Where is a squeeze machine when you need one?
That’s what the brilliant surgeon with Asperger’s Syndrome described when, freaking out, she asked Dr. Bailey and Dr. Yang, not the huggiest people, to hug her as tight as they could — to get her autonomic nervous system to quiet down. The squeeze machine was actually invented by Temple Grandin, Ph.D., one of the most accomplished and well-known adults with autism in the world, who observed that cows held before slaughter in such a contraption calmed down.
Metaphorically, many of us are already well beyond the holding pen as far as slaughter goes, but there may be some help for our anxiety. According to a lot of new science, there is a real basis behind some heretofore unscientifically tested alternative methods to short-circuit panic or trauma attacks. I’ve written an article about a bunch of them. Among the most effective are Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a tapping method currently being clinically tested with great success on Iraq combat vets with PTSD. To learn more, go to TryItOnEverything.com or download a free manual at EFT founder Gary Craig’s website, emofree.com.
In 1969 psychologist Peter A. Levine was attempting to get an upset patient to relax and, in response, she went into a full-fledged panic attack. “You are being attacked by a large tiger,” he exclaimed, surprising himself. “See the tiger as it comes at you. Run toward those rocks, climb them, and escape!” Letting out a blood-curdling yell, the patient began to shake and sob uncontrollably, and to Levine’s surprise, her legs started doing running movements. This response went on for about an hour as the patient recalled childhood terrors, and at the end she felt like herself again and stopped having panic attacks.
The key to why SE works is understanding what really causes trauma. “Traumatic symptoms are not caused by events,” says Levine. When faced by something terrifying, all animals (including humans) fight, flee, or freeze. If caught by a predator, the freeze response serves two purposes: to numb the victim to the pain of being killed, and sometimes to “turn off” the predator, allowing the victim to escape. Observing that wild prey animals rarely suffer trauma, Levine reasoned that it is because they instinctually “regulate and discharge the high levels of energy arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors.” Levine believes that many trauma sufferers identify themselves as survivors rather than as animals with an instinctual power to heal. SE clients learn to “renegotiate” and heal their traumas, rather than relive them, by essentially doing what our nervous systems are trying to do. “When danger is perceived, the body organizes an energetic defensive response,” says Levine. Traumatic symptoms happen when you are essentially stuck in the freeze response and residual energy from fight or flight impulses is not discharged — effectively wreaking havoc on your nervous system.
The feeling of collapse that traumatized people often experience in the face of life situations can be seen as an incomplete response to threat. By learning to complete this collapse response by going into and out of it fully, you can begin to retain a sense of resiliency ….
Rather than fight the collapse … allow your body, a little bit at a time, to fall further into the collapse, staying mindful all the time. Then, when it feels like you’ve reached an end point, when you’ve collapsed as far as you can go, you’re going to straighten back up.
Pleasant dreams, all, as I now return to the collapse of sleep.