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Originally Posted by Kori Anders
Can a flashback ever happen during sleep, or is that always considered a nightmare? Or, like, what I'm trying to ask is, can flashbacks cause nightmares, rather?
Since I already have my dream written down here, I'm probably going to copy and paste it to give to my therapist when I see her. I was/am still pretty spooked by the nightmare, but I don't feel like it's important enough right now to talk to my therapist about it right away.
To answer your question, yes. I was raped a long time ago by my uncle, so I'm a little confused as to why my dream would involve my teacher. So, I was wondering if this nightmare was really just a memory of the rape I experienced but, the people were switched around because I was technically "dreaming".
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no flashbacks can not happen when a person is asleep. A person can remember things in their sleep but they can not have a flashback...
theres a difference between remembering something and having a flashback....a flashback is literally reliving something from the past...
heres a quick and easy example...hold your favorite fruit and stake a smell. now close your eyes and think about when you last ate that fruit. easy to remember right. thats a memory. in some locations the fruit triggering this memory is called a sensory hallucination.
now instead of purposely picking a fruit and thinking about that fruit you are walking down the street and someone passes you with a citrus smelling perfume. this perfume triggers your brain into a flashback (reliving a moment in the past) you look around you and instead of being on a busy street you see you are in a tree orchard. you can feel the sunshine on you, smell the summer smells, and that fruit in your hand, well you can feel the bumps on its skin, see the vivid color, smell the fruity smell... everything is happening in your mind just like it did in the past when the event actually happened. its like you have jumped back in time and are going through that even all over again for the first time.
flashbacks happen when something in the present conscious moment causes your brain to literally relive a moment in the past.
can having a flashback cause a nightmare. sure they can. one day I had a flashback... I was walknig down the street and saw someone carrying a weird shaped package. I started reliving the memory of a trauma that happened at work. later that night I had a nightmare about that traumatic event.
I hadnt had nightmares about this traumatic event for quite sometime. but seeing that odd shaped package, then having the vivid flashback scared me to the point where that night I had a nightmare (a bad dream about the trauma)