Shock Trauma
The word “trauma” is bandied around a lot these days. How great! Before the 80s the only way trauma was talked about was the shellshock of soldiers. Doctors such as Bessel Van de Kolk and Gabor Mate, Judith Hermann, Peter Levine and Pat Ogden have helped bring trauma into the public awareness with their research and therapies. But the word “trauma” can mean very different things depending on who’s using it—and how our bodies have held it. I came across a comment the other day from someone who commented that because someone had only witnessed something bad happen (rather than have it happen to themselves), they could not be traumatised. Wrong!
In Somatic Experiencing (SE), we understand trauma not by what happened, but by what happened inside us in response to what happened outside. It’s less about the story, and more about the nervous system’s response—how it got overwhelmed, how it got stuck, and how it’s still trying to protect us, even years later. In Dr Peter Levine’s wonderful book “Waking the Tiger” he shares examples of trauma that gets released after being trapped in the nervous system for many years.
Shock Trauma: The Big Bang
Shock trauma is what most people classically associate with “trauma”—a sudden, overwhelming event that blows through your nervous system like a bolt of lightning such as a car accident, assault, natural disaster, fall, sudden medical procedure, or a terrifying incident where you felt powerless and unsafe. People generally refer to these as the “Big T’s.”
When something shocking happens to us, the primitive part of our brain, which is several hundred millions of years older than our thinking brain (neocortex), takes over. This happens in the blink of an eye:
When the brain perceives a potential threat, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is rapidly activated. This triggers the adrenal glands to release adrenaline and noradrenaline, which prime the body for immediate action. Heart rate and blood pressure rise to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the muscles, respiration accelerates to increase oxygen intake, and pupils dilate to sharpen vision. At the same time, blood is redirected away from processes like digestion and immune[ab1] function toward systems critical for survival. This coordinated cascade—commonly referred to as the fight–flight–freeze response—evolved to enhance our chances of survival in dangerous situations. While highly adaptive in acute, short-term stress, prolonged sympathetic activation in the absence of real danger can contribute to chronic health challenges.
Can we talk our way out of it?
Can we fight it, or flee it?
If none of these are options, our system slams on the brakes and goes into the physiological state of freeze:
You might have felt time slow down, your body go numb, or your thoughts disappear. Later, some may also experience flashbacks, hypervigilance, insomnia, panic attacks, or feel stuck in a loop of reactivity.
In survival terms, freeze physiology is a wonderful way to keep us safe. It is the body’s last-ditch attempt to shut things down and conserve energy for survival. In the wild, when an animal appears dead (think also a deer in headlights), and even limits it’s breathing, the animal hunting it thinks that it is dead and that it’s meat is bad, and thus loses interest in it. This gives the animal in freeze time to come out of it, and mobilise to run away. This wonderful clip shows an Impala come out of freeze, shake out all the extra cortisol and adrenalin and run off.
In SE we slow everything right down. We gently track sensations, images, and small movements in the body. We allow the survival energy that got locked in your system to complete the cycle it never got to finish. No rehashing the story. No forced catharsis. Just giving your body a safe, supported way to come back into flow and regulation.