why is my leg coming off the table all on its own?

I was on a massage table in my therapist’s office, and had tapped into a memory about a traumatic medical procedure I had had as a child. I had done work on this memory before through psychodrama – re-enacting the trauma, and getting to have a different ending. But what I came to realize is that despite all that prior work, there was a somatic layer of the trauma that had never been cleared.

My Somatic Experiencing (SE) therapist was supporting my kidneys with her hands, which is a common technique in that modality. The kidneys are about fear, and by supporting them, it helped me to feel grounded and safe. Very slowly and gently, my right leg started to bend at the knee and come towards my body and suspend in the air. 

I wasn’t making this happen – my body was just doing it.

Then my leg slowly started to straighten, and in that moment, I realized that the fight response locked in my body was finally getting to complete what it had wanted to do – to kick the doctor performing the procedure, and the nurse who had restrained my legs. I very slowly allowed my leg to move forward as it straightened, feeling into the strength of all of the muscles, and imagining kicking the doctor and the nurse away from me.

My leg went back onto the table, and my body relaxed. I laid there with my therapist’s hands still on my kidneys, to allow the integration of the threat response completing, and then the tears came. I cried for that scared little kid in me who wasn’t able to protect and defend herself, and felt the adult in me finally be able to take care of her in the way that my mother should have as she sat there in the doctor’s office, but didn’t.

This session happened about five years ago, and on some level, I think I’m still integrating it. Not surprising, because it had been locked in my nervous system for over 55 years.

What is Somatic Experiencing (SE)?

SE is a body-based approach for healing shock trauma that was created by Dr. Peter Levine. And just to distinguish the types of trauma, shock trauma is a major event that happens, like a car accident or a terrorist attack. Developmental trauma happens while you are growing up – things like neglect, abandonment or verbal abuse – and is often more pervasive, because you can’t point to any one thing, so it’s often hard to identify.

When he created SE, Dr. Levine realized that when animals in nature are being pursued by a predator, they will initially respond in one of two ways: They’ll either fight back or they’ll run away. Those two options – fight or flight – are built into our nervous systems. We don’t have to think about it – the body responds and reacts for survival. 

If in the process of being chased, the animal assesses that there is no chance of survival, they will go into a physiological freeze response, which means their body freezes and they’ll collapse. 

An example of this you might have heard of is “playing possum.” When a possum feels threatened, it collapses on the ground and plays dead. As part of their built in survival, their physiology starts to change on a dime. Their heart rate slows down, they go limp, and often their body puts out a really nasty smelling liquid from their anal glands, so it appears that they’re dead and their body’s decaying.

Once the predator catches up to them, they won’t attack them or eat them because animals naturally know that if they eat something that’s dead, they could get sick. So the predator walks away. And as soon as the predator is at a far enough distance, the possum will get up and run in the other direction. 

As they’re running, as Dr. Levine noticed, they naturally shake off the fear that was being held in their body. Because they do that, they let go of the fear, and the trauma of the experience doesn’t get lodged in their nervous system.

If you’ve ever felt shaky when something scary happens, that’s a normal response: The body wants to release that energy so it doesn’t get locked in the system. Babies and children release it naturally – they flail and scream. But it gets bred out of us at a young age by cultural expectations, or sometimes by a need for safety if we’re living in an environment where it’s dangerous to show fear. 

So we learn to override what our body naturally wants to do, and it gets stuck in the nervous system, resulting in all kinds of physiological and emotional challenges. 

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn

When we encounter a threat – or a perceived threat – the first thing we do is stop. We have a startle response. We stop and we do what’s called orienting. We use all of our senses to find out where the threat is coming from, so we can assess what to do next. 

We turn our head to look, we listen, we might touch something to assess the temperature, maybe we can taste something in our mouths or smell something in the air. All of this happens in an instant and unconsciously.

And if it is safe, and you have a healthy nervous system, you can slowly settle – that is, come back a state of calm in a relatively short period of time. If you have a severe trauma history, however, it may take days or even months for your system to settle. 

If, on the other hand, it isn’t safe, your body will go into fight or flight. And if, like the possum, you assess that you can’t run away or you can’t fight, that’s when you go into freeze, or fawn. 

Freeze can be both physiological, meaning your body is not moving and/or it can be psychological, meaning you check out or dissociate. Fawning is a protective strategy of complying, over-accommodating, or being servile, in an effort to appease the persecutor or perpetrator in their life, so you don’t get harmed. 

Many trauma survivors feel ashamed about the fact that they froze or fawned, but – and I can’t stress this enough – these are both brilliant coping strategies for survival.

Completing the Threat Response Cycle

When trauma happens, it can be too dangerous or too overwhelming to move or make sound, and so the body’s desire to release gets blocked, and then stored in the nervous system. When you complete the threat response cycle, you’re allowing your body to do what it wanted to do at that time – running, punching, kicking, screaming, crying – so that it can finally move out of the nervous system. 

And even for someone like me, who had worked on that medical trauma for years, there was a true and complete release in the SE session I described, in a way that I had never had. It finally felt healed.

Somatic Therapy

Any effective somatic therapy practitioner is going to focus on safety, grounding and resourcing first, before ever touching into the trauma memories, to allow you to build your capacity to stay present for the feelings and sensations that will emerge in the process. The work to feel resourced in the body, and safe enough and able to explore the trauma, could take a few SE sessions, or with people with complex PTSD, it might take many months. 

Some clients have asked me when we were going to get to the work of healing their trauma, when we’re working on grounding and resourcing, and I assure them that this is the work. 

Much of what we do in Somatic Experiencing is to notice the body, through interoception (noticing what is happening inside the body), and to get curious about it without judgment. We slow down and notice sensations, the body’s desire to move, when the body feels frozen, etc. We don’t push, we don’t force, and we’re not trying to make anything happen. We allow whatever wants to arise to arise, and trust the wisdom and the timing of the body, as it finds its way back to healing.

Body Awareness Practice

My invitation for this post is to notice your level of interoception. How aware are you of what is occurring inside your body, emotionally and or physically? And if you’re not, let yourself just notice that without judgment.

And if possible, moving forward, start to begin to attune to sensations, such as feeling cold or hot or hungry, or in pain or discomfort. Notice your emotions, such as joy, sadness, peace or excitement.

Just give yourself permission to notice and get curious about it, and thank your body for it’s wisdom.

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About Jean:

Jean Campbell, LCSW, SEP, TTP, TEP has been bringing together groups of people to heal for over 31 years. She blends her extensive experience in psychodrama, sociometry, group psychotherapy, somatic healing and trauma resolution to offer training for helping professionals, personalized intensives, clinical consultation, and leadership workshops. You can find her at theactioninstitute.com, on Instagram at @actioninstitute, and on Facebook at @actioninstituteofcalifornia.