Thank you, fern. Yeah, I think what has happened for her is that she has fallen back on her primary coping skill for tragedy/deep pain/personal terror, which is, dissociation. So, for her, this whole experience is parked away in a corner of her brain and walled off by the kind of denial of reality that most people can only dream of. If it doesn't exist in her consciousness, then, she doesn't have to address any of it and her pain is lessened. Kind of. Maybe a little. It sort of works, for a little while, until it gets triggered again, at which time, she must gather it all up and re-park it away in that same corner once more and resume pretending like it never happened.

It took me awhile to learn all this, but once I did, it seemed fairly plain that attempting to engage with her on any of this was never going to work for me, because in her conscious brain, none of it ever happened. It does not exist. I feel great empathy and compassion for her. It must be very difficult to try to live this way.