Brennan's Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Unfortunately, I am having a hard time understanding Brennan’s theory. There are some parts that are easy and there are some parts where I get lost. I have been trying to ask questions in class, but I guess there is not enough time. I wanted to ask today if Brennan defines a traumatic event different from a mode of anxiety. As humans, some of us tend to be more emotional than others, but we can all agree that “the transformation of affect, whether it is grief, anxiety, or anger, is social or psychological in origin” (Brennan 2004, 1). By walking in a room and feeling negativity in the atmosphere, one’s body may trigger a sense of fear which causes one’s body to shrink. While Brennan’s theory, I realize that transformational affect incorporates similar elements as symbolic paradigm.
That is, an individual’s perceptions based on life and reality varies and is changing. Our behavior with and among other people (our interaction) is the result of our shared understanding of cultural symbols. Theorists have used “this perspective to focus on the process of interaction—defined as immediate reciprocally oriented communication between two or more people—and the part that symbols play in giving meaning to human communication” (Kendall 2013, 25 ). Therefore, a symbol is anything that meaningfully represents something else, such as gestures, written language, postures, and so on. On the other hand, Brennan believes that we should not respond to anything we see, but rather something that we smell without even knowing it, which is called unconscious olfaction. This causes individuals to shape the reality of others by what they smell, rather than