Shaking off frozen rage and anger.

One of the types of trauma response is to freeze. When a child can’t fight back or run away (fight/rage or flight/terror) from the abuser(s), immobility takes over, and the victim will collapse. Dr. Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger, observed animals who went through trauma and wondered why they did not have PTSD afterward. Imagine an impala being chased by a cheetah and caught. If the cheetah does not kill it, the impala enters an involuntary state of immobility (the freeze response) and plays dead. After the cheetah leaves, the impala will violently shake, tremble, shiver, pant, and take deep gasping breaths. Then it stands up and goes back to the herd as if nothing happened. It discharged the trauma, reset its nervous system, and healed.

When I went through 15 years of trauma returning to me as an adult, my body would uncontrollably shake when the trauma returned. At the time, I was not aware of what was going on, but now I am. I was slowly facing awful trauma and releasing some of it. I was beginning to thaw out from an extremely frozen state, and this series of suppressed trauma and the body shaking uncontrollably became part of a familiar cocktail of repeated experiences. Unannounced trauma returning, body shaking, extreme pain, overwhelming feelings of death, and fighting with everything I had to stay alive.

This brings me to the idea of composing a song about all of this. The shaking always started in my legs, then moved into my torso, and finally through my whole body. As the episodes subsided, the shaking reversed itself, ending with just in my legs. The music idea started when I explored this shaking speed on a metronome and figured out that the speed at which my body would shake was 160 beats per minute. So I set my metronome at 160 and started playing the piano to it.

The first 1 minute and 40 seconds is a progressive, hypnotic build over time. I might call it a practice run that I did not understand because for 14 years of episodic shaking experiences, I did not yet understand what was going on—literally thousands of them. As I began my 15th year of hell, the first awful memory hit me. From 1:40 to 1:50, the piano gets a bit angry, resolving into a confusing set of two discordant notes (D and an octave higher, D-flat), then resolving into a trill and a slowdown in momentum.

2:06 to 2:36. My body needs a complete shift, slow down, and a mental reset. The simple, high piano notes show up to pull me back to reality: breathe deeply, you’re still alive, safe but hurting. That’s better than unsafe and hurting.

2:36 I cautiously step back into the pain. I hesitate at first, then commit for 46 seconds until the real bad memories, emotions, and tremors hit, and all hell breaks loose for 23 seconds. Frozen fragments shattered everywhere—anger and rage. I can fight back now, and I do so with a vengeance. Finally safety. At 3:45, a slow but steady drop sets in to much-needed relief: a few aftershock tremors and a fade to exhaustion.

I sure love playing my piano. It’s an amazing invention that stills me, stirs me, and sends all kinds of good energy coursing throughout my body. I hope this song will do the same for you.