The mind can place two events beside each other simply because they felt alike.

The mind files by feeling as much as by chronology. Two events years apart can sit next to each other because they produced the same sensation, and once they are paired they explain each other, whether or not they have anything actually in common. A present situation can then inherit the meaning of an old one without any evidence being involved.

When something provokes a reaction out of proportion, ask what it resembles rather than what it is. Naming the earlier event usually shrinks the current one to size. The similarity was in the feeling, not in the facts.