My girlfriend was driving and accidentally ran over a mother duck and its little ducklings trailing behind, much like this illustration. I was in the passenger seat and told her to pull over. I knew this wouldn’t affect her well, and she wouldn’t be able to drive after that. It was heavy traffic and she kept driving for a bit before we could get to the side of the road. She was losing her shit and crying. We swapped seats and kept driving. It was silent for a while, and she eventually stopped crying. I’ve vowed since then to never bring it up again, as I basically witnessed what was her brain entirely blocking it out. By the time we got home, it was like it never happened and we never talked about it again. She’s had a lot of past trauma, at least one incident involving a horrible car accident that she witnessed. She loves all the cute little animals, I don’t think there’s any reason to revisit it. It would break her heart all over again. It was just an accident, after all. They came from between some planted flowers on the median, and she simply didn’t have any time or room on the road to do anything about it.
The reason I know she’s able to block things out like that is because of how she tells her story of that car accident. She stopped after witnessing a terrible crash to see if the occupants were ok. She tells me she found a man on the ground and approached to see if he was ok, but, the man didn’t have a face. I asked in morbid fascination, “OMG, like, his face got ripped off or something?” “No,” she replied, “he just didn’t have a face. There wasn’t anything there at all. Like it was just blank.”
I probably don’t have a clue, but that sounds like trauma memories at work. Traumatic events can create memories that are mixed up and don’t integrate with rest of our chronological memories.
The problem is, those tend to pop up from triggers until the subject has enough mental strength to process them and integrate them into the chronological, past memories, at which point they should lose most of the intense feelings that they come with.
I hope see goes to psychotherapy if she has seen some shit.
Sorry about the duck. Maybe it’s living in a duck heaven now.
Oh, yes. We both go to regular therapy specializing in trauma. We highly recommend it, as well. We’ve worked through a lot of stuff. I just didn’t think bringing up the ducklings in the future would be a worthwhile subject to work through, at least for now while we work on other stuff. She can keep
that and whatever the hell she saw in that accident locked safely away.
My girlfriend was driving and accidentally ran over a mother duck and its little ducklings trailing behind, much like this illustration. I was in the passenger seat and told her to pull over. I knew this wouldn’t affect her well, and she wouldn’t be able to drive after that. It was heavy traffic and she kept driving for a bit before we could get to the side of the road. She was losing her shit and crying. We swapped seats and kept driving. It was silent for a while, and she eventually stopped crying. I’ve vowed since then to never bring it up again, as I basically witnessed what was her brain entirely blocking it out. By the time we got home, it was like it never happened and we never talked about it again. She’s had a lot of past trauma, at least one incident involving a horrible car accident that she witnessed. She loves all the cute little animals, I don’t think there’s any reason to revisit it. It would break her heart all over again. It was just an accident, after all. They came from between some planted flowers on the median, and she simply didn’t have any time or room on the road to do anything about it.
The reason I know she’s able to block things out like that is because of how she tells her story of that car accident. She stopped after witnessing a terrible crash to see if the occupants were ok. She tells me she found a man on the ground and approached to see if he was ok, but, the man didn’t have a face. I asked in morbid fascination, “OMG, like, his face got ripped off or something?” “No,” she replied, “he just didn’t have a face. There wasn’t anything there at all. Like it was just blank.”
I probably don’t have a clue, but that sounds like trauma memories at work. Traumatic events can create memories that are mixed up and don’t integrate with rest of our chronological memories.
The problem is, those tend to pop up from triggers until the subject has enough mental strength to process them and integrate them into the chronological, past memories, at which point they should lose most of the intense feelings that they come with.
I hope see goes to psychotherapy if she has seen some shit.
Sorry about the duck. Maybe it’s living in a duck heaven now.
Oh, yes. We both go to regular therapy specializing in trauma. We highly recommend it, as well. We’ve worked through a lot of stuff. I just didn’t think bringing up the ducklings in the future would be a worthwhile subject to work through, at least for now while we work on other stuff. She can keep that and whatever the hell she saw in that accident locked safely away.