Friday, June 6, 2025

Reestablishing Agency After Collapse: A body-based framework for trauma resolution

  A body-based framework for trauma resolution

In trauma recovery—particularly following early developmental rupture, existential collapse, or the dismantling of long-held spiritual or identity frameworks—there often arises a stage where the nervous system enters a profound stillness. In this space, previous forms of motivation (fear, seeking, performance, survival) no longer drive action. But neither has something new emerged.

This in-between state is not regression. It is the liminal space where agency is being restructured—not as a defense, but as a real, body-based capacity.

🔁 What is “agency” in a somatic framework?

Agency refers to the capacity to initiate movement, choice, or expression from within the body, without coercion, and without needing to justify one’s existence through action.

It is distinct from productivity, performance, or compliance. True agency arises when the organism is no longer in a defensive state and begins to generate desire, preference, and refusal—internally, quietly, and often unexpectedly.

✅ Signs that agency is reemerging:

  • A spontaneous impulse to move, reach, touch, eat, or speak—not driven by fear or meaning, but by presence
  • The ability to say “no” without collapse or justification
  • A return of curiosity that is not driven by urgency
  • Increased tolerance for silence, uncertainty, or lack of purpose
  • Movement and decision-making that feel self-contained, rather than aimed at approval, protection, or transcendence
  • No longer needing experiences to “mean something” to feel real

This is not the return of ego—it’s the beginning of self-direction without narrative.

🧠 Neurophysiological context:

Agency cannot be reestablished while the system is still organized around threat. In sympathetic survival states, all action is filtered through urgency, appeasement, or vigilance. In dorsal collapse, action may be absent altogether. It is only as the ventral vagal state stabilizes—and dopaminergic tone returns to baseline—that spontaneous impulses can arise without being hijacked by old scripts.

The emergence of agency is often quiet. It does not arrive with clarity or purpose. It often begins as a subtle bodily preference:

“I want to sit in the sun.”
“This music is too loud.”
“I’m done reading this.”

When honored, these micro-signals rewire the system toward self-reference over self-survival.

🪷 The Great Doubt and the Return of Self-Initiated Presence

In certain Zen traditions, the term Great Doubt (大疑, dai-gi) describes a state in which all conceptual frameworks collapse, including spiritual certainty and self-definition. It is not confusion—it is a radical suspension of known reference points. In this terrain, the practitioner does not seek answers. Instead, the inquiry itself becomes a living presence:

What am I? What is this?

This mirrors what many trauma survivors encounter in the post-collapse phase—not as spiritual metaphor, but as somatic fact.

eurochemical and Brain Dynamics in Post-Collapse States

The state of collapse, followed by spontaneous re-regulation, involves dynamic shifts in multiple neurochemical systems:

Dopaminergic Systems

  • The collapse of compulsive spiritual seeking or performance removes the chronic overactivation of mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways (ventral tegmental area to nucleus accumbens).
  • A patient in collapse may feel emotionally flat or directionless not because they are depressed, but because the dopaminergic “reward loop” is quieting down after years of overdrive.
  • Healthy dopaminergic tone begins to return when safety is re-established through the ventral vagal system and body-based contact.
  • This shift often leads to spontaneous vagal discharge, rest states, and a reorganization of drive.

Serotonergic Modulation

  • Serotonin stabilizes mood, supports satiety, and modulates cortical integration.
  • When the system is hypervigilant or spiritually bypassing (e.g., relentless seeking), serotonin may be depleted.
  • Restoration of gut motility, mitochondrial function, and restful sleep supports serotonergic recovery.

Default Mode Network (DMN) and Identity Structures

  • The DMN (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and angular gyrus) governs internal narrative, autobiographical memory, and self-other distinction.
  • In trauma, especially dissociative trauma, the DMN can become fragmented or overly rigid.
  • During collapse, the narrative self may fall away entirely, causing panic—but also allowing for reconsolidation of a more fluid, embodied sense of self.

Insular Cortex and Interoception

  • The anterior insula processes internal body states and integrates them into self-awareness.
  • When agency returns, interoception becomes clearer: hunger, thirst, warmth, desire.
  • Survivors may begin to orient from these inner cues rather than mental constructs.

🧱 Trauma Scaffolding and Its Disintegration

Trauma coping structures often include:

  • Hyper-mentalization (analyzing, fixing, learning)
  • Spiritualized defenses (seeking, surrendering, dissociating upward)
  • Control-based survival scripts (perfectionism, hyper-independence)

When these collapse, the nervous system may initially panic. But with support, this disintegration is followed by:

  • The emergence of spontaneous affect (grief, longing, anger)
  • The surfacing of early unmet needs and confusion
  • The slow reorganization of motor tone, vocal expression, and boundaries

This is the phase where true differentiation can begin—not as opposition to others, but as a felt sense of “me” that does not rely on coping structures.

Integration and the Re-Formation of Agency

Once the nervous system stabilizes and vagal tone reasserts itself, a quiet but profound reorientation begins:

Emergence of Felt Agency

  • The survivor no longer acts out of compulsion (dopaminergic chasing) or shutdown (dorsal collapse).
  • Instead, choices begin to emerge from within the body. This is not “doing nothing,” but doing from being.
  • The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) becomes more active, facilitating error detection, emotional awareness, and value-based decision-making.

Reconstruction of Meaning

  • The “Great Doubt” state may feel like the annihilation of all belief, purpose, and God.
  • But over time, a deeper, more embodied form of knowing often replaces it—not necessarily spiritual, but existentially rooted.
  • This is supported by medial temporal lobe consolidation (hippocampal patterning), prefrontal coordination, and the re-integration of emotional memory (amygdala downregulation).

Identity as Process, Not Concept

  • The person no longer seeks to recover a prior identity.
  • Instead, there is an emergent coherence that is lived, not narrated.
  • This is accompanied by reduction in medial prefrontal rigidity and increased connectivity between limbic and sensorimotor areas.

🧩 Synthesis with Developmental Trauma Models

Drawing from Laurence Heller’s NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model) and Alexander Lowen’s Bioenergetic Structures:

  • The collapse of coping can be traced back to developmental charges (interruptions) in attachment, attunement, trust, autonomy, or love/sexuality.
  • Each developmental rupture corresponds with retained primitive reflexes, fascial constriction, autonomic imbalance, and limbic fixations.
  • As these layers unwind, the personality adaptations fall apart, often triggering existential panic—but also making way for organic differentiation.

We begin to observe:

  • Schizoid structures feeling contact for the first time
  • Oral types learning to need without collapse
  • Psychopathic types pausing their drive and hearing others
  • Masochistic types standing upright without apology
  • Rigid types accessing grief and spontaneity

⚖️ Clinical Implications for Body-Centered Practitioners

Practitioners working with this population should be aware that:

  • Collapse is not always a crisis; it may be the body’s greatest act of truth-telling.
  • Patients in this phase may resist meaning-making, especially if it feels like a trap or a performance.
  • Over-interpretation can re-arm defenses; presence and fascial tracking are more effective than explanation.
  • Autonomic signs (vagal discharge, temperature shifts, vocal changes, pupillary response) are more trustworthy than narrative.

This is where sinew channel work, cranial cycling, or primitive reflex demonstration can support restoration from the inside out.

References

  • Deadman, P. , Al-Khafaji, M. (2007). A Manual of Acupuncture (2nd ed.). Journal of Chinese Medicine Publications.
  • Levine, P. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.
  • Levine, P. A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. North Atlantic Books.
  • Low, R. H. (1984). The Secondary Vessels of Acupuncture: A Detailed Account of Their Energies, Meridians, and Control Points. HarperCollins.
  • Lowen, A. (1975). Bioenergetics: The Revolutionary Therapy That Uses the Language of the Body to Heal the Problems of the Mind. Penguin Books.
  • Maciocia, G. (2005). The Foundations of Chinese Medicine: A Comprehensive Text for Acupuncturists and Herbalists (2nd ed.). Churchill Livingstone.
  • Mastagova, I. (2005). Integrating Primitive Reflexes for Neurodevelopment. Neurotherapeutics Press.
  • Moffitt, J. (2025). Neuro-Somatic Mapping of Emotional States: The Interplay of Bioenergetic Character Structures, Fascia, and Autonomic Regulation. LinkedIn. January 2025.
  • Moffitt, J. (2025). The Role of TCM Sinew Channels in Emotional Integration and Vagal Tone Restoration. LinkedIn. January 2025.
  • Myers, T. W. (2020). Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists. Churchill Livingstone.
  • Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton & Company.
  • Pryor, K. (2020). Ten Fingers, Ten Toes, Twenty Things Everyone Needs to Know: Neuroplasticity for Children. Karen Pryor Publications.
  • Rosen, J. (2020). Unshakable: Healing the Roots of Trauma. Mindful Living Press.
  • Soulié de Morant, G. (1939). L’Acupuncture Chinoise. Éditions Payot.
  • Stecco, C. (2015). Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System. Elsevier Health Sciences.
  • Thesenga, S. (1994). The undefended self: Living the Pathwork of spiritual wholeness. Pathwork Press.

 

 


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