Sometimes when asked a threatening question, or an nonthreatening question in a threatening situation, I get a sense of total blankness and loss of memory. I have no ability to remember or grasp at content relating to the answer to their question. I can see this from the outside, and still probably talk about other things, or if I wish, talk around the blank spot and hope to spiral into it. It feels like the piece of me with relevant knowledge is ‘playing dead’ until the threat is gone.
My natural inclination is to hold still and watch myself, and see the parts of me that feel alive slowly expand until they include the ‘playing dead’ part, and it wakes up, and then it might be able to speak. This is somewhat socially awkward. What happens in a conversation going at normal speed without room for a pause is that I feel a strong pull to reach for something other than myself that can speak for me. Anything but my words. Sometimes it’s something i can look up, like a book, or document, (that maybe I can pull from my phone or memory), if not I feel a pull towards confirming the question asker’s expectations and worldview. Like I can imagine that if I was in a similar situation of buying tons of food and they asked me if it was for the virus, but actually I was buying it for my nuclear bomb shelter, I would feel really easy to say “sure… yeah”. Then having said something that was at least slightly in the direction of the truth, I would feel more free to follow up with “well actually...”. But sometimes I just end up saying the non-confrontational false thing and it never gets corrected.
Usually this only happens when there are other social norms and pressures going on that make it so I feel unable to talk about or mention the sense of threat.
Sometimes when asked a threatening question, or an nonthreatening question in a threatening situation, I get a sense of total blankness and loss of memory. I have no ability to remember or grasp at content relating to the answer to their question. I can see this from the outside, and still probably talk about other things, or if I wish, talk around the blank spot and hope to spiral into it. It feels like the piece of me with relevant knowledge is ‘playing dead’ until the threat is gone.
My natural inclination is to hold still and watch myself, and see the parts of me that feel alive slowly expand until they include the ‘playing dead’ part, and it wakes up, and then it might be able to speak. This is somewhat socially awkward. What happens in a conversation going at normal speed without room for a pause is that I feel a strong pull to reach for something other than myself that can speak for me. Anything but my words. Sometimes it’s something i can look up, like a book, or document, (that maybe I can pull from my phone or memory), if not I feel a pull towards confirming the question asker’s expectations and worldview. Like I can imagine that if I was in a similar situation of buying tons of food and they asked me if it was for the virus, but actually I was buying it for my nuclear bomb shelter, I would feel really easy to say “sure… yeah”. Then having said something that was at least slightly in the direction of the truth, I would feel more free to follow up with “well actually...”. But sometimes I just end up saying the non-confrontational false thing and it never gets corrected.
Usually this only happens when there are other social norms and pressures going on that make it so I feel unable to talk about or mention the sense of threat.