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What The Tranquilized Bear Says About Trauma Work
There's an image Peter Levine uses that I think about almost every week.
If there's a bear in the wild, especially an endangered species, and the team needs to move it somewhere safer, they'll shoot it with a tranquilizer dart.
And you'd think the bear just goes still and flops over.
But that's not what happens.
As the sedative kicks in, the bear's legs start moving.
It shakes.
Twitches.
Its whole body lets out, right there in real time, all that running energy that was still buzzing when the dart hit.
By the time the bear actually drifts off, its body has emptied out the leftover panic that never got to finish its job.
When the bear wakes up in its new home, hours later, it's not traumatized.
It's calm.
Because its body finished what it started. Tidy. Done. No leftovers.
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