Grounded

Their neuroception meant they instinctively kept themselves at a distance from her stored anger, her flat face, her internalised terror, her racing heart rate and her muscles racked with tension. She wasn’t safe.

The first is from David Berceli, an international expert in working with traumatised people, who describes ‘grounded’ as: ... in full awareness and connection with What’s going on inside me, What’s going on in my environment And what’s going on with other people near me.

I can no longer think well, plan or assess realistic outcomes. I cannot make good choices

Functional Freeze.

Essentially it is a safe way to help the human body to do what animals do instinctively. When there is stress or threat of any sort, an animal will ‘shake it off’ when it is safe again.

The list of traumatic experiences in Chapter 20 is not exhaustive. There could be other ways in which a nervous system was squeezed so hard by life that it became overwhelmed.

It was new choosing to put herself and her nervous system first, instead of pushing through, denying, pretending, dissociating.

When people get overwhelmed, often as little children, by something horrible that they cannot fight or get away from, their system will shut down internally and their body will hold the patterns of tension in muscles as well as the stored energy that they would have used to fight or run if they could have done so.

Stephen Porges explains that, during the process of neuroception, as well as taking in external information from our senses, our brain also receives information from within the body about what’s going on and what that means for our safety.