The Boulder Mass Shooting May Have Impacted Your Nervous System! (Even if you weren’t there)
We are all saddened by the tragic event that took the lives of ten people in Boulder, Colorado on March 22nd.
Many have gone into a bit of a shock because of the event happening now after all we have been through with Covid. We don’t feel safe in our world when people can have such low respect for life at a time when we feel we should be pulling together to love and support each other.
Shock is actually a biological response and state. It is not just in our minds. It is a normal part of what is called, “The trauma response” that plays itself out in our biology through chemical changes and signaling in the nervous system.
Here I will share with you what The Trauma Response is for you to know how to handle your own shock state or to help someone else if they go into a bit of a shock.
Trauma And The Nervous System
Traumatic events, such as a mass shooting, have a serious effect on the nervous system. Any involvement where you have felt your life directly threatened actives the survival response. The survival response is an automatic programmed biological response that takes over your mind and body.
For many, this can result in a trauma response that gets stuck in the nervous system causing long-term changes to our biology.
For many, they feel they 
go into shock and the trauma response even if they were not present or directly connected to the event in any way.
The most sure way to have an event become stored trauma in our body is numbing ourselves and suppressing the genuine emotions we feel in response. This avoidance causes the biology to not be able to complete the survival response. It becomes stuck and accumulates more and more trauma over time which becomes a great stress and burden to the body.
This diagram from the Foundation for Human Enrichment is a great way to show the symptoms one would experience with trauma that gets stuck and accumulates in our body.
How The Nervous System Responds To High Stress Events
Part of every trauma response in this automatic program of the nervous system is the freeze response. This is a very misunderstood part of the trauma response, so something I want to focus on more than the better understood sympathetic response.
A Trauma Response looks like this shown in the diagram below.
Assuming you are starting from a place of calm and feeling safe and secure, all of a sudden something happens.
Your system sees a threat and it goes up into full sympathetic response. This is a high energy state where you are actively searching for a way to survive. If you were a deer, it is when you stop eating, your body and mind become single focused in running and getting away from the cheetah who is chasing you.
In a traumatic event, this is when you would be actively running away or, as in the case of a police officer, moving towards the threat to fight them off.
After the sympathetic response, the body will go into a freeze state. You may recognize this as a shock state. It is a very low energy state, where you feel like you just want to sit there and stare off or even curl up in a fetal position and go to sleep. For people who are used to being strong, being on the go, or uncomfortable with having really low energy, this is the step of the Trauma Response they will often block. This is what will cause the trauma to remain stuck in the nervous system causing long-term consequences to their biology.
How To Identify The Freeze Response
The freeze response can be described as a shock to your nervous system. Stress has pushed you past the point of overwhelm, causing you to shut down and go into a low energy freeze state.
Signs to look for:
- In a state of shock
- Overall feeling of heaviness
- Unable to focus or concentrate
- Body collapsing and shutting down
- Drooping of the shoulders
- Head bent down
- Bending body over the stomach
- In a daze
- Emotionally numb
Your muscles may also feel heavy, and can mildly change in appearance. You will feel like you are in a low energy state. It becomes hard to do anything. It will seem difficult to find the same meaning and pleasure you are used to getting from regular activities.
If find yourself, or a loved one in this state, it’s important to understand that this response is healthy and normal. It is the normal response of your nervous system when it is overwhelmed by a high degree of stress.
How To Support Someone Who’s In The Freeze Response
There are effective methods for supporting yourself or a loved one when the nervous system is in the freeze response. The person will be in a brain fog state. So the correct approach is to keep things simple, and maintain a strong empathetic presence.
The freeze response is on a biological timer.
It is to be supported rather than avoided. During an event, or after a fall or an accident, you want to allow the body to stay in this state of shock until it naturally comes out.
Let the person stay exactly where they are, rather than encouraging them to move or get up. The body will move or get up when it has completed the freeze response.
It is not helpful to be talking a lot with them, because it will be data their brain will be trying to take in rather than just focusing on the energy conservation and response it needs to be going through.
For example, if you find someone hiding in a closet or under the bed, let them stay there.
Tell them who you are and that you are there to support them. You know they are in a state of shock,
Rather than asking them questions that require an answer, you can then ask them to just nod their head if they are ok with you sitting there. They can nod their head to give you permission to touch them.
This touch can be so helpful. If you are able, just rest your hand somewhere on their body that feels supportive or safe.
What to do next? Just wait. Get comfortable because it may take several minutes of you just being a witness and a support to what the normal process their body is doing.
You will know when they are coming out of the freeze when they start looking around, looking at you, and gently moving their body. It often starts with moving their fingers and feet, stretching them out and then it spreads to moving their whole arms, legs, sitting up and looking around.
Let them do this! Do not rush this. This is called orientation and is a form of coming out of the shock and back into seeing if their environment is now safe.
Only after you see them coming out of it on their own would it then be helpful to start talking with them and engaging more with them.
This is true if you are in a shock state. Let yourself completely go through this cycle where your body fully goes into the collapse, and then will come out of it and naturally start moving.
Why And When Trauma Gets Stored In The Nervous System
The degree of intensity the person experiences in response to the event reflects the level of imbalance in their nervous system. This is showing how much stress has been stored. The person has been carrying it around, relying on coping mechanisms and compensation for support.
Then, fear always comes into play. Fear becomes attached to everything. We are afraid to feel sad because of the intensity of the sadness. We are afraid to feel angry because of the intensity of the anger. We don’t want to say or do something that we will regret, or will have negative consequences.
This causes a very confusing situation to develop. Now, a person is not only feeling sadness, but feeling fear before the sadness. This puts a person in a confused state, unable to really know what they are feeling at all. Because it feels like a big, confusing, chaotic and messy ball of negative emotions.
Once we tap into this burden, there is an enormous release because of the degree of imbalance that was stored in the nervous system.
A Traumatic Event Can Still Effect You Indirectly
For those not directly affected, they can still experience this trauma response. A person may have been somewhere else in the world, and saw the event on the news. This can still activate a freeze response in that person if they already had a high level of stress stored in the nervous system. It can push them over that line of overwhelm.
Remember: The degree to which a person is affected shows the level of imbalance in their nervous system; and how much stress has been stored that they have been coping with and compensating for.
Conclusion
Heavy emotions get stored in the nervous system. A high stress event like a mass shooting can cause a freeze response in the nervous system because of those stored emotions. This is normal.
The degree of intensity experienced reflects the imbalance in the nervous system, and indicates how much has been stored. It’s important to support the nervous system as it is going through this process. Always keep things simple, and maintain a compassionate presence with someone who is experiencing the freeze response.
In the below video, I further explain some of the long-term consequences of Covid on the nervous system and stored trauma and what we can expect next as a result.
To Your Best Health and Sense of Safety and Security,
Dr. Aimie
