Fight, Flight and Freeze Response

I found this article on Dr. Mercola's site that explains what is going on in the background when abuse happens. I thought to share it. 

"The basic idea is that when trauma occurs, whether the injury is to your body, mind or spirit, two basic processes are activated. The first is the fight-or-flight response, which when activated increases your heart rate and blood pressure. Blood is shunted from digestion into tensing muscles, heart and lungs. Stress hormones are produced to help you fight or run.

While crucial in acute situations of danger, the fight-or-flight response is meant to be turned on and back off quickly. As soon as you’re out of immediate danger, you’re supposed to return back to balance, feeling safe and at ease. Problems arise when we go into fight-or-flight and stay there long after a traumatic event is over.

“Sometimes it’s because the trauma is ongoing. That’s what happens to kids who are in abusive or neglectful situations. But sometimes, we’ve experienced a traumatic event and we’re stuck in that fight-or-flight. It’s like our foot is on the accelerator and we can’t take it off.

So, we become anxious and agitated. We have trouble sleeping, trouble concentrating. We’re impatient with other people, impatient with ourselves. Also, we’re stuck in that past. We replay the images, the images of someone abusing us, someone assaulting us or a boss treating us badly or what happened to us when we were deployed …”

The Freeze Response

The second process activated by trauma is the freeze response. Fight-or-flight is part of the sympathetic nervous system, which is one-half of the autonomic nervous system. The other half of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system.

“In general, we’re trying to mobilize the parasympathetic nervous system to balance out fight-or-flight,” Gordon explains. “But sometimes, if the situation is so overwhelming and so inescapable, we go into what is called the freeze response, which is mediated and governed by the oldest part of the parasympathetic nervous system, deep in the mid-brain.

We just shut down; we collapse. We put out large amounts of endorphins to protect us against the pain that’s there. We distance ourselves because the trauma is so overwhelming and inescapable. We can’t do anything else except shut down our bodies and close off our minds.

This happens, for example, to children who were abused by their parents, because the abuse is terrible and they can’t get away from it. It happens to people who were assaulted by others who are much more powerful than they are. It happens when we’re raped. It happens in a warzone when we can’t get away and we can’t fight. We’re just overpowered by the situation.”

When these two responses — fight-or-flight and freeze — continue, they are the essence of post-traumatic stress. “One way to look at it is that post-traumatic stress keeps us chained to the past, to the traumatic events, which we keep on replaying in our body and mind,” Gordon explains. “We’re worried it will happen again.”

The essence of healing psychological trauma is to return back into the present moment because, when traumatized, you’re chained to what happened in the past. You worry it will happen again. If you can relax and come into the present, then the trauma starts to dissipate."

Tapping is one of the tools to help us return to emotional homeostasis or neutrality. 

EFT is not a substitute for good medical or psychological care, so please contact your own personal physicians when this type of help is needed.