Not all triggers involve stress or trauma, some do... hence my total shutdown when confronted with a sewing machine or stick shift. You're right in this, trauma will shut down the retention of knowledge. Stress, on the other hand, the drive to learn and achieve to meet a set goal, not so damaging if it's self inflicted, not from the outside.

But many of the tools used to manipulate others lie in the usage of language, the lack of vocabulary of the average citizen, disdain for learning due to lack of interest or the trauma of school itself and the ability of a few to manipulate that language to suit their own ends. Those are the things that interest me, how we can decode true meaning from others by exploring why certain words trigger a preprogrammed response.