Stress and memory

[Ian]

I've heard people say that stress can do funny things to your memory, but I never thought about it much until now. Yesterday I was out with a bunch of other Purdue folks doing some Airsoft skirmishing, and had my first experience of memory being seriously affected by stress. Basically, Daniel Flory, Chris Rhines, and I were waiting to ambush some other guys. I was lying down on a slight rise trying to look like a pile of leaves - the plan was to let our targets walk past me, so that Dan and Chris could fire on them from in front and I could fire from behind. Well, our adversaries decided not to follow our plan (Arg! Didn't they realize how well we set it up? ) and approached from a different direction, allowing them to see me way too early for the ambush to work.

The sequence of events, as I remember it:
One adversary (Marc) advanced towards me, and took cover behind a tree. I was visible to him, but I wasn't sure if he had seen me, so I stayed as still as possible. He stayed there for a couple seconds, and then moved forward to another tree. After a couple seconds there, he made direct eye contact with me and raised his pistol towards me. I knew he'd definitely seen me, and that staying put was suicide, so I rolled over, jumped up, and hoofed it to a tree a couple feet away.

The sequence of events, as Marc and Chris described it to me afterwards (discrepancies underlined):
One adversary (Marc) advanced towards me, and took cover behind a tree. I was visible to him, but I wasn't sure if he had seen me, so I stayed as still as possible. He stayed there for a couple seconds, and then moved forward to another tree. Seeing this, Chris moved to a covered position a few yards behind me, and shouted out "Ian! Can you move?" I responded, asking for covering fire as Marc made eye contact and raised his gun towards me. As Chris covered me, I rolled over, jumped up, and hoofed it to a tree a couple feet away.

I definitely didn't think that I could have forgotten an entire verbal exchange because of stress! Wow. Can this sort of thing be prevented with more practice? I imagine that if you can become more acclimated to the stress, this sort of thing won't happen as much...does anyone else have experience with this?

 

[Soap]

Yesterday was great fun! I thought it was funny that you forgot that entire verbal exchange. But then I realized that if I was running under fire I would get tunnel vision to some degree. I would be able to see the ground in front of me perfectly but my peripheral vision was blurred. This allowed me to not trip (like some people! har har! ) but it didn't really help me when I was getting shot at.

Our brains simply shut down certain parts under stress. Hopefully, after some more serious force on force drills, we can eliminate these processes or diminish their effects to a great degree.

 

[Jim March]

Been there, done that. In real life and death situations, I find that my brain is "shutting down stuff that isn't needed to survive RIGHT NOW". That appears to include emotions, short term memory tracking, hearing and God only knows what else.

This is COMPLETELY normal.

(Note: only one such case was in "combat" (and barely qualified for the term); most involved motorcycle wrecks/near misses, one involved a near-miss from getting clobbered by a very large wave.)