Too Shocked to Speak
When Traumatic Abuse is a Barrier to Communication
The ball bounced off my body as if I was a human wall, but no sounds emanated from my being. Trapped in a freeze response, my life force could not seek release. I was four years old displaying a natural state of paralysis known as tonic immobility, a predicament of profound motor inhibition coupled with post-traumatic mutism.
Perched on the lap of my older sister, who was also traumatized by chronic attachment injuries incurred from our schizophrenic mother and narcissistically malignant father, I quietly registered her efforts to introduce me to the children attempting to engage me in play. Their bewildered looks reinforced my marginalization. It was clear that I was not like them.
Shut down, I turned to fantasy and books. Ironically my vocabulary was vast, but communication eluded me. Relatedness was dangerous and my skills were deficient having spent months held hostage indoors. In my world survival meant complete retreat.
When fight or flight are not perceived as options, what is akin to ‘playing dead’ becomes a default mechanism. Psychoanalyst Rene Spitz referred to this state as anaclitic depression, based on the stuporous catatonia he identified in the foundling home children he observed in the 1940s. Similarly, Harlow’s cruel studies of…
