What exactly are flashbacks?

[SunshineRainflower]

I keep experiencing something which I’m not sure are flashbacks or just memories? How do your flashbacks manifest themselves?

I keep getting these random memories that turn up in my head of situations with him. My flat hunt has triggered them because I’ve had to look for a place in his postcode, so when I’ve been using google maps I get a lot of these sorts of memories. It doesn’t feel anywhere near as painful as when I first left, it just mainly feels really very sad, disappointing, confusing. They often stop me in my tracks. I remember when I was the girl who thought she had found a lovely, sweet, wonderful man. ‘How lucky I am to have found such a great guy’ I thought. I have both happy and abusive memories of us together, but the weirdest most surreal ones are the ‘normal’ mundane ones. I looked on google earth to check how near a rental place was to his and ended up checking out his street, remembering how I used to drive over there all the time, how excited I was about it at first, how I used to stay with him in his nice place. I remember us going on shopping trips together in his car like a ‘normal’ couple (which I thought we were at that time). Remembering waking up and looking out at the view outside together, him preparing us breakfast while I planned our day.

Oh god it is painful thinking about it actually, because that girl thought she had found someone special, that she was finally no longer single after years of rubbish c****y dating, and I’m still mourning the complete loss of this relationship I thought I had. It feels very, very sad. The normal bits were in a way the bits I liked the most, because I’ve always wanted to just have a normal, stable, calm relationship.

Does anyone else feel like this too? These thoughts and memories have been going on for me for months now. They occupy a part of my brain each day I’m used to them now and don’t cry about it half as much anymore, but it is uncomfortable to still be thinking about him so much.

[Ayanna]

Flashbacks are involuntary recurrent memories of a sudden nature, that make you re-experience the past. These can be happy or sad memories.
They do not necessarily need a trigger. They can occur out of the blue, with no connection to the present situation.

However, what you describe could well be flashbacks. Although most of it sounds like memories.

[Tinkerbell]

They sound like flashbacks to me, you may need some support to recover. There is specific treatment, that you can get from a psychologist to help you process the memories, I hope they get better for you, it’s been years for me and they still haven’t gone.

[Author]

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