PTSD, emotional flashbacks?

I think I’m experiencing emotional flashbacks. I did some research online and found this at a site about childhood PTSD:

“Unlike specific memories of events, emotional flashbacks involve strong negative emotions. A person will be flooded, for small reasons or no reasons, with an overwhelming sense of sadness, rage, terror or frustration. It can happen when you wake up, for example, or when someone criticizes you, or gives you a present. You are not reliving some childhood experience consciously — you know that you are here in present time. But the emotions don’t know it and are reacting like you did during the original trauma.”

I can relate to that so much. I often react very strongly to things that I really don’t think is in proportion to it - if someone’s tone or something they say reminds me the slightest of the abuse, I immediately feel an extreme anxiety, fear, sadness, guilt, and like I just want to rip myself apart, although I know that what just happened is in no way actually dangerous or anything, but it’s as if all the feelings from the past trauma is coming back all at once, and even though I am not reliving the traumatic event or am dissociating to the point where I’m all “checked out”, I feel like I’m reliving it emotionally. I also read that if the trauma occured before the age of 2 (I think?), before you’re able to make any actual memories, you can still have flashbacks but not in that reliving it as if it’s a movie playing in your head-flashback, you know?

I’ve always thought that “no, I can’t have PTSD because I don’t have visual flashbacks where I feel like I’m re-living it as if it’s a movie or something (like flashbacks are mostly protayed in the media, at least from my experience)”, but maybe I can?

I did suffer both neglect and emotional abuse as a child. Whenever something reminds me of it, like if I ask someone something and they reply as if they don’t really care, it can trigger me massively, and my mind is shouting “they don’t care”, over and over again, and I feel just like I did when I was a child and felt negletced and it makes me want to d*e.

Is it possible to suffer from PTSD with only emotional flashbacks? And, what is PTSD apart from the flashbacks, if there is anything else?
I don’t want to say that I’m experiencing flashbacks if that’s not the case, so I’m wondering what you think?
In a way, I can’t really get my head around the idea that I might actually experience flashbacks because of past trauma - PTSD, flashbacks, trauma, “no way! That sounds so serious, I’m sure what I’ve been through can’t have been that bad”, is what I’m thinking.

Also, I think I have some memory loss as well, from when I was a child. I know that the abuse started before I turned 12, but it was at the age of 12 that I “realised” what was going on. It’s as if another person was experiencing the abuse before that. I know that it hurt a lot, but I can’t feel it, can’t remember what it was like or any specific situations, it’s all just a big emotional pain. Almost like the emotional flashback thing - I’m not reliving an actual event, but rather the feelings of the neglect or abuse.

Does this make any sense?

Little wrote:
And, what is PTSD apart from the flashbacks, if there is anything else?

Not talking academically but from experience, my big ones were:-

Nightmares, same person similar theme, very bad effect, would wake in fear sweating and then was so elevated sleep was very difficult. They gradually reduced but lasted decades. Like I said they would start different (always my abuser) but wind up the same

Hypervigilance - Differs. for me it is waking very easily and being fully alert when I do. Always scanning streets, coffee shops, trains, everywhere. It is my normal

Hyperarpousal - comes from a trigger. For me these days it is reading about or hearing about certain unusual items of extreme abuse similar to mine - or simply seeing a middle age brunette wearing horn rimmed glasses. Pulse elevates and hyper awareness goes into over drive

as a survivor also have the classic big two:-

Low self esteem and zero trust Self esteem will always be a work in progress and I like not trusting people - I never get let down so can't see that changing.

If I had to put one above all others it was the repetitive night mare.

in 20s maybe every month
30s maybe every 3 months
40s maybe 3 times a year
50s maybe 2 a year

it still comes but no where near as bad