Prevalence of pain flashbacks in posttraumatic stress disorder arising from exposure to multiple traumas or childhood traumatization.

Pain re-experiencing in PTSD, and its relative absence in nonclinical populations, supports an account of memory in which perceptual details can be re-experienced when memories have been encoded under conditions of extreme stress. It may be possible to conceptualize some cases of unexplained pain as pain flashbacks or of having a trauma origin.