Animals do not view freezing as a sign of inadequacy or weakness, nor should we.
Trauma is the great masquerader and participant in many maladies and “dis-eases” that afflict sufferers. It can perhaps be conjectured that unresolved trauma is responsible for a majority of the illnesses of modern mankind.
The key is allowing and encouraging children to flow through the natural trajectory of their emotional shock reactions to difficult events without attempting to censor or control these reactions, preaching to our children, or projecting our own fears and anxieties.
The foundational truth imparted by the authors is that the adult’s first task is to attend to his or her own emotional state, since it’s only in the adult’s calm, competent, and reassuring presence that children find the space to resolve their tensions.
His face is a stage on which heartbreaking emotions play out. Sometimes he looks lost, a boy alone. Other moments he seems sad, his gaze downcast. Other times, terror bolts across his face, like a child who wakes from a bad dream confused by what he has seen. He has not spoken much of his time alone.
Trauma happens when any experience stuns us like a bolt out of the blue; it overwhelms us, leaving us altered and disconnected.
The answer lies in the particular type of spontaneous shaking, trembling, and breathing that I described earlier.
I found that, if given appropriate guidance, human beings can and do shake off the effects of overwhelming events and return to their lives using exactly the same procedures that animals use.
I have worked to develop a safe, gentle, and effective way for people to heal from trauma. It works by understanding that trauma is primarily physiological. Trauma is something that happens initially to our bodies and our instincts. Only then do its effects spread to our minds, emotions, and spirits.
Our sense of safety and stability in the world and our interpersonal relationships become undermined by childhood abuse because we carry these early thwarted – that is, deeply conflicted – survival patterns into adulthood.
What generally gets overlooked is that sexual energy and life-force energy are virtually one and the same.
Any attempt to dictate what thoughts, feelings, and sensations are proper or improper creates a breeding ground for guilt and shame.
When the moral judgment is removed, individuals are able to acknowledge and experience their authentic life energy freely.
When children are asked to “turn the other cheek,” “put on a happy face,” or “strike back” in situations where they are experiencing daily terror, they do not learn character. On the contrary, they lose self-confidence and a sense of safety necessary to succeed.
When this stuck energy is restored to the whole organism, we can begin to live more fully – to create, accomplish, communicate, collaborate, and share. Instead of being engaged merely in survival, we can then come back to our balanced place, where we’re basically social animals. The fear and paralysis and dread drop away, and we come back into the present, because we have access to all of the energy previously bound up in our freezing and immobility, in our incomplete fight and flight responses.
When people have been traumatized, they are stuck in paralysis – the immobility reaction or abrupt explosions of rage. Because of this, they lack the healthy aggression that they need to carry out their lives effectively.
Often, traumatized people either feel nothing or they feel rage, and often the rage is expressed in inappropriate ways. By beginning to get a sense of what healthy aggression feels like, the extremes of numbness and rage can begin to give way to a healthier middle ground.
If healing is what you want, your first step is to be open to the possibility that literal truth is not the most important consideration. The conviction that it really happened, the fear that it may have happened, the subtle searching for evidence that it did happen, can all get in your way as you try to hear what the felt sense wants to tell you about what it needs to heal.
Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence. Not only can trauma be healed, but with appropriate guidance and support, it can be transformative.
The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect.
Children should never be forced to do more than they are willing and able to do.