My Flashbacks

[1beautifulscar]

Flashbacks are new to me. I started having them less than a year ago. I don't know weather they are the absolute worst or best part (if there is a best part) of having PTSD. I don't know what scares me more, the emotions during a flashback or the fact that my brain is doing something I never knew it was capable of doing and so out of my control. They come from nowhere while I'm lying in bed and I have no clue what triggers them.

A flashback to me is all the sudden going back to an event in my childhood, a memory that got lost somewhere in my mind somehow. The panic sets in immediately, I can see everyone in the room including myself. I feel the original fear and indescribable terror. I realize what's about to happen to me. I realize I can't run or hide, nobody is coming to help me, this is going to happen to me. There are no words but I feel my body tell myself that I have to leave, I have to leave my body there and go somewhere else before this happens to me.
I feel all these emotions in real time. Emotions that I can't even truly find words to describe them.

Then I can feel my brain in a panic and shock and telling itself "no no no" and just like that the memory is gone. I instantly want to go back to it so that I know the rest of what happened to me but I can't. It's like it's no longer a memory any more. I remember the flashback but not the memory itself..if that makes sense. It's like remembering what I just watched on tv but not being able to hit rewind and watch it again. I just have to remember what I saw the first time, then try to put the pieces together.

To me they are by far the most terrifying part of having PTSD but at the same time it's also feels healing to me. I have this deep desire of knowing what happened to me, what memories I blocked, and what made me the way I am today. They let me know and give me a reason. Can anyone relate to my kind of flashbacks?

 

[DMerish]

To me they are by far the most terrifying part of having PTSD but at the same time it's also feels healing to me. I have this deep desire of knowing what happened to me, what memories I blocked, and what made me the way I am today. They let me know and give me a reason. Can anyone relate to my kind of flashbacks?

I can relate. I seem to have periods where I have flashbacks if overly stressed or if another trauma occurs. Then long periods of not having any at all. When they first came I was scared that my mind was doing this to me, then (along with the terror) they just became very annoying and cause me to loose sleep or interrupt my life. Some of my flashbacks have come in bits and pieces until what seems to be a whole scene, then that scenario receded, and many have not returned. When I don't let myself get pissed off because of the annoyance, and simply go about my days as best I can, then after they begin their recession process, I somehow feel more healed afterwards. A couple of months ago flashbacks started coming about the thing I would most like never to have happened to me, and I still hold a lot of anger and resentment towards the person that did it (although I'm beginning to have some compassion towards them also now) and it was a busy time at work so I just f_king wanted them to stop. They did. It will probably revisit me again sometime . . . I definitely don't feel healed about the incident.