Coming out of survival mode.

Coming out of survival mode can be the bridge between you and your more fulfilling life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

What is survival mode anyway?

How can you come out of survival mode?

Why do you get trapped in survival mode if the threat is over?

What strategies can you discover to discharge the energy that the fight or flight mode generates?

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Coming out of survival mode is a topic we’ve been discussing since our previous blog post.

To summarize, we’ve explored how you might become trapped in the energy released by your fight-or-flight reaction. You activated it to protect you, but now it’s causing dysregulation and dissociation.

If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the link to that blog post: “Being Stupid and the Science Behind It.”

In the post, I tell a story about a time at work when I thought I was stupid. Instead, it ended up being a trauma response.

And I end up that article with two pending questions to answer:

1. What strategies can you discover to discharge the energy that the fight or flight mode generates?
2. How do you finish the incomplete action you started while you were immobilized?

In the present blog post, I’ll do my best to answer the first question.

To answer the second question, you’ll go to this other post: Link.

Regardless, you don’t need to read the post to understand and benefit from this article.

I’ve got your back. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about Survival mode and getting out of it.

Let’s start with a definition:

What is Survival mode?

It’s a response you use when you are threatened or believe you are in a life-threatening scenario.

Your rational or conscious mind turns itself off in such instances.

Therefore, a trigger signals other oldest brain parts to respond to the danger.

They will act with programmed ancient escape plans.

First response:

The first response is the fight or flight. Coming from your mammalian brain. {Yes, we have various brains, believe it or not.}

I promise to tell you about it soon. 
I'm writing the topic on my list of upcoming blog posts as I'm making the promise.
So, be patient, there's a lot of great content coming out.

When you need to accomplish one of the following commands, a pre-programmed response will communicate the body with your nerves and chemicals, thanks to how this system is designed.

The commands are:

• run
• hide
• fight

Your body mobilizes an enormous amount of energy for you to face threatening situations.

It does it when it activates the survival mode to perform one of those commands.

It sends a lot of cortisol via your adrenal glands. To your muscles, especially your extremities, so they have enough energy to perform the desired action.

When they face significant challenges, common people perform incredible, uncommon, superhuman actions. You can often watch stories like that in the news.

To name a few, you have seen mothers lift a whole car to get their children out. Or a man climbs several floors on a building to rescue a toddler in danger.

An extra amount of energy that is not at hand regularly is available for them.

The body’s chemically hardwired response to dangerous events is this, including stress.

And it’s meant to be short-term.

When are you coming out of survival mode?

Once you are back in a safe environment, you should be back to homeostasis.

Homeostasis is any self-regulating process by which biological systems tend to maintain stability while adjusting to optimal conditions for survival. If homeostasis is successful, life continues.

Britannica Dictionary

If you get to perform an effective action for which your brain activated the fight-flight response in the first place, the threat is over.

You will likely go back to your everyday life.

But what if you can’t do it?

What if you cannot perform the action for which your body gives you all the strength, focus, and resources?

It can happen for a lot of reasons.

You can get trapped, immobilized, paralyzed, shocked, panicked, confined, stunned, or scared.

Then, the third survival mode response comes into place.

 It’s about the freeze (play dead) response.

It comes from the reptilian brain and is based on the premise that making yourself invisible or disappearing will increase your chances of survival.

This response brings an estate of depersonalization when it is played.

After collapsing, you will most likely develop a state of inescapable shock and learned helplessness. 

Therefore, the stage of the survival mode utilized or needed to survive the threat will indicate whether the situation faced will leave a long-lasting or permanent impact on you.

If you manage to move or do something to protect and safeguard yourself, you will likely be over it more easily.

If you were deprived of doing something about it, very likely you’ll have a long-term reaction.

Why? What’s going on?

Now, the threat is over. Why are you still trapped in survival mode?

Why, if all is over, can’t you feel good?

Maybe a sense of unease, overwhelm, and lurking danger is invading you. Perhaps you feel detached from the things that once appealed to you.

When danger started, your brain thought the most effective way to escape was to fight or run.

For that, it gave you all the possible energy that was available.

You produced tons of stress hormones. Those hormones were sent to your muscles to act.

You didn’t make it.

Things may have gotten complicated for you for any reason. Instead, you froze and did not move. That is probably what saved you, and it’s wonderful.

But where is all the energy you don’t use now?

It is somewhere in your system. And it needs to be discharged or run its course. If it doesn’t, it will cause all kinds of dysregulations and dissociations. It’s like forgetting to turn off the alarm once the fire ends.

The proper release of this energy will turn off the alarm alert and, subsequently, stop the dysregulation and dissociation.

What methods can you use to release the energy the fight or flight mode puts in motion?

Let’s see what experts have to say about it:

Peter Levine is a psychologist specializing in trauma who has dedicated his whole life to studying this subject.

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Author of countless best-seller books like:

• “Waking the Tiger“
• “An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey”,
• “In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness,”
• Along with lots of others.

Dr. Levine also worked for NASA as a stress consultant during the development of the Space Shuttle Program.

He observed animals in the wild while studying nature. And saw those animals deal with danger routinely. However, they seldom get traumatized despite facing many threats.

Conversely, humans are very often traumatized, shut down, dysregulated, hyperaroused, and overwhelmed.

He discovered that long-lasting trauma has less to do with the actual traumatic event [“the thing that happened”] that might not even exist as an authentic traumatic event but rather a cumulative stress response.

But more so with the unused and massive energetic response to the perceived life threat still trapped in the body.

That’s the real cause behind an imbalanced nervous system.

His observations led him to develop the “Somatic Experiencing® method.” A proven method highly effective in relieving overwhelm from the nervous system, therefore coming out of survival mode.

Through the somatic experiencing method, people increase tolerance to challenging bodily sensations and allow their suppressed emotions to be expressed.

Steps for coming out of survival mode?

Discharge through spontaneous, gentle inner shaking and trembling:

This will allow the massive energy prepared for fight or flight to discharge and run its course.

Otherwise, the energetic charge remains trapped.

Therefore, the body believes it is still under threat and continues to perceive the world as a dangerous place.

Accessing the body memory (procedural memory):

Accessing the procedural memory of the event and completing the action removes the need to relive or recount the story. You don’t need to share the details of your trauma history to heal from it. You only need to dissipate the power of the narrative and re-distribute your body map memory to regain life force energy and flow.

Image courtesy of NICABM

Titration:

A method that seeks to slowly release the trapped, stuck, or compressed survival energy in the body.

Using rhythmical cycles.

Makes you increasingly sense your way through the oscillations of internal normal sensations.

But always only to a comfortable level without feeling overwhelmed.

Going through alternate processes of :

• contraction vs expansion,
• pleasure vs pain,
• Warmth vs cold

You can increase your capacity to handle stress and stay in the present through this repeated rhythmical process.

Bottom-Up Processing:

This is similar to other somatic psychology approaches.

It’s a body-first approach to dealing with trauma.

It’s based on the paradigm you can create new experiences in your body to counteract the memorized experiences of tension and overwhelming helplessness.

This is about more than trying to change what you feel.

This process is about exploring your bodily sensations and habitual behaviors and patterns.

At the same time, allowing new ways to feel and beliefs to emerge.

Pendulation:

Pendulation describes the natural oscillation between the forces of contraction and expansion. With pendulation exercises, you can obtain and experience a sense of flow.

When a person becomes aware of their contraction as a result of a traumatic event or chronic stress, they might feel worse or more constricted.

Nevertheless, because of the natural rhythm of everything in nature, including us, expansion will eventually happen.

Becoming aware and flowing with those rhythmic cycles of contraction and expansion can be extremely healing and helpful for coming out of a survival mode state.

Conclusion or takeaway:

When confronted with a frightening scenario, your body is ready and pre-programmed to get you out of it whole and alive as quickly as possible.

Congratulations nature! You got this!

However, the intended action might not be completed as expected for any reason or circumstance. In that case, you might encounter yourself in an uncomfortable situation.

You might feel dissociated, disengaged, fearful, anxious, overwhelmed, you name it.

One common cause is mostly due to the excessive unused energy that gets stuck in your nervous system and body.

Coming out of survival mode can be very challenging, and if you fail to find a proper way to do so, it can alter the course of your life.

Luckily, there are lots of resources available to face this, including the ones provided by the trauma expert Dr. Peter Levine, as:

• Discharge through spontaneous, gentle inner shaking and trembling
• Accessing the body memory (procedural memory)
• Bottom-Up Processing
• Pendulation

This content doesn't replace professional medical or psychological advice.
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