HealingTrauma...
"Feelings of helplessness, immobility, and freezing. If hyperarousal is the nervous system's accelerator, a sense of overwhelming helplessness is its brake. The helplessness that is experienced at such times is not the ordinary sense of helplessness that can affect anyone from time to time. It is the sense of being collapsed, immobilized, and utterly helpless.
It is not a perception, belief, or a trick of the imagination. It is real."
"We humans use the immobility response - frozen energy - regularly when we are injured or even when we feel overwhelmed. Unlike the impala, though, we tend to have trouble returning to normal after being in this state. The very feelings that we need to access in order to us help steer ourselves back to the present are, in effect, numded-out.
This difficulty in normalizing ourselves is very important. I believe that the ability to return to equilibrium and balance, after using the "immobility response", is the primary factor in avoiding being traumatized.
How do wild animals successfully return to their normal state?
The answer lies in the particular type of spontaneous shaking, trembling, and breathing that I described earlier. I remember that when I shared my observations about animal behavior with Andrew Bwanali, chief park biologist of the Mzuzu Environmental Center in Malawi, Central Africa, he nodded excitedly, then burst out: "Yes... yes... yes! That is true. Before we release captured animals back into the wild, we make absolutely sure that they have done just what you have described."
He looked down at the ground, then added softly, "If they have not trembled and breathed that way before they are released, they will not survive. They will die." (...!!!)
Peter Levine, Ph.D.
Healing Trauma
A Pioneering Program for
Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body
Sounds true
It is not a perception, belief, or a trick of the imagination. It is real."
"We humans use the immobility response - frozen energy - regularly when we are injured or even when we feel overwhelmed. Unlike the impala, though, we tend to have trouble returning to normal after being in this state. The very feelings that we need to access in order to us help steer ourselves back to the present are, in effect, numded-out.
This difficulty in normalizing ourselves is very important. I believe that the ability to return to equilibrium and balance, after using the "immobility response", is the primary factor in avoiding being traumatized.
How do wild animals successfully return to their normal state?
The answer lies in the particular type of spontaneous shaking, trembling, and breathing that I described earlier. I remember that when I shared my observations about animal behavior with Andrew Bwanali, chief park biologist of the Mzuzu Environmental Center in Malawi, Central Africa, he nodded excitedly, then burst out: "Yes... yes... yes! That is true. Before we release captured animals back into the wild, we make absolutely sure that they have done just what you have described."
He looked down at the ground, then added softly, "If they have not trembled and breathed that way before they are released, they will not survive. They will die." (...!!!)
Peter Levine, Ph.D.
Healing Trauma
A Pioneering Program for
Restoring the Wisdom of Your Body
Sounds true
Belleeer - 2010-05-31 07:07
