Shock - Primarily of the Psychological Flavor

(N.B. This posting is the first of several relating to some of how I am thinking about sudden events of enormous impact. There are many reasons to think about these types of things, but for me it is at least partly related to the fact that my first conscious memory is that of hearing that Pearl Harbor was attacked. I was little more than an infant and I remember crawling around in the back seat of my parents car, driving to church in lower Manhattan and (I think) someone saying to be still so everyone could listen to the news which was announcing the attack. I had no idea of whether it was important or serious since at that point the only driving forces were squirming in a crowded car, wanting to look out at tall buildings and moving from one sensation to another. But on some level, I suppose, there was some imprinting on my personality over those next several years that the world could be suddenly dangerous and also that I / we not only survived but also thrived.)

Shock when not intended is a nasty event. It can be caused by a number of different situations, e.g., having an experience that follows seeing something grotesquely out of the ordinary, or finding out something that changes our underlying sense of self and/or other, or having a physiological / medical event which is the result of the body suddenly being put on overload or overwhelmed with an event which threatens survival itself.

I use the word in the context of a sudden event which has the power to overwhelm the system, whether it is psychological shock or physical shock. In the physical situation, a state of shock can be induced by, e.g., a sudden loss of blood from whatever cause threatens the very survival of the person. Or if a bacterial infection overwhelms the natural defenses of the body, the system will start emergency internal procedures which activate certain systems and shut down other systems which are not as essential for survival. The body will start this process without any conscious thought on our part precisely because it is so threatened by the actual physiological events.

I say this to differentiate it from the panic process which can start when a person locks into an image or a series of images ("what-if" scenarios) which can be so realistic to the mind and so scary to the body that they call forth a cascade of physiological effects collectively referred to as the fight, flight or freeze process. In the "pure" physiological situation, not only is the body gearing up to deal with a crisis internally, in effect putting out an "all hands on deck" call, but the people around the person will recognize the sudden and profound shift taking place and will naturally want to set up an external alarm to get help - fast.

To be stunned is to have a taste of shock. But the stun does not call forth the whole crisis event. It momentarily leads to a gasp or to the experience of not being able to say or do anything. The stun, in a sense, puts the person into a state of temporary suspended animation.

(Just a side comment: it is a mistake to say that one effects the physical and the other effects the mental. There is no hypen between mindbodymindbodymind... Each is influenced by each would be one way to awkwardly put it. However, there are many subtleties which don't rise to the level of full awareness but the bodymind is listening in and moving about nevertheless.)

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario. You are called into your boss' office on a Friday afternoon and you're told that you are being laid off and you have 20 minutes to clear out your desk. You will be escorted while you do that and then out of the building. No matter how "you cut it" that's big. Even if you knew that there had been several layoffs already in your company and you knew that there was another round about to happen. When it "hits" you it's big. Would that be a stun or a shock?

It's pretty clear it would be a significant event for most people. Few would walk away whistling a happy tune and feeling that it had little immediate impact, although it is conceivable that some would take it as a desired event. For example, if a person really hated their job and they were having a difficult time deciding whether or when to leave the job, this may provide the needed impetus to pursue other things which he or she had been thinking about as a possibility for work. Or a person who was planning on handing in their resignation the following week, it could be seen as a stroke of fortune, especially if there is a severance package involved.

The person goes into "overload." The less they had anticipated it, and the less they had prepared what and how they would handle the situation the more the overload would immobilize them. In some situations the immobilization may not be a negative, in fact it could be a positive development. The immobilization could be acting like a "shock absorber." It helps to dampen the sudden effect so the system isn't jarred too aggressively.

Stuns are probably inevitable in life and, in a sense, we should not try to insulate ourselves from any exposure to them. It's helpful to remember that it's not a "hothouse world" out there. Being delicate may be good for sensitivity, etc., but it doesn't help in what can at times be a rough and tumble world. Neither do we want to become so insensitive that we don't experience these shifts. So it would seem that we have to be sensitive enough to register differences but at the same time, as the stun level goes up, to not go into a state of collapse.

In my next post I plan to talk more about a few lessons from history and how we can learn how to buffer ourselves for big changes in our lives.