Facing tigers

How would you react if you were attacked by a tiger?

What would happen, inside your body? Where would your instincts guide you to?

Could your heartbeat start racing to provide the right amount of oxygen to your muscles, getting ready to run? Would you get tense? Maybe your vision would become hyper-focused, looking out for any escaping route?

What would happen to your daily mental concerns? Getting late, looking good in your pants, doing the car washing… Would you even remember your address?

Would you choose to run away? Maybe hide? Camouflage? Would you even be able to choose anything at all?

And what if there was no escaping?

Our nervous system is very old. And although the "tigers" we face today are not wild animals, our bodies still find adaptive responses to keep us safe, physically and emotionally, the same way our ancestors did back in jungle and hunting times.

When we cannot escape or avoid a situation that jeopardizes our perception of security, our nervous system finds alternative ways to keep life bearable, even if it means going into a freezing mode or immobilization (that's what happens when we're not able to escape or fight against the threat).

Each time we face a stressful situation and manage to get over it (no matter the defensive mechanism in play), our physiology works towards a new state of equilibrium. But to do that we need time.

Time and safety.

In the wild, it might have been coming back to the warmth of community, engaging in social connection again, and taking care of the body and spirit with healing rituals.

In modern society, we unconsciously let ourselves be in a state of permanent stress, dealing with perceived threats every day - fighting against the traffic, defending from our boss, being scared of not being loved by a partner, or running away from the mirror. This continuous state of stress has a tremendous effect on our body and mental health.

We don't know how to defend ourselves from all these threats, especially when most of the triggers we face today have roots in experiences from our childhood. We often can't find the safety or the right amount of time (because a new threat appears immediately after) to heal from that.

When we do not have the opportunity to complete our defensive responses (like running, fighting, or freezing) because we lack time and social connection, our nervous system can't self-regulate and come back to a state of balance and restoration.

In fact, as we grow, a lot of us lose touch with the mind-body experience of feeling safe and regulated.

We commonly create avoiding patterns that we lean on to keep living in society, frequently by pleasing others and ignoring the instictive messages from our natural wisdom. We avoid everything that puts us close to that overwhelming perception of helplessness again.

It eventualy limits the way we connect, our internal awareness, blurs our core beliefs, and restrains our ability to be present.

Trauma is not the event itself, but what happens inside of our bodies and minds after the facing threatening moment. How our organism reacts after runing away from the "tiger", escaping alive from an explosion or dealing with the feeling of abandonment by someone we love.

This tiger was decorating one street in Convent Garden the last time I was in London with my partner. When I saw it, it reminded me how beautifully made is our system and how it addapts so wisely to the conditionings of the outer world. I was then invaded by the gratefulness of being human and having the capacity to learn and explore the adventure of experiencing our bodies.

Expanding the understanding of how our internal systems get activated, how our defensive mechanisms work, and how they allways move towards self-regulation, allows the growth of trust and confidence to act and transform what we need to live happier lives.