Normalising innate behaviours

All of us use expressions such as “I was scared stiff” or “I froze”. But how many of us know that the response that these expressions refer to is tonic immobility? (More commonly known as the freeze response). We’re all aware of the famous ‘fight or flight’ term, but few of us have heard of tonic immobility, a response to any threat that we perceive as dangerous, that can overwhelm our coping mechanisms. We can even find experiencing tonic immobility itself overwhelming because it can render us, involuntarily, physically immobile and unable to speak, which leaves us feeling helpless. And on top of that, we often judge ourselves harshly when we respond in a supposedly ‘weak’ or ‘passive’ way. We feel ashamed of not ‘fighting back’ and these appraisals can also overwhelm us and prevent us from resolving any trauma.

Tonic immobility is evolution’s gift to us in order to keep us alive. Sometimes, in the face of threat and danger, it is safer to remain immobile or ‘play dead’, rather than fight or run. Sometimes fleeing or fighting are not even viable options, especially when we’re very young. We don’t make the choice not to move or not to call out for help voluntarily, this innate behavior and instinct is hardwired in us in order to ensure our survival.

As Peter Levine writes in his book In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness:

As traumatised individuals begin to reown their sense of agency and power, they gradually come to a place of self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. They achieve the compassionate realisation that both their immobility and their rage are a biologically driven, instinctual imperative and not something to be ashamed of as if it were a character defect. They own their rage as undifferentiated power and agency, a vital life-preserving force to be harnessed and used to benefit oneself. Because of its profound importance to the resolution of trauma, I’ll repeat myself: the fear that fuels immobility can be categorized, broadly, as two separate fears: the fear of entering immobility, which is the fear of paralysis, entrapment, helplessness and death; and the fear of exiting immobility, of the intense energy of the “rage-based” sensations of counterattack. Caught in this two-sided clamp (of entering and exiting), immobility repels its antidote implacably so that it seems impossible to break through it. However, when the skillful therapist assists clients in uncoupling the fear from immobility by restoring “self paced termination of immobility”, the rich reward is the client’s capability to move forward in time. This “forward experiencing” dispels fear, entrapment and helplessness by breaking the endless feedback loop of terror and paralysis.

Using EFT for asthma

Chronic inflammation is the root cause of many physical diseases. What causes the inflammation? Chronic stress, poor eating habits, poor gut health/flora, food allergies and intolerances, not enough good quality sleep, not enough exercise. Chronic inflammation plays a huge role in chronic conditions such as asthma.

We are going to address the emotional contributors (i.e. emotional stress) to chronic asthma in this article by using EFT. Keeping your stress levels to a minimum will really help your body to deal with excess inflammation and hopefully you will see big improvements in your overall health. We often make poor health choices because of emotional stress, so dealing with it first can help us eat better and exercise more. Have a go at answering the following questions. Write them down, you might be pleasantly surprised at the insights that you come up with.

In traditional chinese medicine, lungs are the seat of grief, so any unresolved sadness and grief you have will be worth taking a look at. The lung point is at the side of the thumb, try tapping this point continuously whenever you feel sad, and see if it helps you release the sadness/grief from your body.

What was happening in your life around the time, or just before, you developed asthma?

Have you had asthma since birth? What was your birth like? Were you wanted?

How does having asthma make you feel? For example, smothered, panicky etc?

How does it affect your breathing?

What does it stop you from doing in your life?

Are there any advantages to not having to do certain things because of your asthma?

How easy/comfortable is it for you to receive? This might seem like a strange question, but one of the most basic things we receive from life is the breath. How easy is it for you to take in a deep breath and feel nourished by it? 

Do you feel you deserve to be here? Again, just go with these questions and see what answers come up. You might be surprised and the answers might be well worth tapping on.

Do you want to be here?

The intimate link between trauma and dissociation

I believe that traumatic experience is different from trauma, it does not necessarily lead to what we call trauma. Browne (1990) defines trauma as “unexperienced experience” and I agree with this definition. For an experience to remain unexperienced, or for trauma to occur, dissociation has to be present, as it is the mechanism by which an experience remains unexperienced. This is why chronic or persistent dissociation always results in trauma.

Why does an experience remain unexperienced? Because it has overwhelmed our coping mechanisms, we can’t process or feel it, so, as Browne says “instead of a way of avoiding external danger, it [dissociation] is now utilised to deal with the threat of internal destabilisation; whenever we are faced with an overwhelming experience that we sense as potentially disintegrating, we have the ability to suspend it and “freeze” it in an unassimilated, inchoate form and maintain it in that state indefinitely, or for as long as necessary”.

An overwhelming experience can be an external (any type of abuse for example) or internal (the way we perceive or appraise an experience) threat. Therefore there is no such thing as an objective stressor, if the symptoms of trauma are present, and there are many, not just the obvious ones like PTSD, we can say that someone is traumatised.

Some have asked whether peritraumatic dissociation can lead to trauma. While it does not necessarily lead to trauma because it is usually a temporary response, the exception seems to be the involuntary tonic immobility response (more commonly known as the freeze response). Tonic immobility is a somatic dissociative response that protects against overwhelming threat that could result in death. If not discharged, this usually temporary response can also become persistent and chronic leading to trauma.

Some researchers have argued that tonic immobility is inherently traumatic (Bovin, 2011), however Levine (2010) disagrees. He believes that it is the coupling of tonic immobility with intense emotions such as fear that renders the response traumatic. In fact, this forms the basis for Levine’s theory of trauma. That said, some trauma sufferers report that the experience of tonic immobility has been very overwhelming for them.

For example not being able to call out for help or being rendered physically immobile can feel very helpless. Then there are the appraisals of these same behaviors, such as “I should have fought back” or “I am so ashamed I just lay there”, which can also be extremely traumatising. Some of the reasons for these responses may be that tonic immobility is not as widely known or understood as the flight or fight responses. So many may be confused and/or shocked when they become immobile and can’t do or say anything. We also seem to have lost or shunned our connection with our evolutionary past and instincts. Therefore, it can be difficult to understand and accept survival behaviours such as tonic immobility.

Culturally, many of us are taught to fight when faced with threat, so there is a lot of criticism for rape survivors for example if they haven’t fought back. In fact, many times the perpetrator might not even be prosecuted because evidence of a struggle was not found. It is any wonder then that this response is so misunderstood? Tonic immobility is also referred to as “passive resistance or avoidance” many times in the psychological literature which I think is a derogatory and superficial evaluation and could in fact give impetus to appraisals such as “I should have fought back” or “I’m weak and to blame”.

Have we simply lost the ability to experience and discharge tonic immobility because of the cultural cage we live in that disowns many, if not all, of our survival instincts, particularly those pertaining to the body? Animals in the wild freely discharge the enormous survival energy that the response generates without feeling fear, helplessness or shame, which also ensures their survival. Maybe we should (re)learn something from them?

References

Bovin, M.J., & Marx, B.P. (2011). The importance of the peritraumatic experience in defining traumatic stress. Psychological Bulletin, 137(1), 47–67.

Browne, I. (1990). Psychological trauma, or unexperienced experience. ReVision, 12(4), 21–34.

Levine, P.A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Give up all the other worlds, except the one to which you belong

Fear of conflict tapping script

Have you ever remained quiet when someone said or did something awful and stewed about it afterwards? I have, many times. It actually feels a lot worse than challenging the person about their behaviour at the time it happens. Being a peace lover is not the same as being a peace maker. Making peace involves standing up for yourself and holding the other person accountable for what they have done and said. Whether they choose to take responsibility or not is not under your control, but it is your answer as to whether it is worth your while having this person in your life. Setting and respecting your boundaries creates genuine, authentic peace. It's good for you and ultimately good for the other person, even if they don't realise it at the time, or ever.

What often stops us from challenging another person on their behaviour is our fear of conflict. So we stay quiet. Which often gives implicit permission to the other person to continue with their bad behaviour. They don't seem to mind conflict, in fact they might even thrive on it. But I can guarantee if you challenge them and stand up for yourself, they'll soon get pretty tired of being rude or unkind, if only because they don't want to listen to you challenging their behaviour.

Try tapping on the following sentences and see if they help, as always, make sure to customise the words for your unique situation.

Even though I'm afraid of conflict because (what's the worst that could happen?) I completely accept how I feel about that

Even though I feel this conflict ... (where do you feel it in your body, is it everywhere or in one spot?) I accept these feelings and sensations

Even though these sensations feel ... I am willing to be present with them

Top of the head: This fear
Eyebrow: Of conflict
Side of eye: Of raised voices
Under the eye: Of someone being angry with me
Under the nose: If I stand up for myself
Under the chin: If I speak up
Collar bone: Wait a minute
Under the arm: Why are they angry with me?!

Top of the head: I'm the one who should be angry
Eyebrow: They're causing this conflict, not me
Side of eye: I'm trying to avoid it
Under the eye: Because ...
Under the nose: I'm afraid
Under the chin: Of ...
Collar bone: This fear reminds me of ...
Under the arm: And I'm reacting in the same way as I did then

Top of the head: To protect myself
Eyebrow: But is it working now?
Side of the eye: Is avoiding conflict working?
Under the eye: I'm scared that ...
Under the nose: And I acknowledge this fear
Under the chin: I can feel this fear
Collar bone: And not act on it
Under the arm: I know what's right

Top of the head: I just can't bring myself to do it
Eyebrow: Because of fear
Side of the eye: My fear is freezing me
Under the arm: I can't seem to act
Under the nose: Because I'm frozen
Under the chin: I can melt some of this frozen feeling
Collar bone: By feeling it
Under the arm: And not avoiding it

Top of the head: I can tell that person how I feel
Eyebrow: And if they don't like it
Side of the eye: So what?
Under the eye: But I still feel afraid
Under the nose: And that's ok
Unde the chin: Maybe they even sense my fear
Collar bone: And that's why they dump their crap onto me
Under the arm: But I don't have to take it any more

Top of the head: I have a choice
Eyebrow: Even if sometimes it doesn't feel that way
Side of the eye: I can choose not to take ...
Under the eye: That feels ... (empowering?)
Under the nose: I have a choice
Under the chin: I can make choices that serve me
Collar bone: Which will ultimately serve everyone
Under the arm: That feels ...

Love is all we need

Hopefully we'll have started our journey in this life, wanted and loved. The research on the importance of love just keeps growing, as if we needed any reminding of it. We know full well the importance of being loved, how it feeds and nourishes us in every way possible. As Stephen Porges says in the video below "We are mammals. We cannot regulate ourself in isolation. Everything has to do with co-regulation".

This might be of some comfort to those who feel like "failures" because they just can't seem to get a handle on things by themselves. I don't think we're supposed to be able to do it all ourselves. That's why the relationships we have in our lives are so important. That doesn't mean that we can't be independent to a certain degree, or can't give ourselves some of what we need, but the fact is, as a species, we are interdependent. There's no shame in that whatsoever. In fact, I think embracing that fact, takes a lot of pressure off us. We don't do well when we're lonely or when our relationships are difficult or even non existent.

Love is all we need is a cliché, but it's true. It's absolutely true, none of us thrive without love. (Hopefully, we'll also have the necessities like clean water, food and shelter too though, love doesn't feed an empty stomach or a freezing body). But if you look at children who are on the street with their parents, it's a hell of a lot different to the children who are completely alone and vulnerable.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another ~ Thomas Merton, Love and Living

It's exhausting to lie

When you do EFT on the truth of how you feel, it works wonders. Some people call this tapping on the negative, or affirming the negative, but I call it telling the truth. Telling the truth is a huge relief and relieves a lot of pressure, if not all of it. Lying to yourself or others is absolutely exhausting. As Gary Craig says, it's like trying to hold a huge beach ball under water, it takes a lot of energy.

Tell the truth when you tap, you're not being negative, you're not affirming the negative, the negative won't stay forever, and if you have any of these fears when you go to tap on something, tap on these beliefs first! It will clear the way for you, many beliefs can act as an electric fence around the real issue, and every time we try to touch it (clear it), we get an electric shock. When an issue doesn't clear, we get frustrated and think EFT isn't working for us, but it's often because we have the beliefs that I mentioned above and we aren't as honest as we could be about how we truly feel.

Being shamed for your needs

We can be shamed for a lot of things but I think one of the most damaging ways we can be shamed is for having needs when we are children. Having needs make us very vulnerable and we need others to meet those needs, so we're essentially shamed for being helpless which is unbelievably damaging. If the very need for our parents, along with our need for love, comfort and being soothed are shamed we'll question our worth, our belonging, our sense of deserving to even be here.

So we'll try and pretend that we're not vulnerable and that we don't have needs which is absolutely impossible. This is a helpless situation and helplessness is one of the core ingredients of trauma. What often happens later is that vulnerability is associated with helplessness so every time vulnerability (that is, a need comes up) we'll feel ashamed of ourselves for even having the need in the first place, which again leads to a feeling of being helpless.

This is why it's so important to tap on feeling deserving and worthy of your needs, your needs make you human. They encourage (or force!) you to be vulnerable, to reach out, to ask for something, to connect. Whatever way we look at it, we'll always have needs and there will be times when only others can meet those needs. Our needs are a constant opportunity to heal who we think/believe we are.

Try saying the following phrases out loud and see if there are any objections. Rate their truth (0 to 10) and see where you go with them when you start tapping.

I deserve to be here.

I deserve to have my needs met.

It is okay to have needs.

My needs make me ...

I am/feel helpless when ...

It is okay to be/feel vulnerable.