Dear Emily:

Dec 6, 2018, exactly two months ago, your wisdom teeth were taken out. During that event, at the dentist office or clinic, you experienced an anxiety attack. When you woke up from the anesthesia, and after you experienced as I understand it intense  fear and the brain’s/body’s reaction to intense fear.

The brain/body reacts to intense fear by disassociating, or as it is known in the animal world, the “Freeze reaction”. There are three reactions to perceived danger: Flight (running away from the perceived danger so to escape it), Fight (fighting the perceived danger so to disable/ kill it), or Freeze. The Freeze reaction is the animal playing dead, only it is not playing, it looks like it is dead and in looking dead, the hope is that the predator will leave it alone.

The way the animal is able to look dead, to not run away in fear, is that it feels numb, it feels what you have felt: like it is in a dream, nothing is real, not being there, floating elsewhere, detached, numb,  odd. These emotional experiences make it possible for an animal to not move while right there in the predator’s presence, sometimes in the grip  of the predator’s mouth.

At the dentist, neither running away, once under anesthesia, nor fighting were possibilities for you, this may be why the Freeze reaction took place. Then over time, as the Freeze experience continued, it itself scared you, as in.. why am I feeling so odd, what is wrong with me..?

I experienced this myself, the fear and the Freeze. Once I realized what the freeze reaction was about, I understood that it didn’t mean that there was something wrong with me, but that I reacted like any other animal reacts when neither Flight or Fight are options.

anita