When challenges happen, both large and small, most of us have predictable responses: familiar ways of seeing the world, responding to stress, and feeling. I’m a trauma psychologist, and for the past 25 years, I’ve been working with a range of survivors: combat veterans and former prisoners of war, men and women who have been sexually abused or assaulted across their lifespan, and people who had escaped from the former World Trade Center towers or were first responders on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

Understandably, the people I had the pleasure of working with were hypervigilant, always scanning their environments for danger and ready to respond with clenched jaws and fists. When someone is in such a stance, it makes sense that their judgement is clouded by terror and their responses are often knee-jerk reactions. When people are in such chronic states, their attention and decision-making is greatly constricted.