Phantom Smells Associated W/ptsd?

[ellienad]

Recently through therapy, more details of my abuse have emerged. One detail in particular is a specific smell I associate with the abuse. The past couple days since the discovery of this, I keep getting a a whiff of it out of the blue, like a phantom smell. Has anyone else experienced this?? It's really awful, as the smell usually sends me into a flashback and/or panic most of the time.

Edit: I also just realized that maybe it's the other way around.. Maybe something else is triggering the flashback and the smell is part of it? Hmm.

 

[FindingMyself88]

hmmm, could these maybe be a type of flashback?? I have one re occuring flashback of being molested where I can smell the beer that this person drank. Now I can't be around anyone who drinks this specific kind of beer, and really drunk men trigger me.

 

[NovemberStar]

I've had that in the past. I'm not sure either, if it is a visual trigger that triggers the smell, but I have smelt things from my childhood that are not around me when I smell them. And not happy childhood associations, even though the smell might be something non-sinister (i.e. the smell of crayons).

Thinking about it some more - I'd say there would be a trigger, even an emotional one, that triggers the smell memories and to smell what isn't there.

 

[open eyes]

I used to have a phantom taste of chlorine. I was sexually assaulted underwater in a pool & nearly drowned, so it's pretty clear to me why that was happening...

For me too it came out of no where & mostly when I wasn't even feeling triggered. I never really made sense of that part.

 

[Skylynx]

Yes, I'm having that. At first I thought it was something about the carpet, as it's the smell of hemp rope. But now I know it follows me, even when away from the house. Strange.

 

[Fadeaway]

I had something similar. When I first got into my current relationship after having isolated myself for years, I kept smelling ammonia every where I went. I saw the Dr. and he said it was olfactory hallucinations. It seems that when I got more comfortable being in a relationship again, it went away. I never understood it. I did a lot of searching online, but never found a reason for it.

 

[Alfred.Greene]

We learned in psychology that the nose bypasses the processing centers of the brain. So its like super hooked up to the memory center, and that is why smell is so profound with memories.

That being said, I can experience these "phantom smells", and interestingly enough I don't get triggered by them. But sometimes they appear where they cannot be, and I get a few memories.