The Mammalian Disassociation Response

Imagine if you were an animal, a mammal, with the body of an antelope and the brain of a tiger.  An omnivorous eater; physically designed to be a prey animal, mentally designed by Nature and trained by it's herd to think of itself as a predator. 

This is what a human being is.  What a ridiculously designed creature, eh?  What was Nature playing at?  No wonder a human sometimes can't figure out quite what it is or why it's thinking and emotions don't always work in line with each other.

It makes a poor carnivore; possessing a body with neither claws nor teeth sharp enough to pierce another animal's hide or to easily eat the meat below it.  It is slower, weaker and less flexible in comparison to almost all the other mammals in it's territory. 

As a herbivore it cannot digest most leaves and grasses; it has great difficulty in chewing and digesting roots.  It can easily, however, find seasonal berries and fruit - but the seasons don't last long.  So why does it survive so well?

It survives and thrives because Nature has given it the ability to create external tools.  By manipulating its external world humanity has been able to gain leverage over all other animals, plants and territories.  It has hands and fingers able to manipulate raw materials directly, turning them into tools, but it has also learned to use even more advanced tools to create and maintain extended tools that no human can directly operate.

Those creative hands are controlled by an unusual brain.  A brain with comparatively more inter-connectivity (60% white matter) than any other mammal of its kind.

Our grey matter, the matter we associate with thinking, is the same in comparison by volume as that of a chimpanzee - it's the white, interconnecting brain underneath that is much larger.  It gives greater rise to association and idea generating possibilities.

And, because we are able to associate sound and symbols so effectively and have a talking mechanism we can communicate our internal connections with others of our kind; we are super-connected both internally and externally.

Remember though, before we get carried away by how awe inspiring we are - we are still mammals.  We have the same basic biological emotional response system as the Impala, the Antelope and the Rabbit (to name a few). 

I remember the slightly perplexed look on my counsellor's face one day when I told her I'd just realised it was Nature, not me, that decided what the emotional process was and I now had to surrender my ego to the fact if I was going to heal my anxiety disorders.  You see, as a human mammal I was convinced my intellect should be running the emotional show but something much more powerful was going on and I had to accept and surrender to it.  When you suffer with an anxiety disorder of any kind you learn this lesson very deeply if you experience the Mammalian Disassociation Response.  Journeying through and out of the other side of a blocked emotional response forces you to understand. 

This is the natural experience a prey mammal sometimes goes through (if it lives long enough) when being attacked by a predator.   It is not a consciously controlled experience. 

We often hear of the 'fight or flight response' where, in a split second, an animal decides to fight or flee from it's attacker and the emotional energy driving either response is the same.  But mammals come with three responses to threatening situations, not two, and we are mammals.  The third response is the 'freeze' response - 'The Mammalian Disassociation Response' - also known as 'playing dead'. 

When you can neither fight or flee but still have all the energy powering these urges running through your body this is your only other option (unless, as humans can, you suppress it).

It is called the Disassociation Response because, in a bid to easing the pain of being eaten alive, the Conscious mind is detached from the body.  My personal experience of this, after I had been working on healing my panic attacks daily for three months (deliberately, through exposure therapy), was to have my muscles begin pulling me to the ground one night on the way home from work, forcing me to feel like laying down.

My thighs and shoulders got heavier and heavier - as though I were weight training with them at every step and at some point I was going to have to stop moving and collapse.  I looked at my hands and they, and my arms, seemed to be far, far away.  I got home from work, began searching the internet, and came to the conclusion I was suffering with the symptoms of a diabetic coma. 

I phoned my doctor who asked me to go and see her straight away - when I got through the door she told me she saw these same symptoms often with patients suffering with anxiety related issues and this was simply the ‘Freeze Response’.

I had read about the response before in Peter A. Levine's book, 'Waking the Tiger' (a book on how to heal traumatic stress disorders), but this was the first time I had experienced it.  Within thirty minutes of seeing the doctor and receiving her explanation the symptoms, which had been coming on for about three days, had lifted.  Once my thinking mind was able to label the condition and accept what Disassociation felt like for me, my Unconscious was able to let it go.

Mammals freeze or play dead with the unconscious intention of either not being noticed by the predator (moving gets you noticed) or of looking as though you're a diseased meal.  In his book Mr Levine explains how prey animals will look as though they're dead, with eyes open, while the predator stands over them. 

If the mammal is not eaten there and then, and the predator wanders off, a short period of time passes before the mammal gets up; shakes itself off and leaves the scene.

This is not a dangerous state for humans to be in unless it happens regularly – but it is alarming when it happens for the first time. If you ever have these kinds of symptoms I suggest you speak to a doctor just to make sure that is what it is. Their reassurance alone is sometimes enough to help the state pass.

Shortly after this time my panic attacks completely disappeared (they never returned) and I learned a very important lesson:  to stop trying to figure out and outwit the reality of my emotional system using my intellect.

To let the process of feeling do what it was designed to do: discharge.

Sometimes in external life we find ourselves in situations over which we have no control and we are so terrified we want to run away to avoid it or so enraged we want to attack it or undo it but still can have no effect on the situation.  Then, when our emotional reaction keeps being produced and it's obvious there's nothing to be done (sometimes because the emotionally intense reaction is in regard to an imagined scenario) we may turn on the emotional response itself, criticising ourselves, fighting it.  We hate the emotional response and the way it affects us when it comes.

We even end up producing a Secondary Response to try and keep it in check and that just makes it worse.  Now we are overwhelmed but at the same time suppressing the whole thing just so we can get through the day.

But if you were to give in to it ... lay down, let it 'eat you alive' for as long as it needs to ... what do you suppose the Unconscious eventually sees?

It sees the experience from beginning to end for what it really is - all the symptoms, the different intensities, their strange effects, and yet you're still alive despite enduring the worst.  And it stops producing the response.  You get up, you shake yourself off, and you get on with living.

No matter what the emotional type, the emotional healing process works in the same way.

We may hate being mammals sometimes, but that's what we are.

Regards - Carl