um, yeah . . if what I experienced this past week is actually a flashback, I was totally gripped with panic, it was upon me and I was not able to stop or control it, and it was not a memory - one that I can remember.

Sounds good to me arfie.

I would agree with all of that. When I have flashbacks, they usually come with very little warning and then I feel like I'm totally taken out of my environment. Memories are just a normal part of life and not nearly as damaging, though some memories aren't pleasant.

My mind has a mind of its own ~Butch Hancock

I only get so much control over my twisted grey matter. Diddys and doodads will stick there and play there like a broken record. I have commercial diddys that have been stuck in my head since the 60s.

"Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is" ~Alka Seltzer commercial

It gets irritating, but the irritation is manageable. I can joke about it and continue navigating in the present. There is no need for coping measures.

Still, I panic a bit just from the horrific conditioning of decades of flashbacks. It is as though natural, healthy memory function is enough to trigger my fight or flight instincts.

I was replaying last night and considering how I am unsure if it is intuition or triggers - and I've been aware of this 'which one is it' for months and months.

Last night, my teenaged kids came home around 11:30 with a bunch of friends, having a bonfire / graduation party. I woke with a start - I had an uneasy feeling - I remembered the last time I had an uneasy feeling when the party showed up at my house and I didn't say anything, daughter ended up being stupid and getting a DUI. So, last night, although I was fully aware I didn't know if it ws a trigger or intuition - I texted both my kids and told them "I have an uneasy feeling - be very, very careful" and they ended up not getting ripped (drunk, trashed) - and then, this makes me think, yeah, still managing the drinking. I've always run my home on this intuition and everyone respects it, because I've been right so many times and they (my kids and even my ex) learned to recognize the uneasy and proceed with caution.

But, I digress . . part of the mix of all that bothered me in an instant -hearing heavy boots coming across the kitchen floor and knowing that didn't help my feeling of anxiety at all and wondering, remembering how I didn't want to hear my ex's boots, knowing he was home, at the end - but he never wore cowboy boots, his step was never that heavy.

Then, the second or third time I got up, giving up on sleep, to smoke another cigarette, I found someone had laid their cigarette on their paperplate, when eating and no one was in the kitchen and the plate was on the brink of catching fire.

Intuition? Trigger? IDK yet. My intuition used to be so strong but now I'm caught in 'is this intuition or is this a trigger and not to be applied to the present?'

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk to you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seed while I was sleeping...

LOL!

It's a 60s revival!

One pill makes you bigger
While another makes you small

I do like Sounds Of Silence, but The Boxer is my favorite of theirs. Like I say memories and nightmares and flasbacks oh my. In a flashback I'm awake and there. With a memory I remember something. In a nightmare it seems just as real as a flasback, but I'm asleep. What really sucks is having a nightmare then waking up in a flashback. In a nightmare usually I know it's not real when I wake up, but there are times that they are what happened. Is it possible to have a flashback or is it a part of me having a flashback while I'm asleep?

the weirdest thing is my dreams consisted of my mom and i having sex when i was not sexually abused by either parent and never understood why i would keep having those dreams both of us (parents and me) have no real bond between each other. there is no loving, supporting, or caring bond between us as they care more about themselves and have expressed that a lot.

another dream i had is my dad and i fought, boy did i kick his ass! at the end of the dream, i only saw his head coming out of a lion's mouth with blood coming out of his mouth, and his hands/claws tickling me and laughing like the devil which is super scary.

i woke up so fast and started crying. i would always wake up crying from my sleep and if the dream were that scary, i would laying on my bed twitching like a drug addict and my body would be in shock jerking up and down until i woke up.

i haven't had those dreams lately those were back in 06-09 maybe 2010. i also was having flash backs from childhood on how my mom threw me on my bed, twisted my arm behind my back, and told me do u want me to kill u? do u want me to kill u? i saw everything in the flash back, my old room, how dirty it was, our old house like it was yesterday.

it seems as though every time we get into a fight, those memories seem to come back causing me problems.

I am convinced memory functions suffer less conscious interference when I sleep and that the horrid nightmares I suffered during my most vicious battles to keep the memories blocks in place WERE flashbacks, all dressed up in my creative resistance.