hold still, mind.

July 25, 2012 7:10 PM

Can anyone explain my emotional flashback/flashforward moments?

Since I was a teenager, I've experienced (not often, say a few times a year) moments where I fleetingly dip into an emotional, or an emotional state, that is unfamiliar and unwarranted.

It's very difficult to explain satisfactorily. It's kind of like noticing a hidden frame in a movie. The last time it happened, I was stood at a bus stop feeling contented and calm, and I experienced what felt like a snippet of a memory from a time when I was sad and angry. But nothing connected to it. Another time, I was at work feeling dull and I got the same little freeze frame suddenly, only it was happiness and overwhelming contentment, but when it passed it felt profoundly incongruent to my general state of mind.

To be perfectly honest, it feels like a cross between emotional deja vu, a brief look into a thing I haven't yet experienced, and dipping into someone else's thoughts. It's simultaneously unsettling and entrancing, and yet when I write it down it seems kind of trivial to get too bothered about. But when it happens, it stays with me for a while afterwards, or at least the memory of the brief moment does.

Does anyone else experience this? If it's reasonably common, I can chill out about it!

posted by anonymous to grab bag (11 answers total)

I have bad news: I believe you are a creative person. Seriously, this seems normal to me, but to the extent that you notice this, I think it's a gift. I've done this all my life; I've also written and drawn all my life, and this kind of sensation is exactly what inspires much of what I do. In examining it later, I often find that my mind was jarred by a sensation or stimulus that was too subtle to require conscious notice, but got the attention of my brain nonetheless. For example, the smell of wood smoke makes me feel young; a certain kind of teenage articulation makes me feel old . . .
posted by Countess Elena at 7:21 PM on July 25, 2012

They might be inchoate or incomplete involuntary memories. To take a famous case, something that's often forgotten about Proust's madeleine incident is that before the narrator actually remembers his childhood life in Combray, the taste of the madeleine gives him a sense of overwhelming contentment that he can't explain.

No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory—this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
posted by Beardman at 7:21 PM on July 25, 2012 [4 favorites]

Could it be a rush of adrenaline or some other chemical in the brain? I've had shudders of fear for no reason once in awhile, or caught myself laughing for no reason, and then the "feeling" is gone. I think it's just a little "oops!" from the cerebral cortex.
posted by xingcat at 7:22 PM on July 25, 2012

Jamais vu and deja vu sensations are apparently caused by random firings in the same areas of the temporal lobe. Research neurologist V. S. Ramachandran writes about this in a couple of his books, but the simplest explanation he has written to date is in a chapter in a book called Memory, Brain, and Belief, edited by Daniel Schachter and Elaine Scarry.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:42 PM on July 25, 2012 [5 favorites]

I would certainly chill out about it -- the brain is an interesting creature.

I've had a number of mildly traumatic experiences recently, which has left me dealing with more anxiety than I've ever had. A few times, after I've finally managed to calm down and feel somewhat comfortable, I will begin, apparently unprovoked by my thoughts, to suddenly panic -- heart beating quickly, etc. -- before I get a handle on it and calm myself down again. I think it's my brain suddenly remembering its habits and going "OMG TIME TO PANIC."

Similarly, there are times when I'm feeling happy and content and then suddenly, out of nowhere, a wave of depression and ennui. Sometimes (but rarer) the other way around.

I think there are usually stimulants/chemical triggers to this (like how coffee can every once in a while make you love everything) but I think sometimes the brain tries to catch up with itself and for whatever reason, sometimes vividly remembers an important feeling or reaction at an inappropriate time.
posted by aintthattheway at 7:46 PM on July 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I've had exactly what you describe. Mine typically come with a strong feeling of the past, though I've had what you describe as well. The phenomenon seems to be benign and it's over almost as soon as I notice it.

I believe that there is probably a spiritual or psychic component to these experiences, but I don't know what the meaning is. It's almost like stumbling across a little hole in reality.
posted by gentian at 9:27 PM on July 25, 2012

Seriously, this seems normal to me, but to the extent that you notice this, I think it's a gift.
Seconded. What's unusual is not your emotional incoherence, but your skill in noticing it. Some folks spend a lot of time meditating in order to do this, because (a) when such flashes are unconscious they buffet people into a chain of often undesirable reactions, and (b) awareness of such flux is useful in keeping you grounded in moment-to-moment experience, partly because they disrupt any illusorily coherent life-narrative.
posted by feral_goldfish at 9:34 PM on July 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have moments kind of like that but they're less tied to a specific emotion and more like random snippets of memories, like gentian said. Where all of a sudden (for just a split second) I have a very strong sense of what it felt like to be me in a certain time and place, with all of the underlying thoughts and feelings and sensations (qualia, I guess?) that comprised that moment or that time in my life more generally. Sometimes it's triggered by an environmental factor (an odor, a song), but other times it just seems totally random. Also, sometimes it's not an identifiable memory or former state of consciousness, but something more dreamlike, almost like a phantom memory that is unfamiliar to me (the way, in dreams, everything feels "off" or different in ways you can't articulate, and you both are and are not yourself). Or like I've tapped into someone else's memory or consciousness, a la Being John Malkovich, for a fraction of a second.

I've always assumed it's caused by some little tic in the brain, like déjà vu or something. It's fascinating to think about the connection between such experiences and creativity--I've never thought of it from that angle.
posted by désoeuvrée at 1:16 AM on July 26, 2012

The last time it happened, I was stood at a bus stop feeling contented and calm, and I experienced what felt like a snippet of a memory from a time when I was sad and angry. But nothing connected to it. Another time, I was at work feeling dull and I got the same little freeze frame suddenly, only it was happiness and overwhelming contentment, but when it passed it felt profoundly incongruent to my general state of mind.

These flashes seem to me to be complementary states of mind to the prevailing state of mind you have when you experience them, almost in the same sense that orange and blue are complementary colors, and just as when you have been staring at a blue screen for a time long enough for it to lose some of its blueness, and then suddenly shift your eyes to a white wall and experience a flash of orange, then return to the blue screen and have a renewed appreciation for its blueness, perhaps your mind prevents your feelings from growing stale by interleaving flashes of memory of times when you had feelings that were very much the opposite.

It's interesting you mention hidden frames in a movie, because an aficionado of samurai movies once told me that there are typically very brief interludes she called 'pillow shots' right in the middle of the most harrowing battle scenes, in which a camellia blossom floating and gently swirling in a stream, for example, will suddenly appear on the screen and as suddenly be replaced by the action of the battle again as if no time has passed.

It had never occurred to me before reading your question that these could possibly serve to intensify the viewer's experience of the battle rather than distract from it.
posted by jamjam at 1:18 AM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

But nothing connected to it.

Memory is a strange beast. Our brain often tucks away thoughts and feelings keyed on obscure and illogical seeming things -- a smell, the shape of an object, the way light falls on something, etc.

One thing to note is that this sort of recall may be happening a lot more often than you think. In both examples you gave you were in quiet spots alone with your thoughts. I wonder if you would have been able to experience things so clear -- or at all -- had you been otherwise engaged.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:27 AM on July 26, 2012

I suspect you’re a human.
posted by bongo_x at 9:31 AM on July 26, 2012