Kim Kardashian Traces Her Fight-or-Flight Trauma Response Back to Paris Robbery

Going to therapy has started to help Kim Kardashian process and reflect on pivotal experiences she’s had throughout her life. But in an exclusive clip from an upcoming episode of The Kardashians, premiering July 18, a particularly profound breakthrough about her lingering trauma from being robbed at gunpoint comes not from a conversation not with her therapist but with her sister Khloé.

In the scene, Kim recalls her therapist telling her, “You think calm is your superpower. I think you are so desensitized from trauma that you literally are frozen in fight or flight. One time in life, something happened, and you remained calm — and that worked for you, so you will always choose calm.” In an attempt to pinpoint what that moment could have been, Kim says, the therapist encouraged her to look back on her childhood.

But Khloé’s mind immediately flickers to October 2016, when Kim was robbed at gunpoint in the hotel she was staying in during Paris Fashion Week. “You weren’t calm before,” she told her older sister. “You don’t remember that? Kim, you were a lunatic … You were never calm as a teenager [or] in your twenties. You cried about everything, you were bratty, you threw tantrums.”

Kim has previously described the robbery as “one of the most life-changing experiences for me.” Multiple armed robbers dressed as cops forcefully entered her room before tying her up and stealing $10 million worth of jewelry. In the months after it happened, Kim opened up about the incident more. She tearfully recalled debating running at the risk of being shot in the back and being “fully mentally prepped” for the men to sexually assault her.

“Everything stopped after you got robbed because you stayed calm in that situation,” Khloé tells her in the clip. “And you even said, ‘My calmness is what kept me alive.’ That’s when it started. It doesn’t take a detective to figure that one out.”