Helplessness
Helplessness is closely related to the freezing response. If hyper arousal is the nervous system’s accelerator, a sense of overwhelming helplessness is its brake.
Unlike an automobile in which the brake and accelerator are designed to operate at different times, with a traumatic reaction both brake and accelerator operate together.
The nervous system only recognizes that a threat is gone, when the mobilized energy has been discharged. It will mobilize energy until the discharge happens.
If the nervous system recognizes simultaneously that the amount of energy in the system is too much for the organism to handle, it applies the brake so powerful that the entire organism shuts down on the spot. With the organism completely immobilized, the tremendous energy in the nervous system is held in check.
The helplessness that is then experienced is not the ordinary sense of helplessness that can affect anyone from time to time. The sense of being completely immobilized and helpless is not a trick of the imagination.
It is real. The body cannot move. This is abject helplessness, a sense of paralysis that is so profound that the human being and its body cannot scream, move, or feel.
