Anxiety

Anxiety is a warning sign of stress. The purpose of anxiety is to warn us of danger. Anxiety is an early symptom of fight-or-flight, and it increases all the way through until the freeze response. Anxiety can manifest as a gnawing agitation or full-blown panic attack. A constant feeling of agitation is a sure sign that your nervous system is spending time on the right side of the Yerkes-Dodson Law visually demonstrated above.

Fight-or-Flight

Fight-or-flight is a physiological response to perceived danger. The body is designed to react quickly to the danger by increasing the heart rate, heightening alertness, and flushing with energy from the release of adrenaline. You become ready to deal with the immediate threat.

In our modern world, however, this is usually not how it works. Usually we are stressed from work, school, or social situations. These are not immediate threats, but rather long and drawn out stressors. The problem is, the body is not designed to stay in fight-or-flight for a long time. Those with PTSD not only have triggers that activate the sympathetic nervous system, but these triggers they may or may not be conscious. To make matters worse, a nervous system affected by PTSD has more difficulty deregulating and activating the parasympathetic nervous system to return to a relaxed state. The PTSD nervous system will go into fight-or-flight more easily and often and have a harder time leaving that state.

There are three major issues with this prolonged exposure to fight-or-flight. The first issue is the discomfort of staying in that state and the everyday social difficulties it creates. Secondly, the stress put on the body can cause a host of physiological issues like hypertension, a weakened immune system, digestive issues (usually constipation in fight-or-flight and diarrhea in freeze), sleep disturbances, burnout, and exacerbation of mood disorders like anxiety and depression.

Freeze

As we move right along the Yerkes-Dodson Law, past anxiety, past fight-or-flight, we come to the freeze response. Like fight-or-flight, the freeze response is shared with most animals, but the freeze response is much older and can be found all the way back to the oldest reptilian part of our brain. The freeze response can be seen in the video on the TRE page here.

There are two ways to enter into the freeze response. The first way is in response to an overwhelming immediate threat. The body will initially go into fight-or-flight, but if it estimates that it is not able to fight or flee, it will freeze and play dead. Predators tend to give preference to healthy and lively prey. The freeze response is the last and only defense when the threat is overpowering.

The second way that the body may enter the freeze response is when fight-or-flight has been activated for too long and the body cannot sustain it, but the threat still feels active. Without the resources to continue to stay in fight-or-flight it may slip into freeze at least partially. For each person this process is different, and the stages are often mixed between fight-or-flight and freeze. For example you could have bodily numbness (freeze) but an increased heart rate (fight-or-flight).

In freeze, the body is preparing to be eaten without struggle. There are varying degrees of awareness and concentration that drop all the way down to unconscious. Strange sensations and perceptions can occur as discussed in the next section on Depersonalization/Derealization (DPDR). The activation that was present in fight-or-flight like increased heart rate, alertness, and even irritability all reverse. The heart rate drops as awareness fades along with emotional responses like fear and anger.

derealization, depersonalization, and emotional numbness

All the way at the end of the spectrum is Derealization/Depersonalization. When the body cannot manage the threat or stress and feels that death is imminent, it enters in freeze. The more severe end of the freeze response results in a host of strange effects where you and the world no longer seem real and your body and emotions become numb. The comfort of knowing that if a tiger was eating you, you would be in an unconscious dream state is offset by knowing that many spend protracted periods of time in this state long after the threats have vanished.

People in this state can have a difficult time seeking help as these states can be confusing and often times misunderstood to be psychosis by the person experiencing it and even by mental health care professionals that are not properly educated on the trauma spectrum.