Tactile flashbacks? Body memory?

[brokenpony]

can someone help me understand the difference between tactile flashbacks and ‘body memories’? is the latter a real thing with evidence? one night in bed i started feeling tingling and pain and other sensations like something was entering me vaginally and now every night in bed i experience the sensations and vaginal/pelvic pain of rape. sometimes it is overwhelming and accompanied by helplessness/upset and feeling like crying and other times it is less intense psychologically/emotionally. i also clench up. but consciously i know i am not “there.” i thought flashbacks are “being there” completely but google suggests that “body memories” are pseudoscience? i feel crazy. are these flashbacks. please help me understand.

 

[benoit1972]

I may be off point here but when I have a graphic nightmare I won’t remember any part of the dream but I’ll hear a single gunshot, it’s a very specific sound because report when your being fired on sounds very very different. I’ll wake up with my respiratory system under stress, and completely switched on. It’ll take me a few hours and usually a klonopin to untangle the knot.

The reason I emphasized the uniqueness of the gunshot is because I survived a sniper ambush after being shot neck/head. To be honest the flashback is like an audio file perfectly remembered in exact detail on my hard drive, It’s the most unmistakable identitifiable sound I’ve ever hear in my life.

When I hear that unique crisp sounding report from the 7.62x54 being fired it throws me into primal fight/flight, I wake up knowing it’s a flashback, I’m still disoriented and confused, Im usually quite vocal and we have school aged kids, not good.

After a few occurrences of the flashback and thanks in part to my OSA I began to sleep on my lazyboy?

 

[brokenpony]

I may be off point here but when I have a graphic nightmare I won’t remember any part of the dream but I’ll hear a single gunshot, it’s a very specific sound because report when your being fired on sounds very very different. I’ll wake up with my respiratory system under stress, and completely switched on. It’ll take me a few hours and usually a klonopin to untangle the knot.

The reason I emphasized the uniqueness of the gunshot is because I survived a sniper ambush after being shot neck/head. To be honest the flashback is like an audio file perfectly remembered in exact detail on my hard drive, It’s the most unmistakable identitifiable sound I’ve ever hear in my life.

When I hear that unique crisp sounding report from the 7.62x54 being fired it throws me into primal fight/flight, I wake up knowing it’s a flashback, I’m still disoriented and confused, Im usually quite vocal and we have school aged kids, not good.

After a few occurrences of the flashback and thanks in part to my OSA I began to sleep on my lazyboy?

yeah the vaginal sensations/pains are mostly gone now but ofc it’s now 3:30 am and i’m all wound up, so i took a klonopin. but i don’t know how an hour and a half passed so quickly from my post. i was just lying there. maybe i dozed.

what happens to you sounds really terrifying. i’m sorry. i hope you get some more lasting relief than the klonopin.

 

[Wendell_R]

I have had sensations of my arm hurting/tingling that accompany fears of having my arm violently wrenched or even cut off. I have no memory of anything that happened when I was a child. Sometimes the images/fears of what happened or will happen to my arm are so violent that I know they are not strictly flashbacks (because it is a perfectly fine, undamaged arm). So my personal experience is that the body memories are real for me, but aren't an accurate reflection of actual events. I do think they are an accurate reflection of my fears, and that those fears very much had to do with what happened when I was a child.

 

[brokenpony]

I have had sensations of my arm hurting/tingling that accompany fears of having my arm violently wrenched or even cut off. I have no memory of anything that happened when I was a child. Sometimes the images/fears of what happened or will happen to my arm are so violent that I know they are not strictly flashbacks (because it is a perfectly fine, undamaged arm). So my personal experience is that the body memories are real for me, but aren't an accurate reflection of actual events. I do think they are an accurate reflection of my fears, and that those fears very much had to do with what happened when I was a child.

oh that’s interesting. i do remember some of my sexual abuse in detail and also know that some things happened despite not having access to them. however i know these are sensations related to a specific person because the feeling is uncanny and the second the pelvic pain started i started having intrusive thoughts about him and then the awful feelings to go along with it. so i can feel what’s happening and it feels i am being raped by a ghost. i know who that ghost is but i can’t see, hear, or smell him. it’s only tactile hallucination. this is why i feel weird calling it a flashback. but can flashbacks be partial?

 

[Wendell_R]

My body sensations have varied a lot. I tried some somatic therapy and found that I couldn't touch parts of my body without discomfort and sadness coming up. And then as I got closer to the trauma, as it were, my arm would occasionally ache. That was surprising since I'm over 50 and had never had that happen! And for years, I've had a feeling that my head was going to be bashed in, but that was not a feeling of actual pain (maybe just the anticipation of pain). So a lot of the tactile hallucination is incomplete for me. Sometimes I have the sense of being screamed at, without hearing any voices, so more partial experiences there too!

 

[MyWillow]

As much as I hate, hate, hate them, visual flashbacks are easier to make sense of (kinda) than weird body sensations. Ugh.

 

[brokenpony]

As much as I hate, hate, hate them, visual flashbacks are easier to make sense of (kinda) than weird body sensations. Ugh.

but are they flashbacks? is that what you would call what i’ve described? i feel like i am being raped and i feel the distress but i still know where i am.

 

[Abstract]

Can't discuss this or read too much as tricky territory but the way I see it flashbacks are a re experiencing/reliving of an aspect of previous trauma. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will correct me if necessary. Some involve all senses and entirely 3d back there. Some involve 1 or some of the senses. Sight smell sound sensation emotion taste hearing. Body memories are sensory flashbacks as far as I understand it. Essentially flashbacks involve the amygdala rather than the frontal cortex. I do know there are other theories that are not totally proven but haven;t done research on them. Body and mind are intricately connected.

 

[brokenpony]

Can't discuss this or read too much as tricky territory but the way I see it flashbacks are a re experiencing/reliving of an aspect of previous trauma. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will correct me if necessary. Some involve all senses and entirely 3d back there. Some involve 1 or some of the senses. Sight smell sound sensation emotion taste hearing. Body memories are sensory flashbacks as far as I understand it. Essentially flashbacks involve the amygdala rather than the frontal cortex. I do know there are other theories that are not totally proven but haven;t done research on them. Body and mind are intricately connected.

yeah that makes sense, that sometimes it’s just one sense? i just don’t understand what happens. last night was the worst one yet, i felt i should take tylenol for it, i felt upset and nearly cried, i don’t know if this means that bed is a trigger or what and i am scared to tell my therapist about it

 

[EveHarrington]

Yes, sometimes flashbacks are just one sense, sometimes they are just emotional. They needn’t involve all senses. There are a variety of different ways that people can experience a flashback.

 

[MyWillow]

I think you can get caught up in theory (I’m a scientist so I f*cking love theory for deflecting and avoiding and denying) or you can accept shit as genuine memory as my psydoc does.

I am learning that WHAT it means is less important than how you reassure your body that you are safe now and can make good decisions. I get full on visual or dissociative (with no memory) flashbacks without being able to connect the dots so this is helpful for me.