u/Warm-Scholarly

I've recently had nightmares about my abuser assaulting me, but while I am an adult with the strength of a young child. What happens in the nightmares doesn't reflect much of the abuse I am pretty sure I suffered (I only have sensory memories and one maybe visual one at the moment, so a lot of doubt still). It was an MDSA situation, but my nightmares include equipment that obviously wasn't there for my actual trauma.

Has this sort of trauma nightmare happened to anyone else? It makes me feel a lot of self doubt.

TW for flashback environmental description.

I had a flashback last night, and it didn't have a noticeable trigger (it's my second big flashback, the first one was triggered by lights turning off). I just felt more and more panicked until I slipped into it. My lovely fiancé brought me an ice pack, and I was able to somewhat control my breathing, but I couldn't get the emotions or deeply invasive sensations I was feeling to stop. I had a couple more pieces of information pop into my head (the way a bed looked, a promise of something I wanted). Even afterwards I was pretty out of it and I feel really vulnerable today and doubt what came up in my mind as real.

Does anyone have any tips on snapping myself out of it/recovery post flashback? And should I count the memories as actual memories or my brain throwing things out there?