The old saying about time being a healer isn’t true; it dulls but sometimes things won’t completely heal.
About five years ago I had a bad house fire, oil-fired central heating boiler blew up in my garage and did a heap of damage. Wifey and I got out un-injured, but the place was a mess for months; all done on insurace thankfully. I went back to work a couple of days after the fire but by the end of the week, was struggling to concentrate so ended up “on the club” for four weeks as my GP, perhaps understandably, diagnosed stress. I wanted to go back after two because I felt guilty about not being at work when I felt OK physically but I guess doctors do sometimes know best. Firm was fine, I got sorted, went back, life went on.
Last year we had one of our bulk tippers self-destruct on the yard, electrical fault, Volvo so no surprises there; parked up for the weekend, council gritter returning to the yard opposite saw it well alight at 01.30 Sunday morning, when I got into work on Monday morning it was a burned out wreck. I couldn’t go near the bloody thing because the smell brought all the memories of my house fire back; didn’t freak me out or anything but it wasn’t pleasant, and I consider myself a pretty resilient character.
Point I’m making is that sometimes it doesn’t need a lot to trigger bad memories.