[dalila]

Just wondering I know that flashbacks are a part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but what exactly are they? Are there different levels of flashbacks? Or are they all the same.

I am asking cos I seem to have a variety of ways that they happen to me. I have had the full-blown kind where I was totally lost in the memory as if it was now. However, most of my flashbacks are more like body memories. I feel what I felt back then. I don’t have much control over them. At times, I can stop or block them but then they usually are worse when they do come. I can trigger them by dwelling on the past as well. Sometimes I hear and smell or even taste things but generally my vision is not affected and I know where I am. So are these all flashbacks?

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Just wondering I know that flashbacks are a part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but what exactly are they? Are there different levels of flashbacks? Or are they all the same.

I am asking cos I seem to have a variety of ways that they happen to me. I have had the full-blown kind where I was totally lost in the memory as if it was now. However, most of my flashbacks are more like body memories. I feel what I felt back then. I don’t have much control over them. At times, I can stop or block them but then they usually are worse when they do come. I can trigger them by dwelling on the past as well. Sometimes I hear and smell or even taste things but generally my vision is not affected and I know where I am. So are these all flashbacks?

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Good question dalila. Here is what The Courage to Heal 3rd ed. © 1994 by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis ISBN: 0-06-095066-8 says about flashbacks:
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<ul type="square">[*]Flashback are memories that are so vivid that you feel as though the original experience is happening again now, rather than just being remembered. Flashbacks may be accompanied by the feelings you felt at the time, or they may be stark and detached, like watching a movie about somebody else's life. pg. 79 [*]But not everyone is visual... Flashbacks can involve any of the senses. What you heard, saw, smelled, tasted, felt, or thought can return with such immediacy that you acutally relive the original experience. pg. 82 [*]Memories can remain stored in our bodies--in sensations, feelings, and physical responses. Even if we do not know what took place, fragments of what we suffered endure. pg. 83[/list]
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An article you might be interested in reading is: Trauma Information Pages, Articles: van der Kolk (1994) that article can be found with tons of other amazing information for healing from trauma athttp://www.trauma-pages.com Copyright © 1995-2004 David V. Baldwin, PhD

I hope this helps you.

Kindly,

[(JD)]

Good info zh. The more mild references are generally considered being triggered... a flashback is when whatever it is takes you BACK to the original event... we can all feel uncomfortable due to something reminding us, but in the flashback... it's real all over again.

[Butterfly_Faerie]

Flashbacks can be 2 different things.

The most common one for suvivors of abuse etc...or any other trauma.

The intensity of experiencing a life-threatening trauma can take time to subside. For some, it simply never does. If vivid "flashback" experiences or nightmares haunt you, if you're feeling emotionally numb or you feel plagued by worry and are losing sleep over concern for your safety, it is possible that you may be suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Seeking treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can help restore balance, control, and enjoyment to your life.

Also another form of a flash back is a body memory..

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One of the most dramatic events involving the retracing of body memory that I have witnessed occurred while I was traveling in Egypt. As our group entered one of the temples, a woman cried out, apparently in severe pain. As I got close to her, I noted that large blisters had formed on her skin. A man who is highly intuitive commented that she had been in that same temple thousands of years ago and that while she was there, someone had thrown boiling oil on her. Upon hearing this, the woman awakened her own memory of that time and, with it, intense anger toward the one who had hurt her. Those who were close to her encouraged her to release the anger and forgive. When she did, the pain and blistering disappeared as mysteriously as it had come upon her.

Not all retracing is this dramatic. There are times when the release of a memory may occur outside of your conscious awareness. All you may experience consciously is a desire to take a few deep breaths, or to sigh deeply. You may notice that you feel a bit lighter and freer, but you will not be able to say why. A person who is doing well under the care of a chiropractor, acupuncturist, or massage therapist may explode with anger for no apparent reason during or after a session. Another person who is progressing well may suddenly feel a return of all his original symptoms and think that he is not progressing at all. Still another may experience knee pain. Upon questioning, it is learned that as a child she injured that knee. Although she has been pain-free for years, she once again is experiencing the same type of pain she experienced as a child. Still another person suddenly develops a sore throat. As a child, he had one sore throat after another, which were routinely treated with large doses of antibiotics. The antibiotics suppressed the disease rather than healing the body. Most likely, these incidents all represented a retracing of past experiences as they surfaced in an attempt to resolve themselves. Retracing allows all of these individuals to have closure with the past, so that they can heal in the present.

Entrapped in energetic scars is a piece of your vital life energy. Surfacing and resolving the memories allows you to reclaim that piece of your life energy. Over time, the resolution of energetic scars causes you to feel more energetic and alive.

If energetic scars remain unresolved, they not only cause a disruption of your body’s physical energetic systems, they also act as filters through which you view the world. If the energetic scar has anger attached to it, it is likely that your reactions to the world within you or around you will be tainted with anger. If your memory is of a situation that is tainted with feelings of being a victim, you will most likely see life through the eyes of victimization and feel like a victim of many of your life experiences. Body memories may also color your belief in yourself, generating a "can’t do" rather than a "can do" attitude. The energetic scars you carry around with you color your world in ways that are unique to you as an individual.

Body memories surface as part of the process of healing the body. They also surface as a part of the process of healing your life. If you intend to lose weight, for example, all your negative body memory having to do with obesity, and the causes of that, will show their ugly faces. If you can keep your focus on the intention of healing yourself and your life, the body’s memory will dissolve and new life-enhancing patterns can be created in the place where the disease-producing memories once resided. Body memories, unresolved, keep you from living your dreams and achieving your goals. Because of this, people sometimes seek assistance from a medical intuitive who can help to surface the memory. Others seek chiropractic, acupuncture, or massage, knowing that all these forms can initiate a retracing toward health that will reveal the energetic scars so they can be dissolved.

Unfortunately, many people who experience the retracing of body memories and the release of energetic scars think that the care they received injured them or caused their health to deteriorate. As a result, they turn from alternative medicine and seek care that relies on pharmaceutical agents, which usually work to suppress the memories and the partially healed diseases that the body is attempting to surface so that it can heal.

When a body memory surfaces, it often dissolves quickly and is gone forever. If the energetic scar holds within it an unresolved life issue, illness, or residue from a traumatic injury, you might benefit from the support of a health professional skilled in body-mind healing. Whenever a body memory does surface, what works best is to hold love and forgiveness in your heart for yourself and for your past. Then turn from the past, so that you can focus on what you want more of in your life. If you want health, wealth, and happiness to be a part of your future, let go of the past and get on with the business of getting well so that you can live fully!

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Here is the link about body memories: http://www.healthrenewall.com/bodymem.htm

That is what i expierence, body memories, alot of people however will feel like they are watching it on film and it's terrifying.

For me body memories as a form of flashback is scary because sometimes I do not know why i'm feeling it.. because there is some stuff I know happened during my abusive relationship at 16.. but some stuff I can't recall, but I wrote it down so I know it happened.

Very furstrating.

[Malady156]

This isn't really a PTSD thing but I've had flashbacks before and they are way scary, and probably similar to what someone with PTSD would experience.

One time I made the mistake of attending a conference that was held at my old "alma mater" so to speak -- the college I was going to when the whole "storm" first broke out upon my life. I made the double mistake of staying in the dormitory where I'd been living when it all happened (it was summertime so they had dorm rooms available for conference attendees) and even though it wasn't the same room just being there in the building was enough. My anxiety levels went out the roof when the conference sessions were over for the day and I was all alone in that room ... I went out and got some alcohol to drink trying to chase the anxiety away ... another big mistake ... I ended up having so completely full blown a flashback to this day I have NO idea how I ended up where I did -- who found me, how they found me, or ANYTHING. I ended up (somehow) at this house where one of the conference presenters lived or was staying during the conference (can't remember which), shrieking and sobbing hysterically, babbling in another language (they told me it sounded like Gaelic to them; I don't know or speak Gaelic AT ALL, not even one word), and at one point locking myself in a bathroom there with a knife because I was going to c*mm*t su*c*de. I remember those few items but I have no idea how I got to that person's house nor who took me there. I think a couple of the ladies I'd met there at the conference -- a threesome of very nice &amp; friendly gals my age from Florida who were attending -- found me in this "state" and got me there somehow but I don't remember anything after I started drinking. Some of that might have been the alcohol, true, but the majority of it was the severe state I was in due to the flashback. It started there in the room before I even started drinking, and I was drinking to try to chase it away but it only got worse. I thought it was 1983 again and I was reliving things like crazy. Oh man it was bad. Totally out of control.

The people were very kind to me and stayed with me, talking to me, comforting me, and trying to calm me down. Eventually I did come out of it. I heard them talking about calling the ER or ambulance or some such and I totally begged and begged them not to, I was so terrified of being locked up somewhere and so embarrassed about my episode and so scared of someone taking my kids away from me because of it (they were still small back then, were at home with their father while I was away), etc.

[(JD)]

gee malady, sure sounds like ptsd to me but maybe, if nothing major traumatic happened back then, you were experiencing major panic attack from some "lesser" bad memories?

Yeah, alcohol rarely helps.

I agree with those who hold to this definition of a flashback:

"Psychology. A recurring, intensely vivid mental image of a past traumatic experience: " ..online dictionary

body memories and such are just that: body memories or mindful reflections. A FLASHBACK is an uncontrollable type experience where you fully SENSE that you are reliving that experience all over again...

maybe we are talking about the same thing, but there is a real difference in the definitions in the words being used.

Uncomfortable is probably descriptive of all.

Flashbacks hurt.

And not just emotionally.

I feel like I am being slammed back into the past. Almost an act of violence! Except for the first one...as strong and scary as it was, that one only hurt my psyche.

My first experience with a full-blown flashback occurred at my brother's grave. (The first brother that died)

I was very traumatized at age ten by the death of my father, and subsequently stuffed 99% of all my memories of him and that time away.

But I always remembered the wake and the funeral. Almost as if it were easier to remember a lifeless dad than the pain of remembering the loss of a breathing one.

My last memory of the event was at the cemetery. As we pulled in, being in the lead family car, we had to wait for what seemed an eternity, there were a lot of cars following behind us. My father was young, 42 and very active in the community.

When everyone's cars had caught up, the limo turned right to head over to the burial site… well, I checked out and flew away somewhere. I guess I couldn't deal with the fact that he was going in the ground.

Fast-forward twenty-seven years as I stood at my brother's grave. Everything was very quiet, the priest was mumbling, I felt a little dizzy so I put my head down. Suddenly, I was standing back at my father's grave while soldiers folded his flag and presented it to my mother. Sad faces, sniffles all around, I had nowhere to look but down at my shoes. Shiny shoes, theirs and mine, were all I wanted to see.

Someone touched my shoulder and I looked up to find I was back at my brother's grave.

I never even knew my dad had a military funeral.

[(JD)]

flashback
An involuntary recurrence of some aspect of a hallucinatory experience or perceptual distortion occurring some time after taking the hallucinogen that produced the original effect and without subsequent ingestion of the substance. (ref. online medical dictionary)

flashbacks (feeling as if you are actually in the traumatic situation again). AllPsych Online.

I think what you are looking at are good memories, as flashbacks are considered negative, sometimes inaccurate, recurrence of an event.

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I think what you are looking at are good memories

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Thank you Sky, for explaining the difference. You are right. The first part of what I wrote was the memory of those times.

It was this part, where you explain "flashbacks (feeling as if you are actually in the traumatic situation again)." that I left my brother's funeral and was transplanted back to my fathers, twenty-seven years earlier.

Perhaps I didn't explain it well enough.

Suddenly, I was standing back at my father's grave while soldiers folded his flag and presented it to my mother. Sad faces, sniffles all around, I had nowhere to look but down at my shoes. Shiny shoes, theirs and mine, were all I wanted to see.

Someone touched my shoulder and I looked up to find I was back at my brother's grave.

I know the difference between a memory and a flashback, Sky. I have sufered with PTSD for thirty-eight years.

I hope you don't mind, I changed the post icon from your cool blue smirk back to confusion.

[(JD)]

NP on any of that. The main icon that was posted with the original post will remain the permanent one, mine was from me. Sorry for the confusion ... I was thinking someone else reading might not realize the difference.... sigh. Your remembering an additional item, if true, shows that your brain is still trying to file this stuff in it's proper place. Sorry you have been suffering so long, how long have you been in therapy for ptsd, if I may ask. (You don't have to answer any questions.)

[Gemstone]