I rode home in a daze but with my mind racing: I had to explain why I had not been in class to make a scheduled presentation. After making the call, I began to shake and feel a great deal of soreness that dissipated slowly over several weeks. For at least two to three months, however, driving and being a passenger in a car posed serious emotional difficulties: I jumped and shrieked whenever cars appeared to move toward the rear of mine^{Endnote 12}; I screamed into my rear view mirror at cars to slow down as they pulled up behind me at a stoplight; and my children told me repeatedly that I was overreacting to normal driving situations. Although I struggled with anxiety, I persisted in driving because driving had always been a pleasure, and I trusted it would become so again. Besides, all the evidence at the scene and the full payment of my insurance claim validated my belief that the accident was not my fault. I did not develop PTSD.

Despite every effort and her deep resolve, Merriam Baxter’s^{Endnote 13} distress did not resolve as “neatly” as mine. After 31 years of service during which she received numerous promotions and excellent performance reviews from supervisors and her peers, Baxter was fired from her position as Assistant Vice President, Director of Marketing Technology, with a large corporation. Though Indiana is an employ-at-will state that allows employers to fire without cause, Baxter’s manager specified a cause for her termination: based on principles outlined in Topgrading by Bradford Smart, she had failed to perform satisfactorily the competencies of her position—a position for which there were neither a written job description nor identified competencies at the time of her termination (e-mail communication by her lawyer).