Since such individual reality is distorted to a greater extent, it is quite possible that it will differ drastically from the external reality that exists independently of human prejudices and perceptions. In her essay “When I Woke Up Tuesday,” Martha Stout highlights how traumatic experiences negatively alter individuals' perspectives and, by extension, their individual realities when Stout states, “Later in [an] individual's life, in situations that are vaguely similar to trauma…trauma can be “remembered”…when there is no danger worthy of such alarm. In reaction to relatively trivial stress, the person traumatized long ago may actually feel that danger is imminent again, being assaulted with full force by the emotions [and] bodily sensations…that once accompanied a great threat” (422). By making this comment, Stout points out that the impacts of traumatic events remain with a person throughout their life and can even dictate responses to external reality during certain events. Because trauma lingers in a person's subconscious even after it has occurred, it has the ability to distort one's perception of "relatively trivial stress" and cause one to experience one's individual reality with "emotions [and] the body".