Rob's Corner: The Quiet Got Me

I love war movies and history in general. Heather doesn't, not really, she tolerates them, tunes out half the dialogue, and has heard the same films enough times in the background to know them by heart anyway. So when I asked her to actually sit and watch a new one with me, that was already a good night.

We did it right. Couch fluffed, snacks out, surround sound on, lights off. Fifteen minutes in, I started narrating the equipment on screen, the names of the vehicles, the radios, how accurate it all was. That's normal for me. I do that.

Then came the scene. Not loud, not full of the soundtrack you'd expect. Mostly silence. Radio chatter, soldiers talking low, then an explosion and the ringing that follows it. We didn't make it past that scene. Lights came on, the movie went off, and I was somewhere else for a while, crying, pacing, not able to explain what was happening.

Here's the interesting thing that I don't know the answer to. I never heard gunfire in combat. Not once. But that silence in the movie, the specific quiet before things go wrong, was more accurate to what I actually experienced than any explosion ever could be. Whoever made that film got something right that I wasn't prepared for, decades later.

Heather's Translation

I hadn't watched this particular movie with him before, it was a new release. But we've watched plenty of war movies together over the years, and I know that watching them generally makes his sleep worse that night, restless, sometimes rough. We thought this one would be different. It was a blockbuster, made for the big screen, more cinematic than the kind of movie we usually watch at home. We thought that distance might actually help.

It didn't. Nothing about the buildup looked like trouble. It was quiet, and then it wasn't, and he was somewhere I couldn't follow him to for a while. All I knew to do was turn the lights on, turn the screen off, and hold his hand until he came back.

He couldn't tell me much afterward, just that it felt real in a way he didn't expect. I didn't push him to explain more than that. Some nights the job isn't understanding it. It's just staying next to him until it passes.

I'm putting this in a newsletter because I think a lot of caregivers know this exact moment, the ordinary evening that turns sideways without warning, and I don't think enough gets said about how disorienting that is, for both people in the room.

One fact worth knowing:

A 2020 study of combat veterans found an association between reduced sensory inhibition and more intrusive re-experiencing symptoms. It may help explain why particular sensory cues can be powerful, but it does not mean every trigger follows the same pathway or arrives without warning.

Source:

Clancy KJ, Albizu A, Schmidt NB, Li W. “Intrinsic sensory disinhibition contributes to intrusive re-experiencing in combat veterans.” Scientific Reports, 2020;10:936. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-57963-2

What Helped

Lights on. Screen off. I kept my voice low, stayed close, and did not demand an explanation while he was trying to reorient.

Closing

If you've had a night like this, the one that came out of nowhere, you're not the only one navigating it.

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