Why might we experience anxiety when learning about childhood trauma?

Ok folks,

Repeat after me: anxiety is survival stress.

It is those fight, flight responses burrowing up and out to say hello. It can also be old freeze energy (that shutdown response) loosening its grip on the body’s physiology, which in turn means the system will feel and experience the fight or flight responses that got suppressed at some point in time.

‘Anxiety’ can also be that in the moment fight/flee survival stress that trickles out via intense sensations and feelings such as fear or anger.

It can also be felt in the body, somatically, as a clenching of the belly, a tightening of the throat, or a heart racing as it senses some form of threat that is inescapable.

A sense of anxiety can also be the result of the survival stressors, like fighting or fleeing, NOT being allowed to be expressed; them staying stuck on the ON. This “on” energy, in the new traumatology world, is also known as failure to de-activate or complete the stress response.

Fast forward to now …

Let’s say that we know darn well we didn’t get to complete, de-activate, and fully LET GO of said survival stressors in the past, especially when we were young. This means that those big survival energies are still lurking in our somatic self, in our cells, organs, movement patterns and so on, as adults.

Therefore, when we start to learn about how this all works, like you are right now, it can be that one will feel this survival stress, those ‘anxieties,’ front and center.

This week’s vlog dives into this in a little more detail than what I’ve written above.