As traumatized individuals begin to come out of immobility, they frequently experience eruptions of intense anger or rage. But fearing that they may actually hurt others (or themselves), they exert a tremendous effort to deflect and suppress that rage, almost before they feel it. When one is flooded by rage, the frontal parts of the brain “shut down.”50 Because of this extreme imbalance, the capacity to stand back and observe one’s sensations and emotions is lost; rather, one becomes those emotions and sensations.f Hence, the rage can become utterly overwhelming, causing panic and the stifling
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