how. Felt immediatley afterwards, when alone in my room where I fled in terror).
I describe it as 'time travelling' becssue literally one second I'm in the present, thn in the past, back to the present, then the past. Back and forth up to a couple of times a minute (although mostly a few minutes apart).
It's the disorientation that tells me I've HAD the flashback. I might be driving along the road, have a flashback, then a confusing as to 'why am I driving a car and livng in this city????' I think 'But I'm 10 years old, I don't have the ability to drive' and I get confused and feel the city I'm in is foreign - it's vaguely familiar but I dont recognise it at the same time, becasue it's not related to the past.
It's that it doesn't make sense (how can I be driving a car????' That brings me back to reality.
It doesn't matter how many thousands and thousands of times I've had it happen, it feels so damn real and it really IS like I'm 'back there'. And I find NO comfort in telling myself 'but that's not happening now, it's 30 years later'. It's not comforting becssue it's so vivid, I'm more in the past than the present and it IS happening again
