Traumatic images and memory intrusions often happen when someone has PTSD, but they can also happen to someone with a sticky mind who is upset by a thought, a memory, or even an imagined image. These may be a sudden reexperiencing, as if the traumatic events are happening again in the present (usually called flashbacks), accompanied by fear or whatever emotion happened at the time. Or they may simply be vivid, fixed visual memories of real things that happened or were imagined at the time of the traumatic experience.
