what is a flashback

I wasn't asleep but I had images of bad stuff in my mind. I tried to talk about it at session but I switched and switched again and again. My t said she does not want me to get stuck in the flashback. How do I know it is a flashback? What does she mean stuck? Does anyone know? Could someone explain it to me?

There can be different kinds of flashbacks, but the key is that what you are experiencing feels as real as what else is going on in reality at that moment. If I am talking with T about something and I get reminded of a trauma, I might begin seeing it in my head, reacting physically as if it were happening again. Part of me knows I am there with T but part of me feels like I am back in the trauma.

When we get "stuck" in a flashback, we are paying more attention to reexperiencing the memory than to our present reality. When a T keeps bringing your attention back to your present experience, it is an effort to help you stay out of that. Does that make sense?

This happens to us alot. We have intrusive thoughts of things, and in talking to them with T we tend to want to go back to that time inorder to explain it or experience it when talking about it with T. I am not sure if I am explaining this in a way you can understand but it happens to us and your not alone.

I get them alot during sleep too, sometimes i'm having a bad flashback of an accident, but sometimes I'm doing housework chores in my dream like a whole sink of dishes and vaccuuming an I wake up and it was just dream but I can feel my hands doing the work

I have had auditory (hear things that aren't here in present time), visual (see things that aren't here in present time), and olfactory (smell things that aren't here in present time) flashbacks. I have also experienced them through dreams, nightmares & night terrors.

I used to not know or understand them and was totally bewildered by what was happening. It has taken years of therapy to understand their source(s) and to learn some effective grounding techniques. The good news is they have lessened over time.

Of course, they still come up from time to time and probably will for the rest of my life, but now whenever I'm triggered and start to dissociate or have flashbacks, I start working on grounding myself back in the present which helps me to not feel so swept away by them anymore.

I kinda treat them like a familiar old friend now, after all they still have their stories to tell, and even if they aren't the best coping mechanism in the present, they most certainly helped me to survive some rather horrific stuff in the past.

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Pfrog

I didn't know there could be different kinds of flashbacks. When this thing is happening it is real. In fact it is the only thing that I see and feel. For the time I am in it there is no other reality. Just what I am experiencing in that moment. I don't have other thoughts, the idea of grounding is unknown to me when I am in it. There is no one to tell me anything. It is me little in a room with someone I know who is not comforting me. Things are happening to me that I will not say. I told my t what happened. She said it was a flashback. Is a flashback an alter? Is it the memory of an alter? This is where I get confused. The little one is still in that situation even though it happened when I was little. There is so much confusion. I appreciate you responding and the information you gave did help. Thanks

theres a couple things in your post that jumps out at me...

a flashback is where a person has a past memory triggered to the extreme where it is like they are back in that day, time event..reliving it as if for the first time..

example one day I heard a car back fire. my mind brought to the surface the memory of when a clients abuser shot her in front of me. this was so vivid that I seemed to be back in the er and my client was getting shot. the noise of the hospital, the feeling of being in slow motion, the abuser, his statements and actions, my clients scream and actions, my yelling and actions......everything was so vivid it was like it was happening for real all over again. when this happened i was with my wife and it took her caring ways for me to realize I wasnt in the hospital er with a client.

what you posted reminds me of when I have what my treatment providers call an intrusive thought..sometimes I will be trying to fall asleep and I will start thinking about things unrelated to my going to sleep..

example last night while preparing to go to bed my thoughts of my routine was interupted with thoughts from new years. then when I was actually in bed instead of slowing down and going to sleep my mind kept thinking of unrelated to resting and sleeping thoughts, of being in the mine shafts. I ended up turning on the light to get to sleep so that I could open my eyes and remind myself that I was safe and not a child lost in the mine shafts after being abused.

so you see here where I live and work there is a definite distinction between what a flashback is and what an intrusive thought is.

I cant say whether what you experienced is a flashback or not. only you and your treatment providers can say whats a flashback where you are, and only your treatment providers can say how to tell when you are having a flashback, based on whats considered a flashback in your location and treatment providers definition of this.

one rule of thumb I use is go according to what ever your own treatment providers called it, if she said it was a flashback then it is and to find out how she knows it is one you will have to ask her how to tell when you have one.

here where I live and work getting stuck in a flashback means the flashback just keeps running and running over and over again with no let up. example my being stuck in the flashback that I mentioned above would be when that flashback ran its course it just loops on itself and continues again and again from the beginning over and over again. kind of like when I click on the "looping" button and play a favorite song over and over again on my computer, only in this case its a memory.

Again I cant say if thats what your own treatment provider means, only your treatment provider can say what she means by that phase.

I was back in that day. I was little, crying, and repeating the same words over and over. I have never felt like this. The images were real, the emotional pain was overwhelming. It was like I was three again. I bolted out of the bed to go into another room to get away. But was it real? Did it happen? Where is the rest of the memory? It felt real. It felt like a memory. The next day I had a dream. I was asleep and I dreamt that there was a darkness around me, this darkness was draining the life out of me. By the time I woke up I was exhausted and fatigued. My chest felt heavy and it felt like I had a weight on me. It felt hard to breath. This was a dream and that is how I felt during the dream and as I woke up. I know that was a dream. The other one was different.
Also intrusive thoughts for me is when I have a thought come to mind that is completely out of charachter or completely unrelated to what is going on around me. I will sometimes have a violent thought or aggressive thoughts about people. These thoughts will just pop into my head. It's not a memory it is just a brutal thought about someone who may or may not be it the room with me. I have always had thoughts that I kept to myself because they were odd. I didn't tell people. I would just let the thought pass through my mind and try not to flinch. I never quite got used to them I accepted them as just another odd thing in my head.