A friend who had been brought up in care after her father left and her mother developed a mental illness once asked me why she still had trouble concentrating in her teens when the traumas she had faced had been when she was very young. Surely, she thought, she must have come to terms with what happened 10 years ago. The following is what I came up with. Apologies as it's another of my long posts. Note, I'm not medically trained in any way and a professional might say it's complete rubbish, but it makes sense to me and it seemed to help my friend a little bit.
The brain is a processor (sorry, I work with computers). It has two parts, conscious and subconscious. The conscious part deals with our day to day stuff, does our work/school stuff, manages what we say, etc. It's very present oriented. It doesn't think about the future or the past, just the now. The subconscious sits in the background and processes important 'stuff', it tries to make sense of the world around us. Normally, the conscious is the main part of the brain that's operational and we're aware of. The subconscious sits there processing things that we're probably not even aware that we're thinking about, usually doing most of it's work when we're asleep. This is why we all have those Eureka! moments in the shower when we suddenly realise what that homework meant two years ago or what our friend was really telling us last week. It's important and it couldn't be solved immediately so the brain filed it into the subconscious and that's been working on the problem ever since.
In times of great stress or great trauma in our lives, the subconscious mind suddenly has a lot of work to do. It's an important event so the subconscious tries to make sense of it and kicks into overdrive. Unfortunately, the subconscious doesn't have time to process everything when we sleep and the problem is so big, so it starts processing 'stuff' during the day as well. Although we may not realise we're thinking of 'stuff' the subconscious is still doing it. We become distracted, have trouble concentrating, fall a bit behind. Concentration is a conscious mind activity, but it is being pushed out by the subconscious trying to make sense of the stress/trauma that we have gone through.
Girl,
I cannot even begin to imaging the horrors that you face when you have these flashbacks, but I believe they are happening because your subconscious mind is trying to make sense of what happened. It is replaying it and trying to find answers to questions like 'why me?', 'what could I have done differently?' and a million others, some of which you're probably not even aware you're asking. Unfortunately, we can tell our conscious mind "you weren't at fault" but until the subconscious has processed everything and come to the same conclusion we wont, deep down, really believe it.
To address your fears around men and behaviours that make you nervous. The body has a great ability to protect itself. Some people eat a food once (for me it's a Big Mac) that makes them ill. The body then associates that food with poison and they can never eat it again. It's been 25 years since that Big Mac made me ill, but I still need to leave the room when I smell one. At the moment, your body is associating all men and aggressive mannerisms as dangerous. It is kicking in the 'flight' behaviour to get you away from that danger. That's perfectly natural and understandable. I suspect as time goes on and your subconscious has had a chance to process what happened, these feelings will diminish. If they remain for a while, then don't worry, they may become part of you and the way you are. Remember, your subconscious is trying to protect you from further harm. Let it protect you and try not to fight with yourself too much.
I've had less time to think about the cutting issue in the above analogy, but had a thought when walking up the road yesterday (yup, one of those Eureka! moments
). Maybe there is some conflict going on between your conscious and subconscious minds. Your subconscious is demanding all of your processing power to understand what happened. Your conscious is saying "hang about! I'm still here!" and is demanding attention by getting you to cause yourself pain. It's rebelling and saying something like "I need to cause you pain to get you to think about what's happening today."
Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions as to how to make what you are going through any easier or any idea when you may feel better. I only hope that the above gives you some understanding and makes things a little bit easier. Sometimes, we can't move on until we stop fighting what we think we should be feeling and really say to ourselves, "It's OK to feel like this"