Flashbacks are memorys of a traumatic event. A person who fought in a war has flashbacks about the things that he or she went through, A person who has been in a car accident goes through flashbacks about what happened during that car accident.

Flashbacks can be a sound, a taste, a smell, or a touch that the person experienced during the traumatic event.

The brain automatically stores in the brain what the five senses are experiences from the day a person is born to the day they die.

When something happens that upsets or hurts the person it is called a traumatic event. Those events can be anything going through an earthquake, tornado, flood, katrina, rape accidents and so on.

Sometimes because the traumatic event is sof ar outside the persons abilities to understand what they were seening, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching or being touched that the brain safey button kicks in of placing pieces of those memories of traumatic events into what is called the unconscious level of thinking so that the person does nto remember that part of the trauma.

Then as the person heals and begins to get better and they encounter something that reminds them of that trauma they went through suddenly they see what they say when they went through the traumatic event, or they smell the same smells and so on. This is called having a flashback.

T. is not messing with your head. what you see hear and so on already happened to you. something in your life reminds you of what happened and that triggers your brain to replay that memory. Its now a memory so it can't physically hurt you. Mentally well I know only too well experiencing flashbacks is NOT fun. It sometimes is scarey and upsetting in many ways.

Are they real? what you are seeing, hearing and so on WERE real when they happened. now they are a memory.

Hang in there it does get better.