In Peter Levine’s classic book on healing, Waking The Tiger, he has a whimsical section entitled, “Blame it on the Neocortex”.  In other words, when it comes to dealing with traumatic events, be they crisis events or ongoing hardships, we humans are “overthinking things to our own detriment”. This is why cognitive-behavior approaches to trauma events are often ineffective. Levine says, “The neocortex is not powerful enough to override the instinctual defense response to threat and danger— the flight, flee or freeze responses”

Animals have primitive coping responses when faced by disrupting/disarming events.  They respond instinctively. Turtles duck under the water, moles burrow; dogs, wolves, and coyotes roll over in a submissive posture.  All animals have a survival “freeze” response as well as a flight pattern and fight pattern. Of course some, animals are first fighters and only secondarily those who flee.  “No animal”, says Levine, “has conscious control over whether it freezes in response to a threat”. That includes us human beings. In response to a threat, we can fight, flee or freeze.  Freezing is the last option when the others fail and we don’t choose that one: our nervous system, based upon its primitive survival make up, decides that for us. And that freeze response can cause us a lot of trouble. Symptoms such as depression, emotional and relational distancing, numbness and lack of motivation, disassociation, and physical ailments can all be the result of a highly charged life-threatening experience that gets “shut down” or “frozen inside us”.  The fight and flight responses can also cause havoc when they get internalized.