Beyond the Mind's Eye: Flashbacks, Fleshbacks, and the Cartesian Prison of Trauma

If you've ever been haunted by a memory, you likely understand the concept of a "flashback."
But what if your mind doesn't work in pictures or an internal voice?
What if the trauma doesn't feel like a memory at all, but a perpetual, physical reality?

This post will dismantle the monolithic idea of the "flashback" and introduce a vital distinction for understanding trauma in non-representational minds.

What Are Flashbacks? The Standard Definition

In clinical terms, particularly for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a flashback is an intrusive, involuntary reliving of a traumatic event. It is defined by its representational nature.

Think of it as the brain's projector malfunctioning, forcing you to watch a horrifying movie against your will. This "movie" is not just visual; it can involve all the senses:

• Visual: Seeing the event play out in your mind.

• Auditory: Hearing the sounds or voices from the trauma.

• Olfactory: Smelling scents associated with the event.

• Somatic: Feeling physical sensations, but as part of the recalled experience.

Crucially, a flashback exists in the mind. It is a replay of a recorded sensory event. Its power comes from its perceived immediacy, making you feel as if you are back in that moment, even though you are physically safe in the present.

The Crucial Limitation of the Flashback Model

The entire clinical understanding of flashbacks is built on one fundamental assumption: that the human mind has the capacity for internal sensory representation.

But what happens when the projector is not just broken, but was never installed to begin with?

This is the reality for individuals with Aphantasia—the inability to generate mental imagery—and specifically, the condition I term Panmodal Aphantasia, which extends to a full-spectrum absence of internal sound, touch, and narrative.

For this mind, the classic "flashback" is an impossibility. There is no "movie" to intrude. And this is where the established model fails, and a dangerous misconception begins.

The Dangerous Fallacy: "No Flashbacks, No Problem"

The prevailing and catastrophic error in both academic and public discourse is to assume that the absence of visual flashbacks equates to a reduction in traumatic impact. This is a phenomenological fallacy.

It mistakes the absence of the symbol of trauma (the image) for the absence of the substance of trauma (the agony).

If the trauma can't be replayed in the mind, where does it go?

Introducing the Fleshback: The Body's Archive of Agony

My research introduces the concept of the Fleshback to describe the traumatic recurrence in the Panmodal Aphantasic mind.

A Fleshback is not a mental replay. It is a somatic imprint of abuse embedded directly into the body's tissues, nervous system, and hormonal circuitry.

Characteristic	Flashback (PTSD)	Fleshback (Panmodal Aphantasia + C-PTSD)
Location	In the Mind	In the Body
Nature	Representational (a "movie")	Somatic (an "imprint")
Time Sense	Intrudes on the present	Is the perpetual present
Modality	Sensory (visual, auditory)	Physiological (pain, tension, dysregulation)

A Fleshback is the body living in a continuous, present-tense state of the original trauma. It is chronic muscle armoring, a proprioceptive sensation of being choked, a hormonal storm, or a visceral inflammation—all occurring now, not as a memory.

The Cartesian Prison: When the Mind-Body Split Becomes a Torture Chamber

This distinction reveals a terrifying reality: the philosophical mind-body divide, often called Cartesian Dualism, is not an abstract concept. For the Panmodal Aphantasic enduring long-term abuse, it becomes a lived Cartesian Prison.

The mind is a lucid, aware witness—fully conscious of the catastrophe unfolding in the body. It sees the pain, feels the panic, understands the cause. But it is utterly powerless to intervene.

Why?

Because the very tools the mind uses to comfort and regulate the body—visualizing safety, hearing a soothing inner voice, narrating the event into the past—are architecturally absent. The mind is sealed in a soundproof booth, screaming commands to a body that cannot hear it over the roar of its own somatic terror. This state of conscious, impotent witnessing is what I term Paraconsistent Facticity. 

Why This Distinction is a Matter of Survival

Understanding the difference between a Flashback and a Fleshback is not academic pedantry. It is the difference between effective treatment and re-traumatization.

• Therapy for Flashbacks aims to process and desensitize the mental representation of the event.

• Therapy for Fleshbacks must target the physiological imprint directly, through somatic experiencing, autonomic nervous system regulation, and other body-first modalities. Standard talk therapy or imagery-based techniques are structurally useless for a mind that cannot generate the required internal representations.

To continue applying a flashback-based model to Fleshback-based suffering is a form of clinical gaslighting that leaves the most vulnerable individuals trapped and without a path to healing.

This blog post is a summary of the groundbreaking framework detailed in my full thesis. If this resonates with your experience or your work, I urge you to read the complete argument.

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Cristina Gherghel | Independent Researcher & Advocate

Read the full thesis, "Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms," for free on Zenodo:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334

📖 Dive Deeper into the Research

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• 🔹 Neurodivergent as It Is — Exploring Neurological Realities Without Reductionism in Romanian

• 🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research — Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma

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Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: The Somatic Reality of Descartes Mind-Body Dualism

For over a decade, the dominant academic and public discourse has framed aphantasia—the inability to create mental imagery—as a protective advantage in the context of trauma. The prevailing consensus suggests that if the mind cannot replay the "movie" of an abusive event, the impact of that event is reduced.

My thesis, "Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms," dismantles this myth. It argues that this view is a phenomenological fallacy that mistakes the absence of the symbol of abuse (the image) for the absence of the substance of abuse (the agony). This is vital for understanding childhood trauma. 

Full Thesis Available at Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334

Drawing on a longitudinal auto-phenomenological analysis initiated in 2000, this work introduces the concept of Panmodal Aphantasia and demonstrates that in the context of long-term abuse and Chronic Stress, the absence of representational buffers does not delete the impact of harm; it concentrates the external force of abuse entirely within the somatic system. This is why the Body Keeps the Score in a unique way for us.

The Definition of Panmodal Aphantasia

To understand the mechanics of this vulnerability, we must define the architecture correctly. Current literature often focuses on visual aphantasia (the blind "Mind's Eye") or multisensory aphantasia. This discussion is critical for anyone dealing with Complex PTSD (or C-PTSD).

My thesis introduces the term Panmodal Aphantasia to designate a distinct, absolute condition: the full-spectrum absence of all internal representation. This encompasses the five primary senses, the internal somatic senses (interoception, proprioception), and crucially, the mechanisms of internal communication:

• Anauralia: The absence of voluntary auditory imagery (no imagined voices or sounds).
• Anendophasia: The absence of spontaneous inner voice (no internal monologue).

This is not a mind that is merely "blind"; it is a mind stripped of the specific representational tools required to process human experience.

The Law of Conservation of Traumatic Affect

The claim that aphantasia is protective collapses when we apply the Law of Conservation of Traumatic Affect. Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. In a neurotypical architecture, the hydrostatic pressure of an abusive event is distributed across multiple release valves: the visual vent (visualizing escape), the auditory vent (generating a soothing voice), and the narrative vent (telling a story that places the event in the past).

In Panmodal Aphantasia, these valves are mechanically sealed. The subject cannot visualize safety. They cannot hear a comforting voice. Consequently, 100% of the traumatic pressure is forced into the single remaining vessel: the physical body. The absence of the image does not remove the energy; it compresses it into the somatic tissue. This is the core of Somatic Trauma.

Fleshbacks: The Body as the Sole Archive

Standard trauma theory focuses on PTSD Flashbacks—intrusive, representational re-experiencing of an event (the movie in the mind).

My thesis introduces the concept of Fleshbacks to describe the distinct phenomenology of the Panmodal Aphantasic. A Fleshback is a somatic imprint of abuse embedded directly in the body, persisting independently of imagery. Unlike flashbacks, which are episodic, Fleshbacks are defined by persistence and accumulation.

Because the mind lacks the timestamping function of an image (which fades to signal "this is past"), the body does not record the abuse as a historical event. The abuse maintains a "live" status. The somatic experience—postural collapse, Chronic Pain, Autonomic Nervous System dysregulation—is always in the present tense. This is Chronological Collapse: the event is never behind you; it is always within you. 

Paraconsistent Facticity: The Mind as Witness

The state of the Panmodal Aphantasic under long-term abuse is not one of confusion or suppression. It is a state of Paraconsistent Facticity.

This concept describes a catastrophic duality where the mind acts as a lucid, helpless witness to the body's uninterrupted suffering. The mind is fully aware of the somatic terror but, due to the absence of representational tools, is structurally impotent to intervene. It is the specific torture of knowing exactly what is happening while being paralyzed in the dark.

The Fallacy of Coping and Defense Mechanisms

The thesis argues that Panmodal Aphantasia renders standard coping and Emotional Regulation mechanisms mechanically impossible.

• Coping Mechanisms (like attenuation or abstraction) require the ability to internally simulate or modulate experience.
• Defense Mechanisms (like denial or projection) require the ability to distort internal reality.

You cannot distort an image that does not exist. This impossibility defines the torturous reality of the Cartesian Split: the mind is severed from the body, a lucid witness trapped in a somatic prison. You cannot dissociate from a body you are anchored inside with no mental "elsewhere" to go—the representational sanctuary required for escape is architecturally absent. The Panmodal Aphantasic is left with the raw truth of the abuse in the mind and the raw pain of the abuse in the body, with no psychological machinery to bridge the chasm between them.

The Somatic Schism and the Failed Kiss

The most damaging aspect of this architecture is the destruction of self-soothing mechanisms, resulting in a Somatic Schism. Self-soothing is typically a loop where the mind speaks a comforting word, generates an internal resonance, and the body responds.

In Panmodal Aphantasia, this loop is the "Failed Kiss". The lucid mind issues a command—"You are safe, breathe"—but due to Anendophasia and Anauralia, the words strike the body as a "Pane of Glass". The semantic meaning is understood, but without an internal sensory medium to carry the resonance, the signal does not penetrate the somatic barrier. The body remains locked in the Fleshback, deaf to the mind's intent.

The Metabolic Cost of Superposition

This architecture alters the mechanics of Gaslighting. Because the subject cannot "hear" the abuser's voice internally, they do not internalize the "Bad Object" or the lie. The mind retains the fact of its innocence.

However, this immunity is not free. It creates a state of Superposition, where the subject must hold the internal fact ("I am innocent") against the constant external assault ("You are worthless") without any representational tools to process the conflict. Maintaining this friction is a bio-energetic siege. The abuse, unable to distort the mind, instead corrodes the body through the sheer metabolic exhaustion of sustaining the truth.

The Cortisol Bridge and Systemic Collapse

The thesis identifies the Cortisol Bridge as the mechanism of physical ruin. Aphantasia and Trauma create a unique challenge here. Panmodal Aphantasia acts as a force multiplier for stress physiology. When trauma triggers a cortisol surge, the neurotypical mind uses imagery and narrative to down-regulate the system—the "brakes".

In Panmodal Aphantasia, the brakes are absent. The Cortisol burns unchecked through the tissues, leading to Systemic Overload. This is not psychosomatic; it is a mechanical consequence of unbuffered toxic exposure. The result is a specific clinical profile documented in the thesis: catastrophic hormonal dysfunction, hemorrhagic endometriosis, vestibulodynia, systemic mineral dysregulation, and the "Atlas Complex"—a chronic, crushing weight on the musculature.

The Manual Override and Functional Death

With no automatic regulation, the conscious mind is forced into a Manual Override. The subject must deliberately, manually pilot the failing biological machine, using external speech to attempt to regulate the autonomic system.

This process is metabolically exhaustive and unsustainable. It leads inevitably to Functional Death: the biological impossibility of sustaining external engagement. The isolation often observed in these cases is not a symptom of depression; it is a structural necessity to prevent total system failure.

A Structural Mandate for Healing

The findings of this thesis necessitate a complete re-evaluation of established trauma and Emotional Regulation mechanisms. The catastrophic dualism inherent in Panmodal Aphantasia acts not as a refutation, but as a pathological proof of the philosophical split between mind and body; it demonstrates the split not as a philosophical error, but as a lived, torturous reality

Traditional therapy, which relies heavily on visualization, imagination, narrative restructuring, or "mind-based" dissociation techniques, is rendered structurally useless. For the Panmodal Aphantasic suffering from Complex PTSD, the path to healing requires a physiological mandate. The entire focus of intervention must shift from internal representation to Autonomic Nervous System regulation. The failure of the Cortisol brakes demands that therapy be purely physical: addressing the somatic imprint, releasing the chronic tension of the Fleshback, and mechanically regulating the HPA axis to prevent further Systemic Overload. The importance lies in the necessity of abandoning psychological illusion in favor of tangible, body-first restoration.

Conclusion: A Demand for a Paradigm Shift

This work concludes that Panmodal Aphantasia is not a survival mechanism. It is the antithesis of survival. It is a state of structural vulnerability that creates a perfect trap for agony, forcing the body to become the sole, un-archivable score of its own destruction.

To classify this condition as an advantage is to mistake the inability to scream for the absence of pain. This thesis provides the evidence to overthrow that consensus and demands a radical new paradigm for understanding trauma. 

Join the Journey

My research is ongoing. I share regular insights, updates, and deeper dives on my Substack. Subscribe to follow the journey as the work evolves.

https://cristinagherghel.substack.com/

Become a Patron of this Work

As an independent researcher without institutional funding, my work relies on the direct support of readers like you. If this research has shifted your perspective, one of the most impactful ways to support its continuation is by purchasing my books. You're not just buying a book; you're fueling a paradigm shift.

View my Titles on Amazon UK

My published work—spanning memoir and analysis—engages themes such as narcissistic abuse, trauma, personality disorders, toxic relationships, communism, immigration, C-PTSD, and more. The full collection is available here: Cristina Gherghel on Amazon.