...New memory recall: guess what happened to you!
...Flashback: oh no, not this sh*t again!

...personal and idiosyncratic definitions. Your mileage may vary.

Generally, when I have processed through the feelings, I do not get flashbacks from the SAME incident. Once i've remembered and felt the crap? The bomb's bloody well defused. One less landmine waiting to go off in my head.
But that's me, this is why plowing through my crap works so well for me. For some people this would just make symptoms worse.

Some people get suck in a loop-the same fricken' thing over and over. Not sure what to do about that loop-de-loop crap.

Memory: re-cognition or re-call. Are we recalling an event, or recognizing something based on past experience? Both? Neither? COmplicated stuff best left to experts, which I am not.

For me?

Flashback: Memory of event overwhelms cognition of the Now-Here.
That's all I got.


When I flashback a few times, I tend to have less intensity on that incident, and it fades into "regular memory/recall". But that's me.

I'm like BD. Plowing through the shi*heap tends to get me clean and clear. (eventually.) OThers? Just makes 'em feel stinky. Whatever works....

Support as you ponder

sometimes memory comes as a flashback. Especially if it was traumatic. you may only get pieces of it and it comes as a flashback.

To me memory is simply a recollection of an event without any sensory effects.

A flashback is fully sensory. I see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it. It is as though it is happening all over again. Sometimes it comes in snipits in a collective collage other times it's a real time movie.

But this is just me. I tend to be the exception to the rules.

A flashback is full on and action related... I am in terror mode with a flashback .... A memory is to recollect something

They overlap in PTSD, of course. But for me generally a memory makes some kind of sense, logical or even illogical, but with interpretation possible that belongs to a narrative. A flashback to me is so physically sensory that I can't interpret it mentally. I can't build a narrative about it that would give it sense, not even using surreal interpretations allowing for the subconscious mind to be at work. It's like those chills horror story writers describe that are associated with the passing of a ghost near someone.

Brilliant set of thoughts here -- especially the yin/yang idea.
Could it be that memory is the simple act of recollection -- of anything? -- whereas a PTSD flashback has a sensory element of being triggered.
So a flashback is a memory but a memory isn't necessarily a PTSD flashback.
I'm thinking of the many things we do, habits we have that are based on muscle memory. And how dreams feel very much in the moment and real. Maybe a flashback is neurologically similar -- like a flight or fight activation.
Does a flashback feel like you're completely immersed in reliving the experience?

memories are like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWl6Wy5YOWg

flashbacks are like (WARNING - this triggers my anxiety so it may be a trigger for others, too) https://akk.li/pics/anne.jpg

The sudden onset of a past memory and the reactions associated with it based on the current experience commonality in the present.


whew.

For me, flashbacks only manifest as feelings (emotions) and sensations (phantom pains and odors). I don't have many memories. Flashbacks as feelings/emotions are very confusing because they are like memories dressed up in the present and sometimes I can't recognize that they were flashbacks until they are over and the feelings lift.

I wonder if I will ever have memories and what that would be like.

Yeah, open, definitely a flight or fight activation for me. No thought to it, just physical activation for one or the other, and right now.

Hm-m-m-m. . .

I wonder if that ability to insert thought is a dif. When I am remembering, I can chew softly and let it go where it goes. I can act -or not- with deliberate intent.

When I am in a triggered state, I am reacting like a string of black cat firecrackers. One pop after another without regard to who or what is around me.

Kinda brings me back to the "volatile mix" theory. The fuse is not the problem. If that string of black cats has baking soda inside, it will not go, "Boom" after you light the fuse.

Ay. . . For want of a simple word. . . Anybody got their label machine?

oh so the body memories and physical symptoms that come with memory are a flashback and memory is just remembering something . So far when I have recalled something tragic it always ends up being a flashback and I have emotions with it and sometimes sensations and physical symptoms.

Donna it sounds like your memories not remembered are just a bit closer to being remembered.

I didn't forget mine, the traumas, but the things that may have been okay in between are what's missing. Harder to relate a flashback of good to when I didn't have that early. John's loss kinda takes a bite out of the good I had then too. So I learn with every thing a way to move from point A-B without self damage if I can. It may mean: step back to robot "Wall-E" mode, input until I can digest and assess.

I have seen here when those familiar peeks you are getting do have a radical tipping point when a breakthrough happens. Some can be a simple recognition others are outright avalanches..

I have had a few ( 3 digits or 4 no matter) in discussions here, but the play on Calypso is part of what I feed to help offset my picture show.

Memories I can just handle as a thought in my head. Flashbacks for me are heavy and come with intense emotional feeling throughout my body.