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Our Memories Of Rape May Be Buried, But They’re Never Gone
By July Westhale
Trauma is like an underwater tea party where you scream and hear nothing at all.
“Dread. I like it better than the word fear because fear, like the unconscious emotion which is one of its forms, has only the word ear inside of it, telling an animal to listen, while dread has the word read inside of it, telling us to read carefully and find the dead, who are also there.”
— Mary Ruefle’s “On Fear”
I am decidedly late to the game (by about 11 years), but I recently heard Daniel Gilbert’s TED Talk on the neurology behind happiness, from his book Stumbling Upon Happiness. The name makes it sound like a saccharine self-help book, but it’s actually most accurately described as a compelling hybrid of neurology and psychology, with a little advocacy thrown in.
Animals, declares Gilbert, do not experience PTSD. Why? Because the moment they experience something life-threatening — the gazelle chased by the lion to near death, or the mouse narrowly escaping a naturally predatory cat — they find the nearest dark place to take solace and shake uncontrollably.
Is that where the expression “shake it off” comes from? I wonder, chopping onions in my kitchen and listening to his talk.