Types Of Flashbacks

[shell]

I had been getting them for the last few years, but didn't know what they were.

I've been recovering memories of being raped at 14 (certain details of which I recall after getting back the part of the memory I had a that time) which started 12 months ago and now sexually abused about 2 to 3 months.

They initially started off as body numbness, then moved to emotions and then body numbness and nightmares. Now I'm reliving it as being touched and sex (but I'm numb and don't feel the pain), but I can feel the pressure of someone on me, and at times hurting me at other places in my body, legs, neck etc. At times I gag and have extreme nausea.

Yesterday I woke up, I was right back there, feeling totally like I was being raped, with all the pain, fear and thinking it was really happening. No visual, and no recollection of what really happened, or who did this. I panic, get a roaring sound in my head, a flash of light and I'm out of it. It's like I can feel the memory is just there, but I'm to scared to step into it, like it's too overwhelming to know the truth.

 

[maddog]

Gosh, Shell, I wasn't prepared for this... you describe my experience of recently recovered memories of childhood rape almost to the letter. This is exactly how it played out for me, though on a few recent occasions I have also now experienced the full recollection, including what you describe above along with the action replay memory of the event taking place, only with some odd shadowy gaps...

Gosh, horrible stuff, and I suppose the key conclusion from this thread so far is that flashbacks can take many many different forms and can change in their type and quality over time, depending on the trigger, the accessibility of the memory/event being flashed back to and a whole range of other overlapping factors.

Whichever way, they're tough going, and I'm sorry for all of us who have to live with them.

Maddog

 

[Bimble]

My flashbacks seem to stem from a very deep rooted anger, which is becoming more & more prevalent as time goes on. I had an accident at work and hold very deep anger towards my employer after the event. It is getting worse, to the point where I feel physically angry to certain members of staff, who did nothing to help me after my accident. I had to refer myself to occupational health, I have seen personal notes about my health left on my managers desk...the anger is building and every time I expose myself to the place my accident occurred, I feel total rage and anger.

 

[Abstract]

I really wish I knew and fully understood the official difference between an intrusive image/memory, a flashback and a dissociative flashback.

If one really thinks one is smelling a smell in the now that comes from the traumatic event accompanied by intense emotions from the time then is that an intrusive memory of flashback?

I believe a dissociative flashback is where there is zero sense of the now.

What happens if one has no sense of there being any other reality, are experiencing sensations from the past and a combination of visuals from the past and present? What would that be?

If one has an emotional flashback where one is transported back into the past emotionally, and from which it takes a week to recover, but with visuals of the present environment then is that really a proper flashback?

I used to think that a fully dissociated flashback was the only true flashback but keep reading seemingly conflicting accounts from official sources. It really bother me not knowing. It is just the way my brain works. All that self doubt I suspect.

 

[Meadowsweet]

I don't really understand which is which.

I tend to think of intrusive memories being visuals, body memories, uncontrollable thoughts that still enable an awareness of the present.

Emotional flashback is very difficult to understand. I've heard it said that these aren't flashbacks, but are a surge of the intense fear etc felt at the time. Perhaps in response to reminders of the trauma. They certainly feel like being back there, but I guess trauma is experienced as the fear more than anything.

But very occassionally I've had dissociated flashbacks. These for me feel as they did when they happened, so I don't recognise it as being a memory at all.

For example, in an original incident, I had become extremely confused with fear and was unable to comprehend what was happening, or what I should do. So during the flashback I felt exactly the same, my body was in the same position and shaking.

A more recent flashback brought back a childs memory. But again, I re-experienced it with the mind of the child in the way I experienced it at the time. So the flashback memory is of pain and other stuff, but there is zero cognition of the sexual nature of the act. It is only after the flashback had ended that I was able to view that experience with an adult understanding.

 

[surviving_it_all]

My flashbacks....are all emotional in nature. I feel exactly as if I was experiencing it again. Its more tactile. I can feel the sweat on my back from the rape. I can hear the noises.

The majority of my memory is behind my eyelids which were mostly closed.... I feel the jolts of pain on my head. I mostly fear every time I will be hit again. I know that if I lift my head or even try.. I will be hit again but I keep trying to lift my head up.

When I flashback from a trigger, it can be almost anything. I just feel it all. Sometimes I have flashbacks of childhood abuse. I have flashbacks of things I have been through that some would categorize as trauma. I can't find a good line to delineate between what was acceptable about my childhood and what wasn't. So, i have flashbacks....real flashback memories....where I can describe everything: the smell, the touch, the feelings, my thoughts at the time, like in the time frame of the memory... Sometimes they are visual but not always. It definitely not like they portray it on television for me at least. I never see myself. I see it through my eyes.

My therapist walked me through one memory in which I can see most all things with myself outside of the memory, but there a pieces of it in which...I still flashback to. I also since trying to overcome flashbacks have remembered other details about the traumas... I didnt even know the mind was capable of containing so much information. The memories have never faded...as most memories do. They tend to put me back into the time in which they occurred a lot... I think these are my "'flashbacks".

I am not sure if anyone can relate. I just know what I experience and what I define as a moment of flashback.

 

[Loner]

I don't remember many of my most traumatic memories, or at least don't think I do, so my flashbacks are purely emotional.

 

[Philippa]

I used to get oflactory flashbacks mainly. I could smell him. I haven't had one in a while though. I really think that PTSD is something that fades with time, although that is not what the experts say.

 

[Abstract]

Hi Medowsweet,
I sort of thought the same things about a lot of these but have been reading research and I am not so sure any more as some definitely include emotional flashbacks and many specifically mention some awareness of the present. Some discuss being in the past in percentages. For example 90 % in the past.
All of them mention experiencing it from the inside in real time. One is inside the experience whatever that experience is.
Anthony also seemed to think emotional flashbacks were legitimate - if I understood him correctly. Not the term of course! He was very anti that and I understand why! A flashback is a flashback and the "emotional" part is merely descriptive and therefore not relevant.
But we are not talking about being upset about something with those. We mean really intense sudden re experiencing instigated by a trigger.

What I have not been able to find out is if more than one of the senses have to be engaged in the past experience for it to be flashback. In other words does it have to involve sight, sound, sensation, olfactory and emotion. All of those. Mostly they seem to be saying not but I would like to know for sure. Silly me but I like definite's.

I agree that the extremely clear graphic photo type images where one is seeing them but seeing from inside them must surely fall under intrusive memories. Not sure about smelling a smell that is not there though as that sounds like re experiencing to me. I used to think it would be an intrusive memory but am now not sure.

Also if one has to be entirely in the past and all senses engaged then why is there such a term as a "dissociated flashback"?

Surviving it all,
It sounds like yours involve sensation, smell, emotion and therefore many senses other than just the emotional. That makes total sense considering your trauma too.

One thing is for sure though. Whatever type of intrusive stuff it is, it is nasty.

 

[Meadowsweet]

Yes, it's something that very much confuses me.

In my diagnoses report, it said I have daily flashbacks :confused:. But this makes no distinction between the way I experience intrusive memories.

I prefer more definition because it enables me to understand where I'm at much better. With that understanding of the way the different recollections effect my life, I hope I can become better equipped to deal with them.

I've never used the word flashback with my therapist. Instead I describe exactly what happened, so that she can get a full understanding. So I just use the distinctions for myself.

Something happened recently that I think is worth noting. I had been reading a post on here that went into detail about women who had experienced sadism. I stopped reading because I began to dissociate.

But later that day I had a surge of fear. I recognise the fear being of my abusive ex. Sometimes with him I just knew something was going to happen, I could tell he was in that mood. So my fear is something I relate to my own experience. But the imagery was of the sadistic stories I'd read.

Because that relationship was in adulthood, I have a relatively good memory of the level of abuse my ex used even if I don't remember every incident. And it was not as extreme as the stories I had read or what my fear was letting me imagine.

When I was younger I went through a stage of feeling that my father had abused me. I felt abused by someone, but had no memory. When the memory came back, it wasn't my father.

This is why I think it's really useful to have discussions like this and to find the distinctions between recollection experiences.

 

[Abstract]

So did you have photo like images that followed the emotions but which related to what you read rather than your experiences? Or where the images less clear and more like normal memories? Interesting.
Interesting about your father and the memory.

I do find that the more knowledge I have the better I can understand and help myself. Most of my life I ran from self knowledge but now I crave it.

I never thought I had ever had a flashback at all until recently as I thought they were all like one sees in films and where the person has zero awareness of the present.
I have had them where I don't know anything but them at the time (most are like that) but they usually have some aspect of the present in them.

For example my T the once kept turning into my father and the edges of the room were black and I was submerged in terror.

 

[Meadowsweet]

So did you have photo like images that followed the emotions but which related to what you read rather than your experiences? Or where the images less clear and more like normal memories? Interesting.
Interesting about your father and the memory.

No, I felt the fear as real as it was in my experiences, but my mind put it together with the imagined imagery of of what happened in thoe stories I'd read. It's not such a big jump, the fear is real, but the actuality I experienced is much less extreme.

Also, my ex and his friends would sometimes tell stories that may or may not have been true, but they were told to create fear. It wasn't said as a direct threat, but when you're sat amongst people talking about a woman who deserved to be gang raped because she'd done this or that, you hear it and try not to do the same, because you fear the same consequences.

My ex would play mind games with my fears, so often I feared something much worse than actually happened. Sometimes he'd do something one time, but say he was going to do it again many times after. I think he enjoyed seeing my fear and then laughing at me for thinking wrong of him.

The thing with my father was different though. I went through a stage of having nightmares about being a child. There was never any definate images, just fear and then I'd wake up so sure that something bad had happened. At the time I didn't get on with my father and I assumed it involved him because of my negative feelings towards him.

I went on to disbelieve it and think it was just dreams. The more recent flashback of childhood trauma was very different, because it the thoughts were very different to adult thoughts or interpretations and the dissociation and body sensations were very clear.