While only a few humans actually die from fright, chronically traumatized individuals go through the motions of living without really feeling vital or engaged in life. Such individuals are empty to the core of their being. “I walk around,” said a gang-rape survivor, “but it’s not me anymore … I am empty and cold … I might as well be dead,” she told me on our first session. Chronic immobility gives rise to the core emotional symptoms of trauma: numbness, shutdown, entrapment, helplessness, depression, fear, terror, rage and hopelessness.
