Is It A Flashback If You Know It's Happening?

[Leigh925]

Google Pete Walker Emotional Flashbacks. It is very eye opening and was extremely helpful for me! I would have waves of all of these intense emotions and fears and basically be in the fetal position without the visuals of a regular flashback. Understanding emotional flashbacks helped me get control of it and push through them much faster....instead of falling down the rabbit hole!

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

Thanks for the info on the emotional flashbacks. I think this better describes what I'm experiencing than intrusive thoughts. I've always struggled with really spotty memory of my abuse (including the distinct memory of telling myself that I would not remember and then choosing to dissociate instead), so I think I have trouble identifying flashbacks - and the visual memory stuff just isn't there at all. I'll read up a little more on it - thank you.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I keep having these moments when I "trance out" for lack of a better way to describe things. I can't breathe or control myself from crying and acting like the original abuse is happening. Eventually, I "wake up" shaking in a fetal position, suddenly having crashed back into reality.

Sounds very much like a flashback to me. Whether it's an emotional flashback or not it sounds like a flashback to me. The reason I say that is you describe yourself as acting as if abuse "is happening" not being able to "control yourself" and "waking up".

If I understand correctly from my own experiences when I have intrusive thoughts or memories I can't control the thoughts or the memories but I'm able to control my behavior and not end up in a ball crying and then feeling like I'm waking up. That happens for me with flashbacks. In fact I had a flashback today and I was aware of it as it happened during and after it. That doesn't always happen though. Sometimes I don't realize what happened was a flashback until later. I've even gone days and then ended up in therapy talking about what happened and my therapist tells me what I described was a flashback.

Sometimes I have repressed memories though and those are more intense and upsetting than intrusive thoughts or memories. For me repressed memories can be triggering too.

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

@BlackbirdSinging I have trouble identifying flashbacks, and to complicate things, the trauma happened when i was so young that I don't have a lot of really concrete memories of it.

Either way, I'm wring on grounding, for sure. I hate that this is a process, however, and can't just be solved with the flick of a switch.