What do your flashbacks look like?

Sometimes I'll have a memory flashback where I'll have a visual trigger and feel like I'm back in a situation I got out of about a year ago. But other times someone will say something or the most random thing will happen and I'll have an emotional flashback. I was told by a professional that my "body is reacting to situations as if the threat is still present." So even though I know I'm safe now whenever something triggers me I feel as if I'm back in a toxic ab*sive environment.

I don't really have many actual flashbacks of the exact things that happened. However, when I do, they're extremely vivid and very distressing. I cry and get angry and so bitter and experience kind of like this existential dread feeling about the fact that I can't get any of that time back and it's gone forever. My flashbacks usually occur in that more sneaky way, where if I'm triggered then my body has an emotional flashback to the last time I felt this way and I react physically, verbally and emotionally as if I'm still in that past situation. Those paths made in our brains run very deep!

There are many different types of flashbacks. You may not always be fully submerged in the traumatic memory. Sometimes you can have emotional flashbacks, where you feel all the intense emotions of that time without knowing why or the context.

emotional flashbacks are quite common for CPTSD. I would recommend looking them up. perhaps that's what you experience!

For me a flashback is extremely vivid. I'm reliving thr memory in real time like im actually there. They aren't as common as dissociation for me. Sometimes I feel like I have a partial flashback. For a fleeting second I'm in a memory but its not long and I'm not really all submerged. Like the other day I went to take a shower and had this horrible feeling about a bad memory. I didn't get the full context but i felt "there" emotionally and half physically. It was like reality was fading away into the past like a time machine....but before I was fully teleported I was back in my skin in the present.

A flashback would be vivid recollection of sounds, images, and sensations associated with the trauma. In a flashback it feels as though you are truly reliving the situation. By what you said I would say that you are recalling the trauma and it gives you emotions but you aren't experiencing a flashback. As a therapist I would suggest you discern what led to you thinking about the trauma as well as discuss how the trauma is affecting your life now.