Shell Shock, Survival Instincts, and Suffering

How a Lifetime of Small and Large Stressors Can Add Up to Symptoms

This is the second in a series of articles co-written with my friend, colleague, and therapist Lilian Sjøberg, who is the lead author on them. Lilian is a Danish coach and trouble shooter good at seeing patterns, with a masters in biology, who has studied how to help people with chronic symptoms from a practical perspective for five years. These articles result from extensive conversations and Q+A’s I have had with Lilian.

This series began in

Survival Instincts in the Modern World

where we explored what we can learn, by observing the animal kingdom, about the interactions of the modern environment with our fight, flight, freeze survival instincts, and how this could lead to symptoms and suffering.

We can demonstrate the increase in symptoms, e.g. tremoring in Parkinson’s Disease, due to going into survival instincts (fight, flight, freeze) in real time, by deliberately stressing the person out, such as by shouting angrily at them. However, this would hardly be ethical. Instead, we can turn towards video records from history.

Every war had victims that exhibited symptoms due to getting stuck in their fight, flight, freeze survival instincts, especially in the first world war where all people, young and old, were enrolled in the fighting. We can find on youtube several recorded videos, such as the one below, that show us the physical manifestations of the impact of getting stuck in extreme instincts. At the time, it was called “shell shock”.

Apparently, 15% of people in the war manifested symptoms due to staying long-term in the potent powers of survival instincts. The historical videos show a variety of movement disorders manifesting, including paralysis and tremors, and people even went blind and deaf due to events that did not physically touch the person at all. Even office people that knowingly sent their comrades to their deaths could show symptoms of being trapped in their instincts and get “shell shock” symptoms.

Shell shock or PTSD can occur in young people exposed to a short period of terrible fear like a war. However, more subtle or prolonged episodes can impact us too. I have heard stories of symptoms arising due to:

• having a spouse who was physically or mentally unhealthy for a long time;

• a very stress related job;

• being a witness to accident involving a death;

• seeing parents fighting with knives;

• living in a house that was close to demolition;

• being hit by violent parents on a daily basis.

The earlier the episode, the more insignificant an event with potential long lasting impacts can look to a grown-up. I have helped clients to discover the root cause of a specific symptom in later life was, for examples, due to:

• a playful dog that knocked over a toddler who became terrified;

• siblings teasing each other out of anger or jealousy;

• a father hitting a child once as a punishment and changing from being an active child to an observant one;

• being in an early theatre play and becoming embarrassed;

• misunderstanding grown-ups talking about serious matters and getting scared;

• parents demanding high standards for how to perform, and the child for the rest of their life putting pressure on themselves;

• a father playing aeroplane with his child in his raised arms above the boiling pots in the kitchen, causing a feeling of extreme terror.

We can go in and out of instincts on a daily basis for many small or large reasons. If it is a long lasting problem, it can hold us in instincts for hours, weeks, and months. For some people, we find that they have encountered enough subtle or terrible episodes during a lifetime, that it can sum up and result in the manifestation of a conglomerate of stress-symptoms unique to that person.

In summary, it is not just animals and people in wars who experience the triggering of the survival instincts every day, and modern society is doing this to us in new and subtle ways which we may not be aware of. Unfortunately, the medical system is not very aware of this connection between symptoms and stress. This might because they are focussed on imbalances of chemicals in the brain, and on trying to cure the disease by fixing this problem.

Personally, I don’t believe we can ever fully understand what is happening at the cellular level in the brain, since no simple formula or three-dimensional model can give us the understanding of the multi-facets of what is happening at that level. Indeed, a hundred years of brain studies have not brought us much closer to a solution, so why not clear the table and take another approach?

Instead, we have the overview of our knowledge of animal behaviour, observations from history, and the real life experiences of people suffering, by which we can arrive at practical things which we can do to help them. Here is brief overview of recommended strategies:

• (strenuous) exercise to burn off the adrenaline three times a week 50 minutes in a sweating exercise like spinning (but build up slowly, remember that it takes a month before your stamina equals this high level of exercise);

• natural activities to support mindfulness (social activities, hobbies, and awareness of the stressors modern life);

• learned activities that provoke the mindful state (Qi Gong, Tai Chi, and the like);

• reduction of the root causes that bring on the instincts (psychotherapy and physical therapies).

For faster progress, get help and support from skilled people. With ongoing work, 1-2 years from now, you will see enormous progress. Remember, it took a long time to develop the symptoms, and it will therefore likely take a similar amount of time to get out of these instinctual patterns. The effort is worth it when the alternative is rapid degeneration.