Types Of Flashbacks

[Effy]

I was just wondering -- in my mind I have always thought of a flashback as being purely visual. I imagined that when you had a flashback, you would suddenly see the event playing in your head, like a memory that you're recovering. But last week I experienced something very strange, and it felt to me like a flashback, but it wasn't visual at all. It was more like a 'sense' flashback. Like I was remembering a feeling in a really overwhelming way. Most of my CSA memories are gone, and I have been trying really hard to remember anything at all. So I have been anticipating flashbacks. I just didn't think they would happen like this. I haven't remembered anything new, I haven't recovered a visual memory.

I wrote about it on another forum, which I assume that many of you will also be a part of, so I won't go in to too much detail -- in short I was watching a horror movie, which is something that usually wouldn't affect me at all, and during one of the scenes I suddenly felt like I understood exactly what the character was going through. I felt as though I had been in the exact same situation, and I felt this sudden rush of emotions (fear/nausea/panic/dread) like it was happening to me again. I had a violent physical reaction, threw up, and majorly dissociated. But I didn't see anything, it wasn't like a proper full memory, and so I don't know when it happened, or how exactly it happened, I just feel sure that it must have happened to me at some point during the year I was being abused.

Over the years I have had little moments of...I don't know what you would call it, nostalgia maybe? I will suddenly remember a smell or a taste or a feeling, and it makes me feel sick and afraid. And I can feel that these moments are related to my abuse. But they pass so quickly and I am left totally confused. I don't understand any of these things, because they are like tiny pieces of an enormous puzzle, and none of the pieces make sense on their own. I have never before thought that these were flashbacks, because as I said eariler, I thought flashbacks were purely visual. But now I'm not so sure.

So I was wondering what kinds of flashbacks you have all experienced, and how many kinds of flashbacks are there?

 

[Zef]

My flashbacks and body memories only have a visual component when they are really intense ones. When I do get a visual, it can sometimes be accompanied by a smell and/or sense of body position (as if my body was in the position of the visual).

But the vast majority do not include visual content. My stuff tends to be body focused.

I have become basically paralyzed for anywhere from a few seconds to up to an hour. I am fully conscious, but cannot make my body move. I also have seizure-like symptoms where I get violent full body shakes and/or every muscle in my back will seize up like it is severely cramping.

What seems weird to me is that I have no real emotion attached to these when they happen. That seems atypical to what other people experience and it bugs me a bit.

 

[haunted4ever]

Most of my flashbacks are like bits of video if you will. Sometimes though, I will feel everything, body position, etc, but have no picture. I was drugged and raped though, so the drugs could account for the difference in memory types.

 

[Robert D. Cubby]

My flashbacks involve many of my senses. There's the visual, but also the smell that was involved and the loud screaming alarms. And the smoke filled darkness. I feel the slippery floor on my feet also. I also am frozen unable to move. It takes a great deal of will power to try to shake myself back to reality.

The triggers make no sense either. It once happened while is was BBQing hot dogs. I guess the smoke was the trigger then. I also identify with characters in movies and know exactly what emotions they're going through, especially where the scene resembles my recollection of my traumatic experience. The flashback is definitely more than visual with me.

 

[Chincho]

My flashbacks involve smell, sound and body memories. No images for me.

 

[Effy]

Thanks guys, it's really interesting for me hearing that flashbacks involve all of the senses and are not always visual. That episode scared me quite a bit, and I didn't know what to think at the time. It felt like a memory, but not a full one, only a fragment. Frustrating, but I guess it's progress.

 

[Tinyflame]

Your first paragraph is exactly my experience also Robert, for visual ones. But I can't 'shake' myself out because I don't know of an 'out' other than that reality at the moment. They just hit out of (seemingly) no where and then they're over.

 

[ericaboo]

The ones I've been having - I'm almost completely in the experience - visual, smell, sound, emotion - but I am aware that I'm not actually back there - I know it's memory, but it's so overwhelming, that It's very hard to snap out of it and get back to "normal." I get totally stuck in that experience - paralayzed.

I've been hearing about the icewater thing, and I'm going to try that. Right now- I just have to either ride it out for an hour or so, or find some kind of distraction - which is damn hard to do.

 

[Darrell P.]

My flashbacks involve visual memories of my attempted rape and sexual assaults, they occur while I'm awake and doing my sleeping time in the form of badreams, nightmares.

 

[Jen93]

I think I'm a victim of child physical and emotional abuse (still in denial). I'm also a victim of bullying. My flashbacks are visual, auditory, I get body memories where I was hit, and I get "slideshows" meaning short bursts of the event(s) happening like when a slide changes pictures. Only mine will be past-present, instead of switching different slides. Those ones are the most confusing, and it's during those ones I dissociate, don't know where I am, who people are, or I'm thrust into the past and act out the trauma (end up standing in a corner or hiding in my closet from my abusers to escape being hit.)

I generally experience intense nausea during the body memories and the last kind of flashback. And anger and sadness.

The last one in my opinion is the scariest, because I can't ground myself and have no control over it. (My T was SUPPOSED to give me grounding tips; but hey, no one cares about crazy little freaky Jenny at home crying in her closet. Just as long as she doesn't embarrass her parents everything's fine.)

 

[Red Feather]

I have intense emotional flashbacks. I get literally put back to that state of feeling completely powerless and trapped. Once I felt so trapped, just sitting here in my living room. And then it can trigger a panic attack and a lot of anxiety. I have recently been having very intense and fast intrusive and visual flashbacks. Just one image. That bolts through my entire body in a flash. It happens when I am in a trance like state and have a thought that is really unconscious. I don't even know what it is, but it triggers that reaction... does that make sense? lol.

 

[bethinhfx]

@Jennifer: I care

My limited experience with flashbacks was one of having a sense of something and then actually seeing peoples faces etc., almost like a photograph. Very surreal. Then I went into shock. I haven 't had any since those several about 6 weeks ago. Had to drop out of school. So, I am hoping there wont be too much more. Beth