Find a calm and grounded place where you will have no interruptions, sit comfortably, and start to simply observe what is happening inside.We can use our minds to access the solution rather than playing an endless loop in the projector of our minds. So armed with this knowledge you can take your foot off the brakes and learn to set the conditions so your body can release these patterns. In the initial stages of freeze, the mind may be very active and you may experience anxiety but feel somewhat paralyzed. Feeling depressed, blank, numb, detached or dissociated.Cold, sleepy suddenly, slower heart rate, nausea, heavy limbs as if gravity increased.Like an animal in the teeth of the lion, struggling but about to die, the parasympathetic nervous system turns on and we notice the symptoms of shut down: Some people refer to this slowing and shutting down as depression. Emotions such as excitement, fear, anxiety, annoyance or angerįreeze: When stress overwhelms us, we may feel stuck.Heightened sense of alertness, like something bad is going to happen and our muscles are gearing up to respond.Hot, tense, tight jaw, twitches, itchy, sweaty, rapid heartbeat, shallow breath.Your symptoms will be a combination of either the alarm response or or freeze, to dampen feelings of overwhelm.Īlarm: When we are stressed, the fight or flight part of our sympathetic nervous system turns on and we feel: To discharge these body memories, understanding how the nervous system works will can help us “complete” rather than block or try to get fid of the emotions arising for accumulated stress. Unfortunately talking does not change the “photo plate” of our nervous systems. Our thoughts especially, may be an interpretation of what happened as a way to try and explain and distance ourselves. They may not be an accurate record of past events. Our memories are shaped and reshaped by thoughts and experiences. So how do we get free?įor Peter Levine the answer is not just talking or thinking about painful memories. Or we may use alcohol, drugs, over work, over eating to try to calm the pressure cooker of anxiety inside us. We may think of ourselves as unlucky in love, or accident prone or start to feel defeated because we can’t break the pattern of challenging behaviors. When trauma has been blocked from conscious awareness, we may find ourselves in similar situations over and over again as we attempt to work through painful experiences. These re-enactments take up enormous amounts of energy, and we use a lot of energy avoiding people, places and things to detour around these triggers. With severe trauma, flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive memories take over and we feel them in our bodies as if we were re-living it physically. And each time we think about fearful experience, we anchor it more deeply in our bodies and nervous systems.
These traumatic events are embedded in the body like image on a photo plate. You may know someone who has had a car accident, experienced fright as a child, or has had a scary medical procedure. And this is what scientists like Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, have discovered: when a trauma is contained and experienced start to finish, the nervous system discharges the memory, like erasing an Etch a Sketch. Unlike humans, wild animals find a safe place, experience the trauma from start to finish and their nervous system discharges the fright.
Our language, thoughts and feelings are like the “save” function on a word processing program. We think “if only” or “what if” and the painful memories take up residence in our bodies. Non-human animals lack higher brain functions that humans utilize to explain reality. Humans think about their trauma and recycle it, never realizing their body has a secret weapon to let it go.
Without this ability in the wild, they would wander around shut down, uptight or confused.
Scientists have made a fascinating discovery about the way animals in the wild let go of fear and stress.īecause they are able to release it and move on, they are free of PTSD like symptoms.