‘Flashbacks’ about things that haven’t happened

[Pleasedontdothat]

My husband died very suddenly and unexpectedly last year and I’ve been experiencing flashbacks of the moment when I found him since then. I’ll be doing something completely mundane and suddenly it’s like I’m there again, feeling the same panic.

These thoughts are now expanding and I’ve started getting flashbacks of things that haven’t happened, like my daughter falling from her horse, car crashes etc. They feel like vivid memories, that pop up at random times and I feel the same panic as when I have flashbacks of the trauma I’ve actually experienced.

Has anyone else gone through something similar and if so, what helped? I started a course of EMDR but stopped halfway through as I’d started to dread the sessions and didn’t feel it was helping.

When something traumatic happens part of the subconscious tries to work out exactly what happened, in order to avoid it happening in the future. That's why you're getting the flashbacks of your husband's death, it's your mind's way of trying to make sense of a situation that was such a terrible shock.

I would hazard a guess that your mind is now playing out a similar scenario but in different circumstances - hence the vivid thoughts of things that haven't actually happened. Your imagination is entirely subconscious so this is akin to having intrusive thoughts, almost as though it's testing out other shocking incidents to see how it (you) would cope.

Thanks - I understand why it’s happening - I’d be keen to hear from anyone who’s experienced something similar and what helped

Have a read around symptoms of PTSD and see if it fits for you.
EMDR is the most effective type of treatment for this but if you don't like it then you can have other types of talking therapy.

I'd say remedial hypnosis is very effective for PTSD but then I would....certainly the people I've worked with have experienced very good results.

I am guessing it works in a similar way to emdr in terms of allowing the memories to be acceßed without the overwhelming emotions? I can see that would also work well.