Fear

So, if there were a ''clear and present danger'', anyone would feel a sense of fear. The fear would be regarded as a necessary and appropriate reaction to a seemingly hostile or dangerous situation. Thoughts of danger, of dread, and possible actions for survival would occupy the thinking while emotions would range from concern to panic. The body responds immediately with stages of excitement; pounding heart, shallow, rapid breathing, muscle tension or flaccidity, cold sweat, etc. Sensations range many descriptions, such as ''skin crawling'', "blood running cold'', fainting, shuddering, tense, weak, etc. The familiar "fight or flight reaction" feels like the urge to take action, "either fight like hell or run like hell". Adrenalin in the bloodstream supplies tremendous energy for action. If you can't run, fight. If you can't fight run. What if neither choice is possible?

Anxiety

There's a third reaction, more recently described as "freezing", in which the responder ''spaces out'', ''goes numb'', and otherwise ''dissociates'. This is often referred to as ''going into shock''. Without suitable support, people often go into shock and never come out, yet they carry on their routine as necessary. Anxiety is the same as fear except there is no clear or present danger. Often, there's nothing present to worry about at all. A "panic attack" is an intense, sudden anxiety episode that occurs in the absence of any danger. Anxiety can also be general, attaching itself to any minor concern of the moment in a major way. The body responds to the inappropriate feeling of nonexistent danger as though there were a real danger. Why, then, would there be a fear response without danger? The answer is that there is a perceived danger, but not in the environment, but in the subconscious mind. There's a feeling and associated thoughts held just out of awareness that periodically threaten to be felt, or come to awareness. Grief, for example, is an emotion that many people have conditioned themselves to avoid. It's possible to be terrified of experiencing such a feeling, and the internal, emotional world is unsafe. The irony is that the original experience that caused the fear has already been survived. Anxiety, then, is an alerting to an obsolete fear, associated to an old event, that has long since outlived its usefulness.

We often react to physical or emotional trauma by going ''into shock''. Especially as children at the age when we believe in Santa Claus, and the world is magic and everything seems so personal, trauma can be so overwhelming that we simply carry on with our lives without coming out of shock. We remain numb, emotionally blunted, inexpressive except when over-reactive. Most emotions are blunted except anxiety. Anxiety is thus a ''signal emotion'', alerting the experiencer that other, perhaps frightening emotions are on the move from just out of awareness and demanding to be felt.

Freezing and Shock

"...Finally, the animal enters a state of shock, which involves ''freezing", and collapse into tonic immobility.   Immobility is a mechanism an organism uses to shut itself down when escape is impossible.  The last ditch stand involves an analgesic response and dissociation.  Internally, the animal is physiologically highly activated; externally, there is no movement.  Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are activated simultaneously."
— Marianne Eckberg, Victims of Cruelty

Naivete

"...To give up one's naiveté and reorganize one's consciousness to incorporate the knowledge of such horror in the world is challenging at best and may feel devastating to some.  It interferes with one's assumptions of personal invulnerability and of the world as meaningful and comprehensible. To do this work requires knowing that humans have the capacity for the utmost evil.”
— Marianne Eckberg

Dissociation

"Following a traumatic event, dissociative phenomena can continue for years or even arise for the first time years later.  They may be identified by numbing, flashbacks, depersonalization, partial or complete amnesia, "out-of-body" experiences, inability to feel emotion, unexplained "irrational" behaviors (ocd), and emotional reactions that seem to have no basis in reality.  It is likely that some form of dissociation is fueling every case of PTS and PTSD."
— Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers

"....Simply defined, dissociation means that the normal connections between thoughts, feelings, sensations behaviors and images are broken; things that normally go together are separated.  Elements of traumatic events are isolated from each other.  Another form of dissociation involves separated ego states, [like personalities] which contain distinct affective states associated with traumatic events.  Yet a third form of dissociation that occurs during traumatic events consists of distancing oneself from the actual experience by dissociating from one's bodily experience...out of body experiences...unreality and depersonalization....disorientation.”
— Marianne Eckberg, Victims of Cruelty

Really prove that anxiety can be stopped in the moment.  Manipulate the internal dialog, the internal images, and the somatic reactions.

Rating scale 1-10.  Restore the critical factor.   Switch from problem state to resource state.

1. Rate 1-10. Attention narrows with fear.   Get her to broaden her peripheral vision to notice visuals at the edges of her vision.  Repeat. Rate 1-10.

2. Rate 1-10.  Recite 5 colors she sees, 5 sounds she hears, and 5 textures she feels.  Rate 1-10.

3. Rate 1-10.  She talks to me about it while passing an apple, ball, from one hand to another.  Rate 1-10.

4. Rate 1-10.  Breathe from your heart.  Rate 1-10

5. Rate 1-10.  Emotional Freedom Technique.  Follow what I do and repeat after me; “Even though I have this problem with anxiety, I completely and lovingly accept myself as a worthy human being.”  Rate 1-10.

6. Rate 1-10.  Backward Spin; Imagine or identify the direction that anxiety moves through the body.   Body reaction/language.  Demonstrate with hands motion. Imagine fear spinning in front.  Imagine reversing the spin and demonstrate.   Tell her to laugh inappropriately, really inappropriately.  Rate 1-10.

7. Rate 1-10.  Say the ‘’trigger statement’’ that says why/how upset you are, e.g. “I can’t…..”  Say it 5 times slower.  Good.  Five times slower again.  Good.  Even slower.  Rate 1-10.

8. Ross Jefferies technique;

Tune into the anxiety, rate 1-10, show where with hands.  Don’t talk to self about it or fight it, but just notice it.   Every 10 seconds, tell me ‘’same’’ or ‘’changing’’. Good, in what way did it change?   Bring it back, feel it again, to the area that’s the sharpest.  Bring your attention to the very border of the feeling.   Don’t relax the tension but soften the space outside the border of the tense physical feeling, the very EDGE of the feeling, every 10 seconds same or changing?   Scale of 1-10, before and now?   Tense up again, talk to self about how bad, 1-10?