When we go through trauma, every ingredient of the experience combines in a way that makes it impossible to separate one from the other. So the brain combines the separate elements of a trauma into one memory package, engaging in some extremely helpful processes to keep us safe later. The elements might include things such as a smell, the time of day, the body’s posture, close and faraway sounds (including music), lighting, who we’re with, where we are, and what happened just before things got scary.9 Whatever is in the memory bundle associated with the trauma gets neurologically coded as
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