I went to a new T today.. YEAH.. I finally found one(even one that I cound afford) and the experience made me think about the following:

Does anyone else experience "snapshots" in time and is this PTSD? Where time freezes and you just see a snapshot but feel the feeling?

For instance:
When I was 5yrs, I attended a one room school house. I was a kindergradener and I had to walk to the babysitters - about 1.5 miles. The area was completely rural. Nearest neigbors about a mile apart or so.We had lived there maybe 4 months before school starting.

When winter came, the landscape looked different. And I would get lost and wander around on some gravel roads unable to find my way. The winter back then was lots of snow and bitterly cold. Eventually, a neighbor would be driving along and find me and take me to the babysitters.

So my memory is 2 frozen snapshots.
1) a mental picture of the curve in the road where I always chose wrong
2) a mental picture of my hands up aginst the car heater vent warming my hands because they are freezing cold

I "go" back to these snapshots every once in a while if something triggers it. It isn't a verbal memory but a mental memory I guess.However, I feel the same feeling as it was at that exact time.
The indecision
The bitter cold
The extreme fear
The relief of someone finding me

Do the snapshots ever go away and how do you make them?

[lenjan]

I don't know if they ever go away, but i have them, and yes, it's PTSD. That was a surprise to me to find out, too -- I always thought PTSD was a full-on flashback, but many T's now have told me it doesn't necessarily have to be, and that "snapshots" count.

If you figure out how to make them go away, let me know. Mine happen at the most inconvenient times!

TC

Candy

[(JD)]

Yes I do too.

PTSD has the whole gambit of memory sensing... you might not see anything but feel or otherwise sense something... and be back "there" it's a beast of a DX.

[FaithisAlive]

I get them too. I call them "clips" almost like a clip from a tv show or something.... and it almost FEELS like MY memory when it happens, but then it doesn't ya know?I dunno...just thinking....

[froggie2]

Interesting topic. I never knew that either. Is that why memories of my childhood can come back and still be so painful? No often, but enough to drive me crazy that why can't the past be over instead of popping up again and again. Mostly from an abusive stepmother and ex. Any one read much about it?

[FaithisAlive]

Hey Froggie.... I just love your little frog SOOO MUCH!!It cheers me up when I see... maybe that sounds silly, but I love frogs and he is the cutest thing....so thanks for being here...

My counselor told me that until we deal with the FEELINGS that went along with EVENTS in our childhood, we will be haunted by the memories.

I'm just hoping to get enough "clips" to make some kind of sense of things so that I CAN allow the feelings to come...for me its kinda like watching tv when the power keeps blinking on and off just when the show is starting to get good...
You try hard to catch it before it blinks out again....

Anyway...Peace.. Faith

[Perna]

I think it's just "regular" memories we get stuck on. I have lots of them, but fewer than I use to have before therapy? My "favorite" is when my family was driving across country and we were in the "badlands" of South Dakota and there was nothing but bland, beige, grass-covered hills and highways with phone poles -- was almost worse than the Midwest/Kansas, Nebraska or Oklahoma prairies. Anyway, I decided to "memorize" a phone pole, a particular one and I started at it until I couldn't see it anymore out the back window of the car. Was/is a very interesting experience, "my" phone pole. While I was looking at it, memorizing it, I was thinking too about how I'd think about it in a year, 10 years, etc. It's been nearly 45 years now.

I think any situation with strong feelings can be the same, that's what memories are; you don't remember things that aren't memorable which is why it seems there are more bad memories stored up than good; who remembers a "sunny day" when there are "exciting" hurricanes to remember? If you think about it, you have to remember specific instances, can't remember a train of instances over time very well/specifically (learning to read, for example; doesn't usually happen at once, in one sitting, so isn't remembered).

I use to (before therapy) get "flashbacks" from smells. But not specific flashbacks, just the feelings, usually of anxiety or misery. There was one library I'd never been to and it happened to be in an elementary school. Walked through the door and, of course, thought it looked different, it still smelled like an elementary school, the "layout" and height of drinking fountains, where bathrooms were located, etc. were school-like. Wasn't even my old school, I'd never seen/been in this one before but the terror when I walked through the door was "old." Obviously I was never thrilled about elementary school for a multitude of reasons. But I was actually in 4 elementary schools from kindergarten to 6th grade, in a couple different states and they were all different types of schools, some newer some ancient. So it's not a specific memory, it's a PTSD-like "situation" but still, it's a part of my life and not likely to just go away. Because of therapy I don't get "surprised" anymore by smells and walk into situations like the school-turned-library one anymore. A lot of the stress has removed itself so things are much more bearable and I'm surer of myself "now" and can separate out that things aren't happening now and are not going to happen again like that. It reminds me of the CSI-type shows where the good guys tell a victim, "He'll never hurt you again" after they kill the bad guy.

[(JD)]

Yes, it appears that the storage area for trauma is near the one for other senses of memory...thus the connections being stored?

What is good about this though, is that we don't have to go over each and every aspect of any trauma to "get over" the flashbacks. Once we worked through an event, the brain then "learns" about it, and proceeds to go ahead and properly store all the similiar memories. This makes them better under control, as then we can go, look at the memory and put it back rather than have it pop up without wish.

I've been fortunate enought to "fix" one off these snap-shots. I kept getting a slow motion scene where I am standing alone and uncared for...eventually with therapy and the internalistion process I was able to go back to the same scene and "feel" my T's presence...that snap-shot hasn't returned....hopefully with time a lot more can be healed..

My therapist uses guided imagery. It doesn't get rid of the snapshot but it helps make it less powerful. I've only done it for one situation and it worked to make it less powerful (frightening) and less frequent.

I didn't think of it as a snapshot, but that's just what it was. It was always the same picture. I just thought I was not remembering all of it. Interesting.

ECHOES

[Perna]

I think they're technically called "screen memories" http://soc.enotes.com/psychoanalysis.../screen-memory just an image that means more than it seems to on the face of it. I don't know if anyone's ever read I Never Promised You a Rose Garden but I'm reminded of the vertical lines across her vision which turned out to be her crib bars when she was a baby/toddler.

[obsids]

Ack.... I get that all the time... it's like a slideshow in super fast forward. Sometimes, one memory will trigger another and then another. Sometimes it is all bad flashbacks. Sometimes it is just like paging through a photoalbum.

When it gets really bad, either triggering or just annoying, I sit down and play computer games to focus my mind on something different.

[froggie2]

Due to my machine acting up I never got back here. Too bad. I have been going through a lot of these. I know it has to do with an abusive stepmother and my dad not knowing about it or not caring. I have finnally confronted him with some of this but He either doesn't remember or chooses not to. The trauma is that he has ignored what happened and why don't I get on with my life? Each time I get triggered its like the whole family gets to affirm that there is something wrong with me and I go crazy.I think I have spent the majority of my life defending or validating myself. I am like a dog with a bone I can't let go. I am constantly explaining myself and trying to find answers why? I am getting the why but grieving it is the tough part especially when I have buried a lot and can't feel it to get through it.