Peter Levine. Our father who art in…

Peter Levine. The father of Somatic Experiencing®. His contribution to trauma therapy began with a simple observation: animals in the wild go through life- threatening events all the time- yet they don’t develop chronic PTSD. Humans can the other hand develop trauma symptoms from events far less intense than being hunted by a predator. So, his central question became-

Why do animals shake off trauma when humans get stuck? Why don’t animals get PTSD?

Peter Levine was trained in physiology, psychology and medical biophysics. In the 1970s the clinical world treated trauma mostly as a pure psychological event. Related to memory, fear and its narrative. Levine brought the nervous system and survival psychology into this context. He became fascinated with the orienting and defensive responses we humans share with all mammals.

FIGHT

FLIGHT

FREEZE

These are autonomic responses that emerge from the reptilian brain. Not from our thoughts. But the key discovery was what Levine discovered about what happens after. After observing wild animals like a gazelle, Levine noted the following key responses of the gazelle being chased by a predator-

1. To escape from its killer, a gazelle will run as fast as its legs can take it. It mobilizes enormous sympathetic energy of its body- Activation of flight response.

2. But sometimes its predator may outrun and catch it. When this happens the brain releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which raise heart rate and prepares muscles for action. Here the gazelle will kick the predator with its hind legs to escape being eaten. But when it knows it cannot fight, it gives up- Activation of fight response executed but not able to save itself.

   What happens next stunned Peter Levine-

3. The gazelle goes limp. Pretends dead. The cheetah or lion sniffs the animal. Now being a predator there is no fun in eating a dead animal. So, after a while the predator walks away. The freeze response in the gazelle’s body is part of an acute stress reaction. A neurotransmitter called acetylcholine is released into the blood, which makes heart rate drop to near zero, breathing extremely minimal, physical stiffness in muscles and inhibited movement. This freeze response is an evolutionary defence mechanism, allowing the animal to remain still to avoid detection by a predator and enhance its perception to determine the best subsequent action- Activation of freeze response highly successful as it saves from being eaten.

Now what Peter noticed that after surviving a threatening attack, the deer simply–

1. Slowly comes out of freeze. It shakes it body. It trembles its belly, ears, head and legs.

2. It kicks or runs or jumps in place.

3. It might even vocalize by making certain bellowing sounds or grinding its teeth.

4. It will orient itself to the environment again, finds his fellows and jump and sprint away.

Here, the deer is simply shaking off whatever left- over fight, flight or freeze energy is stuck in the body by doing the above-mentioned movements. Very naturally.

What Levine discovered was that this discharge is not random and he watched this in many animals. It was how he deducted that the nervous system completed a biological sequence of actions that was initiated by a stressor or the threat in the environment. For the gazelle, there was nothing unfinished inside its body. And this discovery was critical to the birth of the therapy called Somatic Experiencing®.

We humans have the same ancient survival circuitry, but we have something that animals do not. Cortical Override. The ability to inhibit instinct. Our pre- frontal cortex does this for us and to us. Our evolved brain. When faced with threat or a stressful event, by thought alone it is sufficient to freeze our bodies by thinking-

Don’t make a scene

Don’t be a cry baby

Be strong

Get over it

We have ways to allow our own minds and society to punish us by suppressing expression. This led to Levine’s core deduction:

Trauma is not in the event, but it is what gets stuck in the nervous system when a survival response cannot complete.

The trauma is hence an unfinished or thwarted biological sequence.

For Peter Levine, the freeze state was fascinating. In animals, as per his observation it was temporary. A mere metabolic strategy to survive being overwhelmed. But in humans, it was chronic. Because we do not discharge after the threat is gone. We get stuck in the ruminations of our cortical brain, our thoughts, our voices, negative self-talk. And our bodies get stuck in bracing, collapse, hyper- vigilance, anxiety, panic, numbing, chromic pain, disassociation, startle response, digestive issues, emotional blunting.

What Peter lay emphasis on was the symptoms of PTSD. Post Traumatic stress disorder. He realized it was not a psychological memory disorder but a pure physiological completion disorder. From these observations Levine developed Somatic Experiencing®. And he based it on two key factors-

1. Titration- To release trauma is small packets of physiological doses which is not a re-living or catharsis technique.

2. Pendulation- To help the nervous system move between activation and de- activation rather than being stuck in one polarity.

   
   

The goal then, Levine said is not to tell the story of the trauma, but to allow the body to finish it. Because the body wants to complete the action it once began. When not allowed to do so, trauma sets in.

As we already know, trauma lives in posture, breath, reflexes, muscle tone, viscera, fascial mobility, orientation and autonomic cycles of the human body. It does not live in the mind or just in memory. To allow trauma to finish its cycle, the organism must complete the thwarted defensive action. A voice waiting to scream but could not is a body with a tight jaw or hypothyroidism. A body that was once ready to run but could not is a body with restless leg syndrome, tight calves or weak leg muscles. A body that wanted to feel or express but was supressed is a body with diabetes, heart disease, fibromyalgia, cancer or chronic pain. A body that could not hold its boundaries is a body with eczema, acne, psoriasis, skin eruptions. A body full of fear is a body with digestive issues.

Social inhibition traps survival energy. Humans override their biology with cultural rules and ego. Discharge is natural and necessary for the soma. Shaking, trembling, yawning, sighing, crying, farting, burping, sweating, laughter, spontaneous movements like stretching are all autonomic completion mechanisms which we do not execute from our own social fears and norms. And trauma is about being stuck in such survival modes where yawning in public is unwomanly, burping after a meal is ugly, farting is disgraceful, yelling back at a husband who is abusive is disrespectful, voicing an opinion is being rude. Our actions are met with failure and contained to boxes of character flaws or personal degradation.

Before Peter Levine discovered this new aspect to dealing with trauma, therapy was largely cognitive, narrative and interpretive. Slowly trauma began to be understood as embodied, procedural, neurobiological and somatic. He helped reframe trauma from – “What happened to you “to “What is it that movement that you wish to do.”

All animals have this innate natural mechanism to be able to return to safety because their bodies complete the story.  And we as human beings remain in trauma because we simply do not. Healing is less about recall and more about completion. And we all have stories to complete. Don’t we?

“In response to threat and injury, animals, including humans, execute biologically based, non-conscious action patterns that prepare them to meet the threat and defend themselves. The very structure of trauma, including activation, dissociation and freezing are based on the evolution of survival behaviours. When threatened or injured, all animals draw from a "library" of possible responses. We orient, dodge, duck, stiffen, brace, retract, fight, flee, freeze, collapse, etc. All of these coordinated responses are somatically based- they are things that the body does to protect and defend itself. It is when these orienting and defending responses are overwhelmed that we see trauma.

The bodies of traumatized people portray "snapshots" of their unsuccessful attempts to defend themselves in the face of threat and injury. Trauma is a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. For example, when we prepare to fight or to flee, muscles throughout our entire body are tensed in specific patterns of high energy readiness. When we are unable to complete the appropriate actions, we fail to discharge the tremendous energy generated by our survival preparations. This energy becomes fixed in specific patterns of neuromuscular readiness. The person then stays in a state of acute and then chronic arousal and dysfunction in the central nervous system. Traumatized people are not suffering from a disease in the normal sense of the word- they have become stuck in an aroused state. It is difficult if not impossible to function normally under these circumstances.” ― Peter A. Levine