Imagine that you walk into a crowd of people who suddenly get into panic, running to get away from something. What would you do? Would you run with them or go against the current to see what is happening behind the crowd? Normally you would run away, and most probably get worried, scared for your life. When a traumatic event hits too close to us, we might develop |
a strong reaction to the experience, and it doesn't matter if we only experienced the threat to our own physical integrity, witnessed injury or death of another person, or only heard about it on the news. The same event may cause traumatic reactions in one person but not in another. Depending on the person, some are unable to handle the intense emotional memories of disturbing events, and this can lead to the panic attacks, re-experiencing that stress, hyper-vigilance, rage, numbing, nightmares, etc.