At the moment a trauma takes place, all of a person’s senses automatically focus on the most salient aspect of the threat. This is usually a visual image, though it could also be sound, touch, taste or smell. Many times it is a combination of several or, even, all of the above sense impressions simultaneously. For example, a woman molested by an alcoholic uncle may panic on seeing a man who looks vaguely like him or whose breath smells of alcohol and who walks with a loud, lumbering gait. These fragmentary snapshots come to represent the trauma. They become, in other words, the intrusive image
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