Flashbacks

Flashbacks are described as memories that are experienced by a traumatic event survivor as if the traumatic event was happening again. They can be experienced at any time of the day or night and can be very disturbing. The reason for this is that flashbacks of the traumatic event produce the same feelings and physical sensations that were present during the traumatic event itself. For seconds you may feel that you are at the scene of the traumatic event again, hearing, seeing, smelling and reacting to the traumatic event. You feel the horror, fear or helplessness again, the traumatic pictures and images reappear in your mind and you feel you are experiencing the whole thing again. This is naturally very disturbing and distressing feeling.

Traumatic event recollections

Not every vivid memory of a traumatic event is experienced as a flashback. Some people may experience difficulty switching off their memories and recollections of the traumatic event and things in everyday life can be a trigger to traumatic associations. You may not even be aware of the initial trigger (it can be simple things like being pushed in a crowd or hurrying and breathing heavily). This means that your mind is struggling to make sense of the traumatic event. Your mind is finding it difficult to work out what happened to the world you knew before the traumatic event. The world no longer feels safe.

Ray remembers the day when he was a victim of an armed robbery. He handed over his money and other possessions to the robber in order not to be harmed. For weeks after the traumatic event he couldn’t stop thinking about what happened. Parts of the event seemed to pop into his mind at the most unexpected times. He could remember even the smallest detail; it was like a film being replayed again and again. He sometimes found himself feeling all the reactions he had during the traumatic event- shivering, feeling of horror and helplessness and even anger - again. He found all this very distressing and he felt out of control, as he could never predict when these reactions would overtake him again.