| The attacks inflicted on the American psyche a kind of collective post-traumatic stress disorder, producing at a societal level the hypervigilance that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan know too well. |
| Presence of persistent symptoms: difficulty sleeping or disturbed sleep, irritability or anger attacks, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance, exaggerated reaction when startled. |
| The symptoms manifest in three major ways, namely intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance and avoidance. |
| Such hypervigilance is part of the normal fear and flight response which is damped down by benzodiazepines but undergoes a rebound during withdrawal. |
| In their new normal, troops must reconnect with children, adjust to more independent spouses and dial back the hypervigilance that served them well in combat — but that can alienate them from civilians. |
| The episode supposedly had a searing effect on Mitt, and people who know him say it sank a hypervigilance in him that has shaped his public demeanor for decades. |
