flashbacks

[tharidler]

hello everyone
although the title maybe sounds a bit dramatic i'm not  talking about ptsd or a serious accident causing this to most people this may just sound like memories but i am interested to see if anyone else has to deal with this?
the reason i say memories is because that is what they are in the sense that i remember things that are good,bad or indifferent but they seem to affect me more than they should ie i remember conversations with people where i have said something unkind or stupid and this causes me to cringe and to feel ashamed eventhough they may have happened years ago and these things for want of a better word haunt me i understand this may sound a bit strange but it really upsets me that i said these things eventhough the things i said may not have even caused offence and its horrible to replay things that make me feel so stupid but its one of many things in this whirlwind of my mind i hope this makes some sort of sense if not its at least helped me a little to pose the question thanks for reading
btw i am on meds and have spent time in different therapies

[Got]

Welcome to my world

[Munchroom]

Hi  :) Yep, I know what you are referring to - I will suddenly have very vivid memories of things that happened years ago - or even dreams that I had agggges ago! I think its our depressed state of mind that just decides it will be a good idea to dedge things up and over-analyse them   x

[Lol]

Hi Tharidler, I think that this may represent to you the thing you fear most in yourself - ie, you would never wish to say something unkind to some one and upset them but you are afraid that you have/might. If so this is all part of the paranoia and loss of self esteem and in some respects self trust that comes with depression and the overwhelming desire that people must never think bad of you.

I have a simelar thing that manifests in a recuring dream. I have only just worked out that this is what it means in the last year and since finding out I haven't had it! It started when I was little (before 10) and has been freaking me out in a 'what the hell MUST this mean? way ever since. But now I know.

Basically, in the dream I am in a public place with friends and family chatting away and all having a nice time. Then, out of the corner of my eye I am aware that (now this bit is changable but always the same sort of gist) some one has just said 'oh my god what's this?' or 'wait a minute that's not what I think it is is it?' or sometimes they think what they can see is something it's not but I know the truth, or sometimes it is a police taped cordoned off area and an excavation is taking place. and i KNOW, immediately, that I have in the past murdered some one and buried them there and it is about to be discovered and there will be undenyable evidence that it was me and everyone will know. And it occurs to me all at once like I had buried it deep in my subconscious and conveniently forgot about it and I can remember actual memories about it and everything.

Now for years this freaked me out to the point where, when I was depressed, I actually scoured my living memories in case I actually had done something like this and buried it. I even thought maybe I was a murderer in a previous life and I should be regressed and find out (I don't even really believe in regression!). I scoured every memory I had thinking even if I didn't murder someone I must have done something awful and forgotten about it what was it.. The 'memories' in the dream seemed so vivid that I could even conjur them up now if I tried and they would feel real.

My other theory was that I must be pretending I'm some one I'm not and it's only a matter of time before people realise I'm a fake. (I felt a fake because I was happy shiny Lol on the outside and reeling, insecure, overwhelmed Lol on the inside).

It turns out, through much therapy, that it is my worst fear that anyone would think bad of me. And any bad thought anyone might have, be it that I'd taken the last biscuit, or said something accidentally that had caused offense, would be akin to murder (one of the fundamentally worse things a person can do that I can think of in my book). The dream is therefore about how I am afraid people will discover that (I'm only human) I am flawed, though I try really hard to be perfect, and if they did discover that, it would be as bad as if they had discovered I was a murderer.

There is a reason for this but I still can't talk about it yet.

I think you are describing something similar maybe? You are not in you heart a bad person, but we are all flawed human beings, and I;m going to make a very sweeping statement here, but I would go as far as to say that everybody in here, by the very nature of having fallen victim to depression, feels the same way.

We are all beautiful, flawed human beings. Don't worry.

[Zaf]

I have flashbacks and its always something unpleasant, or I regret, or I feel ashamed of

[tharidler]

hi there
first of all thankyou for your responses i honestly felt it was just me because i had spoke about it in therapy and really got what i felt was fobbed off as i was deemed to be wandering off topic.so it makes me feel a little better knowing other people understand and not just from an academic point of view and also some interesting points were raised that has given me some ideas to at least explore.

[xwardx]

Flashbacks are one of the hardest part of depression for me as to me the only way I can describe it is a video playing over and over and it feels like i'm being tortured, I can't wipe the memory out or forget it. It's always a bad memory too never a nice one! I just have to try my best to think about my daughter's smiling face and she helps me get through it

[tharidler]

hello xwardx
i guess it would be too much to ask for it to be pleasant memories for me its usually snippets of conversations that starts it things i have said or heard over the years and too say it's like torture is a very true statement for me as that what it feels like but at least through sharing i have learnt others have to deal with this which in a small way helps.

[lost rolex]

hello everyone
although the title maybe sounds a bit dramatic i'm not  talking about ptsd or a serious accident causing this to most people this may just sound like memories but i am interested to see if anyone else has to deal with this?
the reason i say memories is because that is what they are in the sense that i remember things that are good,bad or indifferent but they seem to affect me more than they should ie i remember conversations with people where i have said something unkind or stupid and this causes me to cringe and to feel ashamed eventhough they may have happened years ago and these things for want of a better word haunt me i understand this may sound a bit strange but it really upsets me that i said these things eventhough the things i said may not have even caused offence and its horrible to replay things that make me feel so stupid but its one of many things in this whirlwind of my mind i hope this makes some sort of sense if not its at least helped me a little to pose the question thanks for reading
btw i am on meds and have spent time in different therapies

i guess its very hard when you can not nail dow your flash backs like looking for a lost place and time when you where hard done by, for me it's easy the 14 months of &$%+ i went through, each day hold a new flash back, somtime they play in order sometime there on shuffle like track of an album, just the same album over and over again