White

We have been looking at the melting pot of emotional responses we can have when life gets challenging, and how we all have our unique way of dealing with things. If our emotions are running high, then sometimes our inner minds fear that this could be too much for us to deal with and can detach us from what is happening. We know that this happens in shock and PTSD situations and this detachment from our emotions and ourselves is something that has been studied extensively. But with this type of research, I think it is so hard to fully navigate the uniqueness of our emotional responses, and this can make understanding this difficult to analyse. If you have ever been skiing then this is something you might have experienced or heard about. I know as a skier this is something I always hated and luckily only had to experience a few times - it's called a “whiteout”, where the snow is falling so much that you lose all concept of direction as the dense snow makes all the landscape indistinguishable. It's a horrible feeling as you just don't know what is in front of you or even which way is downhill or uphill and it can make you feel quite sick and very disorientated.  I think at times when we are in an emotionally challenging situation our mind opts for a type of whiteout situation, in PTSD this is often at its maximum and I think we can then feel those disorientated and sick feelings but struggle to place this next to an emotional response or situation.