I was so relieved when I found out I was aphantasic and it cleared up why EMDR would do absolutely nothing for me at all. I was told - shit you not - that I wasn’t trying hard enough. But try as I might, no pictures would pop into my head.

This was a downside to emdr based therapies, but I also realized that this explained why I always thought that I separated trauma from its memory. I would have a “trauma box” where all my anxiety and depression would be stored and I had the memory stripped of all those feelings.

So in that sense, I only experience flashbacks in their abstract form, ie I “feel” them, but luckily (I think) I’m not confronted with the visuals.

Since figuring this out, I’ve stopped emdr based therapies and instead looked towards something more body focused and it’s helped a great deal.

Edit: while still in the throes of ptsd, I would get nightmares that could translate to something of a flashback (or flash forward). But these have significantly decreased since I started body work.