Do any of you have flashbacks with your eyes closed?

My T asked me why I have my eyes closed when I have flashbacks in therapy. I did not know the answer but apparently I have them closed all the time while I'm having them. I feel everything in my body too. I wonder if I keep my eyes open if I don't feel it as I would with my eyes closed.

Do any of you ever close your eyes when having flashbacks?

When I have flashbacks, I become so hyperfocused on the memory that I lose touch with my actual body. So to answer your question, I probably have my eyes open most of the time, but my brain makes that information less of a priority... if that makes sense... like, I can see, but I'm looking at something else, something in my head. As a person with psychosis, I would say it is a different experience from hallucinating. Well... eh... it's complicated.

I am new here and can't seem to figure out how to post so i am hoping you get this anyway. I myself have severe PTSD and i won't waste your time with having to read my life story, but let me try to break it down a little for you. Childhood abuse, married eleven years to Satan( broke my legs, stabbed seven times, shot at all the time, kicked in the stomach( whilepregnant with my second child causing her to be born with a terminal illnesses from which she died at16, and everything else evil that u can think of.... that's just the beginning.) So to try to help you let me say that most of the time I also close my eyes. It is the only way i can feel a little safer dealing with the flashback. I can't afford therapy and have to now deal alone. So i send you a huge hug and say that do what makes you the most comfortable when bad things enter your mind. You are not alone

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Interesting. I didn't think about that til just now. I think I have closed my eyes, and probably went from closing my eyes to opening them. I am thinking maybe it might bring a reaction of difference from when and how I am seeing it at the time.

I think sometimes I press on my eyes or head.

I am not sure...at this time thinking about it. I think its because we are relating seeing it to the eyes. Even though it is not. Its happening like a projector of the mind, seeing it in front of you, but not....and seeing it in the mind. I think our brain is telling us we are SEEING it. So our eyes are reacting.

I think I shut my eyes from seeing it...if my eyes or closed or even waking up in a nightmare...I want to change from the dream state. having eyes opened. I want to close my eyes from seeing it.

I may not always react in this opposite while I am not thinking about it...sometimes I think I turn or jerk my head a little from seeing it faced in the directed.

So I think we are reacting as we would be seeing something avoiding it. ...and what our state would be in experiencing that and then changing it. Like turning your head in a scary movie, and closing your eyes, and them having a nightmare and trying find a way out or focus that its not real, or there.

Distracting or changing from the state your in while experiencing it.

This is from my own insight and experience about it...

For me my flashbacks do not come in therapy. When I have a flashback it is like an all inclusive wave of feelings and sensations that rolls over my whole body. When I talk about a flashback I am able to close my eyes and see an internal vision of what was happening to me during the flashback. I can describe the sensations without feeling them again.

I don't close my eyes when I have them, apparently I stare off into space and you can tell I'm not thinking in reality anymore. But I do have them when I try to sleep, or like I'll have thoughts about confronting the people who are the reasons I have PTSD or people saving me from them or random anime adventures where I reply certin aspects..............if that helps its hard to sleep but hey

I close my eyes and sometimes have them open. If they are open I'm staring off into space and have been told I have fuzzy focus eyes. It's odd.

-Tig

5 years ago, flashbacks occurred eyes opened or closed. Today they are more sound induced at times. I have a difficult time staying in the moment, and this is an on going challenge for daily living and activities.

I have really thought about, because up til now I have not but my T can tell when I am seeing a memory(for some reason I hate the word flashback) from the past.

Like some of you I drift away and appear to be looking in the distance but unfocused. I know that when I am afraid of what I am experiencing I close my eyes and almost recoil physically from it.......as a way of making it go away. I also feel it in my entire body, its horrid!

When I dream obviously my eyes are closed, and just before sleep also closed if I begin to "remember".

When I can bring myself back I need, absolutely need, to be able to find something in the present to stare at and have found myself repeating over and over in my head the name of what I am looking at. I guess this has been my way of grounding to the present. Now though I try to use some of the techniques that my T has told me about.

Sorry you are experiencing this.....its hard huh? Hugs to you