event, the authors initially hear stories that don't match how people act in threatening circumstances (1). The stories only make sense through publicly accepted beliefs, heuristics, and logic. A supportive challenge to the description of their actions, while the authors let the person know they had been in similar situations, quickly changes the narrative to one more consistent with human experience." "This is not a trivial distinction; private logic is quite visible in the first minutes or hours after a tragedy as events expose the raw beliefs of each person. Because we otherwise have no access to people's intimate internal logic, some behaviors and beliefs may not make sense to us unless we appreciate this private internal logic."