Original story by Deborah Bloom for The Washington Post.

“I had to tune out the second he began to get hysterical,” Marie said, referring to the way Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh became angry, defiant and sometimes emotional during his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, when he denied allegations of sexual assault.

From her home in New Bern, N.C., Marie — who asked that her last name not be used to speak openly about her own sexual assault — watched the hearing in her living room with her two sons. As Christine Blasey Ford testified that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her while they were both in high school, Marie became so anxious she asked her children to leave the room.

Her reactions to the testimony were not unlike many other women’s across the country.

The committee on Friday voted along party lines to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate for a floor vote. But sexual assault survivors were still grappling with the emotional fallout from Thursday’s hearing, during which Ford’s testimony forced them to confront their own painful memories.

It was not long after Kavanaugh was seated in front of the committee that he became visibly angry. When that happened, Marie told The Washington Post, she froze, flooded with memories of a former boyfriend who she says raped her when she was 20 years old.

“Whenever [Kavanaugh] interrupted female senators while they were asking him questions, it’s the same exact thing my ex would do when I tried asking him something and he didn’t like me sticking up for myself,” Marie said.

Women across the political spectrum called in to C-SPAN during hearing breaks to talk about their experiences being assaulted. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reported a 201 percent spike in calls Thursday as well as “unprecedented wait times” for its online chat.

The Crisis Text Line, which provides crisis intervention, saw the numbers of people reaching out with stories of sexual abuse double in October 2017, when the #MeToo movement began. The organization says it’s the highest number of sexual abuse reports they have seen since the 2016 election.

Such responses are common when sexual assault is in the news, said Nancy Glass, associate director for the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health.

“When people hear others telling their stories, it can ‘trigger’ them, it can bring back memories of their own experiences, even if it’s from a long time ago,” Glass said.

The result can be surprisingly physical. The chemicals and hormones released in the body during a traumatic experience can also be released when the experience is remembered, Glass said. They are like symptoms.

“Your adrenaline is going. Your body is producing an inflammatory response. It can cause you to feel anxious, sick to your stomach, get headaches,” Glass said. “It has different reactions to different people.”

Glass says she has worked with survivors of sexual assault for 25 years, and the hearings brought to memory the many horrific stories she had heard throughout her career in public health.

Like combat veterans, sexual assault victims can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The triggering of a victim’s PTSD occurs when they are prompted to remember or relive the trauma, whether by a car backfiring or a fraught sexual assault hearing on Capitol Hill.

Lisa Barnhill watched the hearings from her living room near Missoula, Mont. She says she was raped in 2012 at a party by a man whom she trusted. She says she tuned in to Ford’s testimony, but five minutes into the cross-examination, she had to tune out.

“You could hear [Ford’s] voice shake,” she said. “When they started bringing out graphs and asking about where her house is in relation to the party — it was too much.”

Barnhill said she tried to carry on with her day, and then began to feel the memories of her attack return. “It was like this feeling in the pit of my stomach,” she said.

Kristie, who also spoke on the condition that her last name not be used, said the hearing continues to devastate her.

“There are some similarities in Ford’s story and my own,” Kristie said. She told The Post her rape also occurred at a high school party where kids were drinking. She woke up to a classmate attempting to remove her clothing.

“I repeatedly told him, ‘No,’” Kristie said. “Over and over, I said, ‘No.’ I tried to push him off and fight back. He was stronger than me, taller than me, and bigger than me. I had been a virgin, and that was forcibly taken away from me.”

Kristie says she and Ford have another unfortunate commonality: She can’t recall key details that many think she should be able to remember from that night.

“I cannot remember the exact date or month, though I know the season,” Kristie said. “When people claim she must not be telling the truth because she can’t remember the date I thought, ‘This is what people would say to me.’ ”

Watching the hearing from her home in Ocean View, Del., Kristie said she felt her chest tighten. She said she has lost her appetite since the hearing ended Thursday evening.