This section addresses the following questions:

• In the video of the bear, is he still unconscious when he is shaking? Is shaking/convulsions a way for the trauma to evacuate?

• To complete a stress response do we always have to have a fight or flee response? Do we always have to shake or run? Can verbal expression or small movements be enough?

• I am stuck in a paradox. How do I complete the survival response when I have to constantly hold back at home/work, because it’s not safe to express/be with what wants to happen?

• I now understand why I developed PTSD after an accident! I was not allowed to complete the stress response. How do I go about doing that now, 9 years later?

In the video of the polar bear, the shaking and trembling starts as he is beginning to emerge from the anesthesia. He is not fully conscious, but is emerging from unconsciousness. This is a perfect example of how the old stuck sympathetic response wants to emerge, as the layers of freeze (in this case it’s a chemically induced freeze via tranquilizer) that are often on top of it, start to lift. In this case you can literally see the bear’s legs “running,” completing the procedural instruction to flee that got shut off when it got hit by the tranquilizer. Then, after that energy discharged, those big spontaneous deep breaths came in, signalling that his system was returning to baseline.

What’s important to remember is that this is a very straightforward example, for the purpose of illustrating the process of deactivation. That bear is a wild animal that has no social conditioning. The trauma was very straightforward and easy to complete. Human trauma, and our process of coming out of freeze and into deactivation, will almost always be much longer and more complex than this!

For most of us, there have been many overwhelming events that caused our survival responses to rear up and remain incomplete, and these events may be decades old, not minutes old. The threats were often much more chronic, or subtle, and tied in with issues of attachment and authenticity. We may have learned to default to freeze in times of stress very early on, such that the freeze response became a deeply embedded part of how we go through the world. We have societal conditioning on top of that, which tells us not to ‘be impolite,’ or ‘act out.’ All of this makes for a longer and more complex process.

So, for us the first thing is establishing safety. That is key. Without a safe environment, where we feel free to start exploring these old survival energies and how they may want to express, we cannot progress. If your work environment isn’t a safe place to do this, well, that’s pretty normal in this day and age and not a huge deal, the trauma work can wait ‘til you get home. If your home environment is not safe though, that is a huge deal. I wish there was a better answer but there just isn’t — without a safe home environment a person cannot heal from trauma. At the very least there needs to be room that is yours, which no one is allowed into, while you are doing this work, but it will still be difficult if those who are living with you aren’t able to support your expression, or at least leave you alone to process. So, if this is the case, the first step is getting out of that home environment and making a new home for yourself that is safe.

Once we have safety, then there are all sorts of ways in which our system may want to start expressing these incomplete responses. It could start with words — speaking truths that never got to be spoken. It could start simply with doing enough orientation that it really LANDS in your system that the environment you are in (where you are doing this work) is now safe. It could start with pressing, or pushing, or squeezing something, or making funny faces. We can never know exactly what each person’s system will need, and that’s why learning to follow your impulse is SO important in this work. Your body knows what it needs, you just need to have a safe environment in which to listen, and then trust your impulses enough to act on them. It also may be very important for some to support this individual work by working one-on-one with a good Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

It is pretty much universal that at some point there will be some trembling, shaking, or internal vibration of deactivation, but it shouldn’t be forced, and we can’t know when this will happen organically, but we can be sure that at some point it will, though it may be subtler than one may expect. This is why this video with the bear is so important — so we can see that this is a natural process, and when it happens for us, is something to be welcomed and celebrated instead of feared.

If there is a specific incident, like a car accident, that you know left you traumatized, you can try working with this, using memory. Start with before the accident when everything was fine, and also remember after the accident when you knew everything was safe. Then, see if you can slowly progress to the moment of impact in your memory, noticing the whole time what is happening in your body, and pausing to allow any kind of impulse or emotion to be expressed. Remember to go slow! Do this in small bits and pieces, so it may take several tries to get to the actual event.

Again, this kind of work can be well-supported by a qualified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.