Two years ago, I had a scary experience with someone in a building. Afaik it didn't leave me with any lasting trauma, I can think directly about the experience and the person without flinching away... but I still flinch when thinking about the *building*. Why?
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Memories are weirdly tied to location. Can imagine all sorts of plausible evolutionary reasons. Not an aversion but sometimes when I go to specific locations I remember the exact part of a podcast I was listening to last time I was there.
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Yep! The amygdala is very responsive to context.
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Not location-specific, but white sedans freaked me out for a long while after a particularly bad breakup that ended in a car chase
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(And thinking I saw person around was way less scary/salient)
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I did. A decade ago I was assaulted in the city,then later on that same night ran into the guy who assaulted me, but in my _town_. I ran into him & his friends that 2nd time on a very dark street. Barely managed to bike away while he ran after me. I avoided that street for years.
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Yep. I got beaten up in a bus interchange 35 years ago. Still feel a twinge of aversion and danger when I go there. Reflecting on this, what I should do is manufacture a new, positive experience in the same space
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Whoa yes. Post-breakup, I’m still good friends with my ex and see him socially. But I have an aversion to his apartment building: low-key dread and revulsion when I think about going inside.
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Maybe related cognitively, I've always been surprised at the strength of the positive feelings I get looking at my lit-up home from outside in the dark. Similarly to looking down from a particular perspective into a cozy valley.
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I also dream of a handful of specific places (like BMan) that, despite often looking pretty different than the actual place, are identified in the dream as the place and inherit their distinctive and powerful emotional tone.
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PTSD isn't logical. Your trauma is probably associated with the location and the possibility of a future occurrence, not the memory of the previous experience you survived.
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