How come my gran survived the horrors of the Blitz,?

Question

but has been so badly traumatised by the clocks going back that she can't stop banging on about it?

Answer 1

Leave your granny alone, look what she did making sure you came into the world.

Answer 2

Your gran is probably reliving an experience of the Blitz. Not so much the bombing which killed over 50,000 Londoners, but also such as the Black-Out - when street lights were switched off and the city was just dark at night.

By the end of WW2 in 1945, something like 400,000 British civilians had been killed as a result of Nazi bombing of our towns and cities.

God knows how many were maimed and injured, probably three or four times the number of dead.

Tell you grand to stop worrying. Tell her to turn all her clocks back to GMT. I live in Greenwich, here in sahf London and have never changed my clocks in nearly 40 years.

Bawn and bread!

Edit: BOBO above hasn't got a clue what he's talking about. The Nazis did not need to 'aim' bombs on London, they simply rained down in what is called 'blanket bombing'. Whole areas of London, especially the docks, were blown to bits. This was not just a one off raid, we're talking months on end starting in about September 1940 and not really coming to an end until the end of hostilities in 1945. The Nazis, when they no longer had an air force to bomb us with, sent their flying bombs and rockets down upon us.

BOBO - you simply have no idea. Think of 9/11 night after night, after night, for three years and more. Gives you some idea.

Answer 3

Old people like stability in life. Which means that changes to a day like clocks changing can be unsettleing.

But during the blitz she would have been a young woman, and would have found it easy to cope with things like being bombed, or clocks changing.

maybe she'll be happier in a few months when the clocks move back.

Answer 4

LOL....very good! As I have got older I have started to become traumatised by things like that!!

Bobo - You are talking rubbish. The nightly bombing of London...Liverpool...Birmingham...Southampton...Portsmouth....etc took place for years starting with aircraft carrying up to 1000lb bombs and finished 4 years later with unguided ballistic missiles (V2's).

Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in the most horrific way.

As someone said earlier, imagine 9/11 happening every night for 4 years and you may get some idea of just how insulting, uniformed and childish your comments are.

Answer 5

It could be delayed onset post traumatic stress disorder:
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a term for certain severe psychological consequences of exposure to, or confrontation with, stressful events that the person experiences as highly traumatic. Clinically, such events involve actual or threatened death, serious physical injury, or a threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defenses are incapable of coping with the impact. It is occasionally called post-traumatic stress reaction to emphasize that it is a result of traumatic experience rather than a manifestation of a pre-existing psychological condition. The presence of a PTSD response is influenced by the intensity of the experience, its duration, and the individual person involved.

It is possible for individuals to experience traumatic stress without manifesting Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as indicated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and also for people to experience traumatic situations and not develop PTSD. In fact, most people who experience traumatic events will not develop PTSD. For most people, the emotional effects of traumatic events tend to subside after several months. PTSD is thought to be primarily an anxiety disorder (possibly closely related to panic disorder) and should not be confused with normal grief and adjustment after traumatic events.

PTSD may be triggered by an external factor or factors. Its symptoms can include the following: nightmares, flashbacks, emotional detachment or numbing of feelings (emotional self-mortification or dissociation), insomnia, avoidance of reminders and extreme distress when exposed to the reminders ("triggers"), loss of appetite, irritability, hypervigilance, memory loss (may appear as difficulty paying attention), excessive startle response, clinical depression, and anxiety. It is also possible for a person suffering from PTSD to exhibit one or more other comorbid psychiatric disorders; these disorders often include clinical depression (or bipolar disorder), general anxiety disorder, and a variety of addictions.

Symptoms that appear within the first month of the trauma are called Acute stress disorder, not PTSD according to DSM-IV. If there is no improvement of symptoms after this period of time, PTSD is diagnosed. PTSD has three subforms: Acute PTSD subsides after a duration of three months. If the symptoms persist, the diagnosis is changed to chronic PTSD. The third subform is referred to as delayed onset PTSD which may occur months, years, or even decades after the event.

Answer 6

"Fatboy" & the Luftwaffe might have been "SLIGHTLY" over rated!? I mean it'd had taken the Luftwaffe of "then" a month of Sundays to knock out a modern telephone booth! Bombs were a "LITTLE" smaller back then & accuracy was, well considerably less than a modern day sling shot!

Answer 7

If she survived the blitz shes over seventy have some consideration.You probably couldnt survive the loss of your chip shop.

Answer 8

A little kindness for your Gran, please.

When you are her age, you won't like "change" either.

I hope your grandchildren (when you have them,) are more sympathetic than you seem to be.

Answer 9

Well, we can't be sure which was more traumatic for her ... but perhaps the whole self-inflicted thing is what makes the difference here

Answer 10

Simply leave her alone and be supportive. She saw things that you hopefully will never have to deal with in your lifetime. Patience and consideration should be your watchwords.

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