I have been writing on here about the Polyvagal Theory (fight/flight and freeze) and that I am trying to get out of immobility. I posted a video in this post Voice Note: Talking about collapsed immobility, being able to take in new information, calendar imagery, and anger defined as dissonance – Learning to Live by Faith of an impala getting out of immobility. And in a recent post Chakra Crystals; Imagery of absorbing and processing energy – Learning to Live by Faith, I was writing about compressed, stored energy. It’s like having a balloon full of toxic energy stored inside you. Anything can trigger the energy in that balloon, but you can’t regulate that energy. And that reminded me of a quote by Calvin where he said we carry within ourselves many forms of destruction.

I think what’s happening is that those balloons are holding the energy of incomplete, or not completed, threat responses. So in the video of the impala…I don’t think it shows it…but before the impala went into immobility like that, it would have been running as fast as it could. Then when it realized it was going to be caught, it went limp…and all of that running energy got compressed and stored away. The energy is stored away for safety…so that it won’t hurt the impala…and then the impala wakes up not too long after going into immobility…and starts shaking. It shakes that compressed energy off, and then starts running again.

Fight/flight and freeze responses are intended to be used for something like what happened to the impala – another animal was chasing it. But for people, fight/flight and freeze responses can be triggered by emotional threats, not just physical ones…and the energy can be compressed and then never released. So imagine that the impala went into immobility and then stayed immobile for a very long time…you could see how that would be harmful to the impala…and that the longer it stayed in immobility, the harder it would be to recover from it. And for people whose brains process information this way, of going into fight/flight-freeze over and over…even when there might not be a threat…you can see how that action energy (the energy of the uncompleted response) would get stored again and again. So I have been working with titration for the energy in that balloon…working with it a little at a time…trying to let the steam off of it. I am finding that I am experiencing resistance to releasing that action energy. I think it’s that you are used to it being there…so it changes everything…changes the balance of things to release it. Also, because threat response energy (fight/flight-freeze) can be triggered by emotional stressors, energy would get compressed and locked away when I could not process what happened in an event that happened during the day…or couldn’t resolve it. I would just say, “That didn’t happen” and set the energy aside. I had a response to a certain situation that I couldn’t act out, so I just had to pretend it didn’t happen and keep that energy stored away because I couldn’t adjust to what had happened yet…things happened that changed your life in ways you were not ready for is what I’m trying to say. It doesn’t always have to be from a physical threat…it can be from an emotional one, too. So I’m working on learning how to process life exactly how it happened – not amplified or minimized…just exactly how it happened. Can I feel ok once I see that those things did happen? Can I release that energy now and say that I wasn’t able to resolve things the way I had hoped but I will be ok because my life is in God’s hands? That’s what I’m working on.

So again, action energy is the energy of an uncompleted threat response. That impala had all the energy cued up to keep running, but had to go into a freeze…so that action energy got locked away. When the impala woke up, it had to shake it off. My counselor said that it’s energy that’s all dressed up with no place to go. And you have to release that energy safely. I’m still learning about how to do that…how to go through the deactivation process and will write more about it soon. It helped me process my thoughts to write this out. I hope you found it helpful, too. Basically, I think how it works is that you release the uncompleted action energy…and then live off of life energy…new life energy that flows through you. I might not be saying that right. I have been in a fight-flight-freeze loop for a long time…so I am used to letting the adrenaline of that threat response pull me through the day if that makes sense. But if you can release that stored action energy and learn to live off of regulated life energy…not adrenaline…then you can stay in ventral vagal and be in daily-living mode…which has a healthy, regulated energy that goes with it. I’ll stop here for today and post again sometime soon.