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

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Related Blogs

For complementary insights and further reading:

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

• 🔹 Cristina Gherghel Research — Panthropic Abuse and Ontological Trauma

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