Impalas and the Traumatized Traffic Light: Keys to Emotional Healing

What is the key to emotional freedom?

Impalas face constant threats from predators eager to catch them. Sometimes, these predators succeed in delivering a fatal blow before the impala can escape. Interestingly, immediately after such attacks, impalas begin shaking as if experiencing a severe seizure. Remarkably, once the shaking subsides, they walk away as though nothing happened, showing no lasting trauma. Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger, explores this phenomenon to illustrate a principle of healing and resilience. Levine explains that after a traumatic event, our bodies generate immense energy due to the instinctual fight-or-flight response. However, this energy can become trapped when we are paralyzed by the event. Trauma results from this trapped energy. Healing occurs through its release. The impala's post-trauma shaking releases pent-up energy, allowing it to remain emotionally and mentally unscathed.

Mr. Rogers famously said, “If it’s speakable, it’s manageable.” When an experience is too painful to discuss, it often becomes intertwined with our sense of self and narrative. Dysfunction occurs when we are immobilized by a negative reality, with energy so entrenched that it defines our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. This leaves little room for alternative perspectives. Externalizing our narrative creates space for a reality that’s more detached from ourselves and thus more malleable.

Judith Eger, a Holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist, wrote, “The opposite of depression is expression.” The key to healing is to move through traumatic experiences by expressing them in any form—art, dance, karate, speech, writing, or another medium that resonates with us. Finding a way to articulate our deep angst helps externalize our trauma, facilitating the path to healing.

While this sounds straightforward—just talk about or dance through the pain to heal—it is often more complex for those who have experienced trauma. To illustrate this, consider the traffic light analogy. Each person’s emotional landscape is unique, so the categories of green, yellow, and red will differ from individual to individual. Emotions and realities can be categorized as follows:

• Green: Safe emotions we are comfortable experiencing and expressing. This may include joy, satisfaction, care, anger, boredom, and disappointment.

• Yellow: Emotions and realities that are uncomfortable but manageable, often requiring inner work or coaching. These might include love, appreciation, sadness, vulnerability, and loneliness.

• Red: Experiences so painful or dangerous that we cannot even acknowledge them, either to ourselves or others. These are suppressed and hidden, yet they significantly impact our perception of ourselves, others, and the world. They wreak havoc in our lives and relationships because they remain unnamed and unaddressed. Potential examples include hope, intimacy, jealousy, shame, and self-loathing.

Emotional dysfunction often involves a disproportionately large ‘red light,’ where emotions and experiences are threatening and thus suppressed. The goal is to shift these ‘red realities’ into the safer zones of yellow and green. Health is characterized by a larger green light and a smaller red light.

To address red realities and express them, deep safety is essential. Safety allows us to hold even the most painful experiences so that they can be seen and externalized. Building this safety is both simple and deeply complex. It requires patience, compassion, and a strong connection with oneself.

Citations:

• Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences. North Atlantic Books.

• Eger, E. (2017). The Choice: Embrace the Possible. Scribner.