Flashbacks

Obsessive thoughts can be controlled, at least to some extent, but flashbacks are involuntary, vivid images that unexpectedly recreate traumatic moments. They can involve sight, sound, smell, or physical sensations.

Flashbacks can be triggered by any cue that has been connected with the infidelity, whether the cue is conscious or not.

Flashbacks are distressing because they occur spontaneously, without warning. For the traumatized person, ordinary life is a minefield of explosive triggers. And triggers can be anything: the smell of burning leaves in the fall, getting a busy signal on the cell phone, or sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner (when, two years earlier, he had gone out to pick up ice cream and didn’t come back for three hours). Riding past a restaurant where the lovers ate can bring on waves of panic and trembling.

When you have a flashback, it doesn’t matter that the truth is known and that things are back on track; you go through it again, almost as it for the first time.

One night, Colleen woke up at midnight and realized that her husband hadn’t come to bed yet. She got up and found a light shining under the closed door of his computer room. She tried the door, but it was locked. Even though she totally believed that her husband’s Internet affair was over and that he was working on his computer project for work, the locked door sent her into a panic. It triggered a flashback to the nights when he used to  lock himself in the study at 3:00 and indulge in sexual affairs on-line. Like others who experience A.M. flashbacks, on this night Colleen experienced the physical symptoms that accompanied the original trauma. Even though she knew his shenanigans were over, she endured the same sense of fear, panic, and rage.

Either partner can have flashbacks.

As upsetting as they may be, you have to expect that sudden flashbacks will be a normal part of your experience.

Vicky kept flashing back to the moment when her husband knocked on the door of her hotel room and exposed her intercontinental tryst. When she was reminded of that event, she felt as if her heart were jumping out of her ribcage, as though the knock were just happening.