Traumatic Stress & the Nervous System
“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.”
What is Trauma?
“Trauma may result from a wide variety of stressors such as accidents, invasive medical procedures, sexual or physical assault, emotional abuse, neglect, war, racism, natural disasters, loss, birth trauma, or the corrosive stressors of ongoing fear and conflict.”
- SE™International
We now understand that trauma is not what happened to you, and it is not the event that occurred. Trauma is what happens in the nervous system. It is the words that didn’t get to be said, the protective actions you couldn’t take, or perhaps the feelings you couldn’t feel or express. Kimberly Ann Johnson writes in her book Call of the Wild:
“Trauma is not one thing. We tend to the of trauma as a specific event lik a car accident or death or an abusive relationship, but it’s not the events themselves that are traumatic. Its the way that we metabolize the events, or don’t, that determines whether they linger in our system as unprocessed material causing record skips and literal or metaphorical indigestion.”
What traumatizes one person’s system, may not be traumatic for another’s system. In a traumatic event, a person’s survival response may be thwarted, resulting in the freeze response, and possibly stuck survival energy. When trauma occurs, it’s as if the body stays ‘stuck’ in the traumatic event and the mind and body continue to suffer even after the event(s) have passed.
“Most people think of trauma as a ‘mental’ problem, even as a ‘brain disorder’. However, trauma is something that also happens in the body. ”
How does trauma happen in the body?
The SomaWell Journal articles Nervous System Basics: Part I and Part II discussed polyvagal theory and the basics of the autonomic nervous system (check out the articles if you are new to understanding the nervous system).
To summarize, depending on what we detect through Neuroception (our ability to unconsciously detect threat or safety in our internal or external environment), the body moves into three main autonomic nervous system responses:
~ Sympathetic: mobilize for action like play or exercise, or respond to stress or danger in fight or flight.
~ Parasympathetic Dorsal Vagal: rest and stillness in safety, or immobilize/freeze under life threat.
~ Parasympathetic Ventral Vagal: in safety, we can socially engage; under stress we may tend & befriend with others to problem solve; under life threat we may experience the fawn response and appease others to survive.
Sympathetic: fight or flight REsponse
In a traumatic event, the body may enter into a sympathetic mode, mobilizing for action to defend or protect. A sympathetic response prepares the body and mobilizes the muscles, narrows the vision, pumps blood, and the breath rate increases. The HPA Axis is initiated and hormones and chemicals shoot throughout the body including adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. The hormones and chemicals are life saving are meant to be temporary and short lived in the body. These are highly activating energies shooting throughout the body in order to respond to threat, and in the case of trauma it is possible that the HPA Axis continues to loop, never fully completing its life cycle, even if the traumatic event has passed.
Dorsal Vagal: freeze & IMmobility REsponse
When we feel that we are under life threat, the body may press on the gas pedal to enter into a sympathetic mode, initiating the HPA Axis for action, while at the same time the body slams on the break. The competing energies in the body overwhelm the nervous system and the body shuts down to play ‘dead’, initiating the freeze response dorsal vagal collapse.
Imagine a possum playing ‘dead’ in the face of being eaten by a predator. As the possum freezes up and lies very still, the predator (often thrilled by the chase) then gets bored and moves on to its next potential meal. The possum then slowly exits the immobility response, discharges the fear energy, and moves on with its day. The possum has completed the immobility response and can move back to homeostasis, as if nothing happened.
Just like the possum, we have no conscious control of the freeze response, and its our body’s beautiful way of surviving. However, humans sometimes do not complete the immobility response, which leaves the high charge of energy ‘stuck’ in the body.
fawn REsponse
Another beautiful survival response humans are capable of is the Fawn Response which is promoted by the ventral vagal system. In the fawn response we may feel frozen in danger, and also try to socially engage by appeasing an abuser, in order to survive. As a trauma survivor moves through life, fawn response patterns engrained in the nervous system can cause a person to deny their own needs, and fall into patterns of appeasing and people pleasing in stress and conflict. With an overall lack of boundaries, self trust, and self empowerment, a survivor of trauma can feel frozen in their patterned response. Again, this response was necessary at one point to survive, and now it becomes maladaptive and detrimental to a person’s overall wellbeing.
‘Shaking it Off’
“Nature has instilled in all animals including humans a nervous system capable of restoring equilibrium. When this self regulating function is blocked or disturbed, trauma symptoms develop as ways of binding the undischarged arousal or activation” - Dr. Peter Levine
Animals model these nervous system responses well: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Animals also have an intuitive way of experiencing stress and coming back to homeostasis.
After a stressful event, a dog typically ‘shakes things off’ to discharge the energy and complete the life cycles of the hormones and chemicals shooting through his body that were there to help him mobilize for action. This is a natural process for him and helps him return back to equilibrium after a stressful event.
Consider again the example of the possum playing dead - the freeze response. After life threat has passed, the possum will then come out of immobility and shake off stress to discharge all of the built up mobilizing energy that was not used in a fight or flight response. An animal’s nervous system is easily able to shift back to equilibrium.
While animals have the ability to shake it off, human beings don’t always have this luxury. In the case of trauma, the body and nervous system may not have had an opportunity to complete the thwarted survival response (fight or flight). These physiological processes may become stuck ‘looping’ and creating less than ideal patterns within the systems of the body. The nervous system is on overload all of them time as the life cycles of stress hormones, emotions, neuromuscular responses, never had a chance to complete fight or flight.
The body is efficient and continues to operate in pattern, as if the traumatic event is still occurring.
It is important to remember that trauma impacts each individual differently, and its impact looks different for everyone. The impacts of trauma are nuanced and complex and can have lingering effects on both the soma and the psyche.
“While traumatized humans don’t actually remain physically paralyzed, they do get lost in a kind of anxious fog, a chronic partial shutdown, dissociation, lingering depression and numbness.”
Indicators of Trauma & Functional Freeze
With trauma, we may end up stuck in a freeze response and we may experience symptoms later in life. Being stuck in a freeze response doesn’t mean we are physically paralyzed (like the image of the frozen possum). Rather, Dr. Peter Levine calls this a ‘functional freeze’, we can go about our day, but we are still operating in a partial shutdown, not fully feeling alive or thriving in life.
There are three general types of functional freeze we can experience: Low Activation Freeze, High Activation Freeze, and Concurrent Over Activation.
*This is not an exhaustive list, nor is it a list to create a diagnosis for oneself, perhaps its just another way to see and understand physical and mental symptoms.
Low activation freeze: stuck on ‘off’
Over-activation of Dorsal Vagal Parasympathetic Nervous System. This can look like…
Low energy, exhaustion
Numbness
Low muscle tone
Poor digestion
Low heart rate or blood pressure
Poor immune system function
Disconnection, dissociation, withdrawal, isolation
Depression and apathy, low motivation
High activation freeze: stuck on “on”
Over activation of Sympathetic Nervous System. This can look like…
Increased heart rate
Difficulty breathing
Cold sweats
Tingling throughout the body
Muscular tension
Exaggerated startle response, hypervigilance
Chronic pain
Inability to sleep/relax
Panic attacks and anxiety, racing thoughts
Rage, aggression, anger
Overtime, adrenal fatigue
Concurrent over activation, both stuck “on” and “off”
In this situation, both branches of the autonomic nervous system are over activated and a person may feel like they are on a ‘roller coaster’ with their feelings, sensations, emotions, and energy, as they rigidly and chaotically move between sympathetic and parasympathetic states.
There is both anxiety and underlying depression
Muscle rigidity in one area of the body with low muscle tone elsewhere
Lethargy and then a switch to high activation
The body is never quite able to come back to a dynamic equilibrium where it ebbs and flows between activation and ease. Instead, movement between states feels 'out of our control’.
The Impacts of Trauma
The impacts of trauma on the psyche and soma are being explored and understood more than ever before. Whether a person is experiencing high, low, or concurrent over activation freeze, the impacts on the body and mind can be detrimental.
Stress is overwhelming
It may be true for some of us that when we are stuck in a functional freeze trauma response, our window of capacity is decreased and any sliver of stress feels overwhelming. Under stress or conflict, our nervous system responds in its habituated pattern - we either move towards hypoarousal and shut down, or move towards hyperarousal and react emotionally, feeling ‘out of control’.
Living in a high activation freeze could feel as if the body is constantly on alert and prepared for action. However, the body is not meant to be in high alert for long periods of time, and those of us in high activation freeze likely experience adrenal glands submitting too much cortisol throughout the body. Adrenaline is only supposed to be in system for short periods of time! This constant flooding of adrenaline and other chemicals and hormone exhausts the body’s systems resulting in suppression of the immune system, blood pressure increase, illness, gut inflammation, autoimmune disease, sleep issues etc. It is likely that a trauma survivor can’t access the parasympathetic nervous system to balance out over activated sympathetic response. The body is in constant sympathetic mode.
Living in a low activation freeze could indicate the body is bypassing rest & digest, and shutting down, possibly resulting in dissociation and disconnection. We move through the world in a numb-like state not fully feeling or alive, and this can be incredibly isolating and lonely.
A final reminder, these beautiful nervous system responses were once an adaptive and incredible strategies used to survive a traumatic event(s). Now the responses may be maladaptive which can cause us to be unwell - physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.
Healing is Possible
Healing is possible, and it begins with befriending the body
AND healing looks different for everyone.
While the body and mind can be impacted by traumatic stress in many ways, there is hope for healing and trauma resolution. The nervous system is capable restoring dynamic equilibrium to the body!
Some of the ways in which SomaWell helps clients in trauma resolution include:
Create nervous system support, helping you to feel settled, and also ready and aware of what is happening, so you can respond consciously to what is in your environment.
Mindfulness and present moment focus through embodied movement and coaching to help you de-thaw the freeze response in the body.
Embodied boundaries to help you restore your dignity and internal strength.
Building emotional resilience and expanding the window of capacity to handle stress & conflict.