Fight – Flight – Freeze

Your “Fight or Flight” Response to Threat Was a Life-Saver. But if You Got “Frozen” There, You May Have PTSD.

You are walking alone on a mountain trail at dusk, returning to your car a little later than you’d planned. You’ve always known it’s bear and cougar country, but you’ve never had a bad experience with a wild animal, so you’re not concerned.

Suddenly, you hear a loud snap of a twig behind you. Your heart rate increases; eyesight and hearing become more acute; your head whips around towards the sound; and your muscles tighten as blood flow to them increases. Without conscious thought, you instantly assess the possible threat and choose to flee or fight.

You may have picked up a stone or limb as a weapon or begun to run before you even think. Reading this, you may have noticed increased heart and respiration rate, a tingling of the skin, increased perspiration, and a sense of alertness. Your imagination just now may have offered images of escape routes or ways you could fight off the imagined attack.

Highly stressful or life-threatening experiences arouse vast amounts of survival energy and emotion — the well-known fight-or-flight response, shared with all animals. Our lower or reptilian brain and sympathetic nervous system arouse instantly to maximize our chance of survival. Merely thinking about such a situation activates the same responses. When it takes control, our bodies respond far more rapidly than normally to assess the danger and to fight or flight.

Congratulations! Your nervous system’s response to threat has worked very well. The proof? You’re alive!

We can remember what animals never forgot.

Think of an animal in the wild — a rabbit, for example. It may be calmly eating one moment at the edge of a meadow and running for its life from a wolf the next. Imagine if that happened to you! That would be pretty scary! Yet if the rabbit escapes, then within minutes it will be back to normal life, not traumatized.

Were it not for this ability to rapidly discharge adrenalin and excess survival energy, the animal’s ability to meet future threats would be reduced, and they would not survive long in the wild.

What is PTSD in humans?

But there is a difference between such responses in humans and animals. People can get “frozen” in an incomplete biological response to unavoidable threat. They become stuck in some combination of the nervous system’s fight, flight or freeze response.

It is like having both the accelerator pedal and the brake pedal pressed to the floor at the same time. The person may think they got over the experience; but if they were unable to shake off the strong charge of energy and emotions afterward, that vast amount of survival energy can become stuck in their nervous systems. Months or years later, often without even a conscious connection to the traumatic experience, many different kinds of symptoms may appear. Read more here about the symptoms of PTSD.

Such symptoms are normal for a person with an over-stressed nervous system. They have lost resiliency, the natural ability to flow easily between the many moods and energy levels necessary to live a full and rich life.

Does every trauma cause PTSD?

Whether an experience results in PTSD depends on how severe the threat was, whether the person was able to make any effective defense, and whether that person had support afterward to move through the powerful sensations and emotions.

For example, I treated a woman who experienced a home invasion and attempted rape. She effectively drove the attacker out of her house by screaming and ferociously hitting him. She was, of course, extremely upset at the time; but this event did not cause PTSD because she had the experience of effectively defending herself.

Obviously, this has not been everyone’s experience. You might have been simply overpowered by the force, speed, or repetition of what happened to you.

Also, we are social animals, and we need people to rely on. PTSD may afflict someone who experienced a traumatic event when they had no friends or other support systems to help them unwind from the trauma afterwards.

Experiences that may have traumatized:

• Abuse or neglect of essential care and love in childhood
• Sexual, physical or emotional abuse in childhood
• Surviving a natural disaster (floods, hurricanes, etc.)
• Accidents (car accident, fire, work accident, etc.)
• Sexual or physical assault
• Injury, illness, death of a loved one, or people nearby
• Combat trauma
• Domestic violence by a partner, sibling or other family member
• Bullying in school or workplace

What is Complex PTSD (C-PTSD)?

When these kinds of traumas or assaults victimize a child or adult repeatedly over long periods of time (months to years), this may result in Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). Nearly everyone suffering from C-PTSD has such symptoms as discussed for PTSD and for the same reasons. However, the symptoms may be more intense and debilitating. Complex survival strategies and personality traits will likely have grown up around the PTSD. Isolation, distrust, and a tendency to re-enact victimization may complicate treatment. Similar treatment approaches are still effective, though longer-term treatment will likely be needed.

Is treatment necessary for PTSD?

The good news is, it is never too late to get “unstuck,” or to heal trauma or PTSD. The stuck energy of these emotional and physical wounds can be released. This healing can happen naturally and spontaneously for a person who has suffered trauma. However, if symptoms of PTSD have already persisted for months or years after the traumatizing events, it is unlikely that person is going to heal from these on their own.

Often sufferers of PTSD feel a lot of guilt and shame around the symptoms they are experiencing. These people might be reluctant to seek help. Keep in mind that PTSD is not a sign of weakness. Seeking help for such problems is a courageous, empowered, and positive decision which holds promise to restore good feelings in your life and also will positively affect those around you.

If you suspect that you or a loved one has post-traumatic stress disorder, the important thing is to get help as soon as you know there is a problem. Untreated PTSD negatively affects many aspects of the person’s life, including his or her personal relationships, mental and physical health, and ability to work and achieve ambitions.

The longer one waits, the stronger the tendency is to become resigned to the symptoms as “that’s just the way I am.” The sooner someone begins treating PTSD, the more quickly it can be overcome.

Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder at Releasing the Past uses a highly effective method called Somatic Experiencing®, a positive, natural process which focuses not on “reliving the past,” but on “releasing the past.” Read more about Somatic Experiencing® here.

The Somatic Experiencing view of post-traumatic stress treatment teaches us that humans, like wild animals, have within our bodies and nervous systems the natural ability to recover fully from traumatic life events.

Together, we focus on:

• building resources; i.e., people, places, things, memories, thoughts, boundaries, and beliefs which help us feel empowered or successful
• growing self-awareness of feelings and body sensations through exercises
• gentle re-training of the over-stressed nervous system with homework

This allows one to process these past traumatic events and begin to move past them. The magic of Somatic Experiencing® as treatment for PTSD is that it connects you to something your instincts and body already know how to do. I help you to remember!

When you are ready to try the Somatic Experiencing® experience for yourself, contact me for a free 30-minute consultation. We’ll get to know each other a bit, and I’ll help you understand how Somatic Experiencing can help you where you specifically want to make changes in your life. Call me for that appointment at 970-493-2958 or use my contact form here.