FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Primitive Reflex Integration on the Surrey/Sussex Border

Anxiety: how to retune your nervous system

One of the things I’m most frequently asked about is how to reduce generalised anxiety.

With the current situation continuing to unfold, we all need to look after ourselves and make sure we are not projecting our fears onto our children too.

Here is a brief explanation of how our nervous system works, and how it relates to anxiety:

In order for us not to be in a constant fight/flight/freeze cycle, we must activate our parasympathetic nervous system – or our social engagement system. In this state, we feel calm, able to think clearly, able to communicate clearly, able to listen clearly and able to see clearly. We do not falsely detect threat and are consequently far more engaging to others.

Here are a few simple things you can try, almost anywhere, which will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and help you to feel calmer:

Music – Find a recording of Mozart’s K448 – Sonata for two pianos and stop everything else. Sit in a chair and listen. This piece of music has been proven to reduce stress – and even the occurrence of seizures in kids with epilepsy!
Breathing – Try slowly breathing in through the nose to the count of 4, and out through the mouth to 8. Breathe from your belly rather than ribs!
Gargling – Try very vigorous gargling – to the point where tears start to form in your eyes. When you start getting tears, it means your vagus nerve is firing. Try and keep it up for a few seconds and then relax
Hum – this activates laryngeal muscles, which get signals directly from the superior and recurrent laryngeal branches of the vagus nerve. If done for long enough, this allows us to control our breath, slow down thoughts and enter deep relaxation
Chant – chanting “om” stimulates vagus activity to the digestive tract, and is said to improve digestion and inflammation levels in the body. Chanting “om” following stressful events is an excellent way to reduce stress levels
Laugh – laughter is extremely effective in improving mood and heart rate variability. This is because we use our diaphragms when we laugh – unless we are laughing nervously, in which laughter is shallow and comes from the ribs. Belly laughs are an easy vagus nerve workout! Personally, I have a couple of video clips that keep up my sleeve, which I can’t watch without crying with laughter.
Socialising – socialising and connecting with others is SO important. Being solitary, lonely and disconnected from others severely affects our mood and health. Being around others helps us laugh more, which, as we’ve just established, helps us keep our vagus nerve regulated… Obviously, this is rather difficult under the current circumstances, which is why Zoom is quite helpful to allow us to stay connected with others.
Yoga and Meditation – PROVEN to tone the vagus nerve and reduce stress. I was even discussing this with a respiratory doctor a few weeks ago. It is only your logical left brain telling you it doesn’t work!

All the above are excellent things to do WHILE doing or BEFORE the Safe and Sound Protocol, by the way. The SSP is a five day listening intervention designed to re-tune the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and consequently has a calming effect on all the systems in your body.

If you want to dig a bit deeper and help reduce your anxiety permanently, you are welcome to contact me.

FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Moro reflex Uncategorized

Sleep, anxiety, night terrors – and neuroscience

Some of our children – indeed, some of us – find it extremely hard to switch off. Our brains work overtime, processing what’s happened that day, worrying about what might happen… Some of us wake up at 3am and can’t get back to sleep. Some of us are almost asleep when we suddenly jolt ourselves back to wakefulness, having had a sort of dream that we are about to fall off a cliff or down stairs or similar. And worst of all, some of our poor children suffer from night terrors: episodes of extreme night-time distress, thrashing about screaming and crying, eyes open, but fast asleep.

What causes all these disturbances?

When we are in a constant state of fight/flight or freeze, we are living in survival mode: our brains are on alert for perceived threat. Our primitive lizard brains are active, rather than our rational upper brain (cerebellum). This means it’s very hard to switch off a racing mind and fall asleep.

This fight/flight and freeze cycle (think rabbit in headlights freezing with terror and then racing away to avoid danger) is caused by unintegrated Fear Paralysis and Moro reflexes.

The Fear Paralysis reflex is the first reflex that a foetus develops. It is thought to develop at around 5 weeks in utero, but there is research to show that it may even develop earlier than that, given that Fear Paralysis is a reaction at a cellular level rather than a neurological reaction involving the central nervous system. A foetus will react to threats, such as loud noises, by shrinking and withdrawing in order to protect itself.

The Fear Paralysis causes the foetus to stop moving, restricts peripheral blood flow, lowers the heart rate, reduces exposure to adrenaline and reduces the absorption of cortisol (the stress hormone).This is similar to a mouse feigning death when caught by a cat: heart rate and breathing slow right down so it can protect itself and zoom off and hopefully escape when dropped.

The Moro reflex starts to develop in the second trimester, and gradually takes over from the Fear Paralysis reflex. However, if something stops the Fear Paralysis reflex from integrating effectively, the Moro reflex will also be retained, and a person will live in a constant cycle of fight, flight and freeze. The Moro reflex will cause racing thoughts.

Fear Paralysis is responsible for the emotional well-being of a person, and retaining it means that there are likely to be anxiety, phobias, brain freeze under extreme stress, a lack of adaptability and potentially panic attacks and night terrors. Signs of a retained FPR reflex are:

– anxiety / withdrawn behaviour

– low stress threshold

– rabbit-in-headlights-like freezing when there is a threat

– sensory processing challenges

– hypersensitivity to light/sound

– finds change difficult

– clingy behaviour

– extreme fatigue

– selective mutism (also in adults)

– breath holding when worried/upset/stressed

– obsessive behaviour/OCD

– fear of not being in control

There’s another pesky reflex that I usually find in those with sleep disturbances: the Babkin reflex. This is a reflex associated with separation anxiety.

When I started working to integrate my children’s reflexes, we noticed a dramatic improvement in my son’s ability to switch off at night – it used to take him around two hours to wind down and fall asleep! From a month or so after we started working with his reflexes, he was able to switch off and drift off to sleep within minutes.

I was one of those unfortunately to be jolted awake with a falling-off-a-cliff type dream just as I fell asleep, almost every night, but a couple of weeks after I’d started working with my own reflex integration, I noticed that I had stopped having this experience – and I haven’t experienced this again since, in around 6 years.

If you don’t plan on working with reflex integration to resolve these common sleep issues, here are some other things you can do to calm your autonomic nervous system down:

humming
take deep breaths in to the count of 4 through your nose, push breaths out through a small “o” (as if you are whistling) through your mouth to the count of 8
take deep breaths in to the count of 4 through your nose, push breaths out through a small “o” (as if you are whistling) through your mouth to the count of 8
yoga is extremely helpful and will teach you to breathe to help you self regulate
take yourself back to your lizard brain, and pretend to be a mermaid, separating upper and lower body as well as you can and rock your lower body from side to side
leave mobile phones downstairs, and don’t have a clock by your bed, especially if LED
use spray magnesium oil on the soles of your feet
use an eye mask to block out light

However, if none of this works, or if you have an inconsolable child with night terrors, reflex integration work – or even the Safe and Sound Protocol, depending on the person – might be a sensible next step, in which case, please do get in touch to find out how I might be able to help.

FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Spinal Galant Reflex STNR: Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex

W-Sitting – what does it mean?

Does your child sit in this position?

This is known as “w-sitting”, and you may or may not have heard that it’s not a great position for the hips.

Your child sits like this because they are comfortable sitting like this.

However, I’m about to tell you what causes a child to sit like this, what consequences it may have for attention and learning, and what you can do to help them.

This W position is very comfortable for a child with a weak core. Your child may have been diagnosed with hypermobility – or perhaps not. They may fall over frequently, they may get exhausted easily compared to their peers. In class, they will find it hard to sit comfortably in a chair, and will perhaps keep experimenting with several different positions in a chair in one sitting, and never truly be comfortable with feet flat on the floor. This is because of a lack of core strength.

This wonderful video demonstrates beautifully how it *should* happen, within the appropriate developmental window:

Let me make a very important point:

Merely stopping a child from w-sitting will not address the neurological cause, and will not address the knock-on effects of having poor core stability, nor the future problems it may cause.

Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very visible example of someone with a weak core and poor stamina

I was talking to my son’s teacher when he was in Reception. She told me that there is a noticeable reduction in stamina and core strength in children these days, and that a large proportion of children in Reception classes are unable to support themselves when sitting, drawing, at a table – or even on the mat during story time.

Why this epidemic?

Well… we are simply not allowing our children to move enough. We are restricting movement by using “equipment” and props. Some babies end up sitting in car seats for hours at a time, or end up in jumparoos, Bumbos, or even being “worn” for longer than absolutely necessary. Later on, children tend to move less, glued to screens for long periods of time. Play areas are now hyper-safe, with protection against knocks, bumps etc. When I was growing up, most children had a scab on their knees several times a term.

What babies REALLY need is to be given plenty of floor time and as children, plenty of opportunities to explore surroundings, in order to work out how to organise their bodies for themselves, how to integrate their reflexes and move on to the next stage of development – unprompted.

After all, if you help a chick hatch, it will fail to thrive.

So, what causes w-sitting?

As I’ve mentioned, w-sitting is a symptom of a weak core. It is likely that a child will have skipped a stage of development. It is almost certain that these children will have an active STNR reflex, which is a transitional reflex that follows the Moro, TLR and ATNR. It emerges at around four to six months of age and integrates between nine to twelve months of age – but only if rolling, sitting, rocking on hands and knees, crawling, pulling to standing and walking have happened within an appropriate timeframe.

The STNR reflex allows a child to understand arm, leg and body movements without moving the head. It also affects the development of binocular vision and binaural hearing.

Children who have never integrated the STNR often have learning challenges. These children find it hard to sit in chairs or at tables, often slumped, with their legs wrapped around the legs of their chair for support.

Having an active STNR often means that vision and hearing senses have not properly developed. STNR children often find sport a challenge as their hand-eye coordination tends to be poor due to not developing sufficient connections between the left and right hemispheres, which will affect reading and writing.

It is also important to know that just because someone has a six pack, it doesn’t mean that their STNR has integrated. Reflex integration will not happen unless the body re-patterns in a specific way. So, no, I do not want to see your abs as proof of your core strength, thank you.

The STNR reflex can be integrated using the rhythmic movement patterns observed in foetuses and new-borns. You may be able to help by allowing your child to MOVE as nature intended – take them to the park, get them to walk around in a crab position, get them to wheel themselves around on their tummy on a skateboard, get them to use a balance ball, try family yoga classes or ballet…

In order for the STNR to integrate fully, it is sensible to look at what else is active and work through a movement programme to help the brain make the appropriate neural connections. These movements can take as little as five minutes a day.

For your nearest RMTi practitioner, please go to https://rhythmicmovement.co.uk/where-is-my-nearest-provider/

FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Moro reflex

Understanding your aggressive child

Do you have a child who has unpredictably hit, kicked or even bitten someone else? Are you wondering what on earth is causing this behaviour and what to do about it? Read on…

When you were a tiny little foetus, only around five weeks old, your central nervous system started reacting to external stimuli. When there was a sudden loud noise, you would instinctively shrink to avoid potential danger.

It may come as a surprise, but there is nothing “wrong” with your child. Your child simply lives in a state of fear, and cannot self-regulate in order to feel safe and trust others.

Fear Paralysis Reflex

This instinctive reaction is the Fear Paralysis Reflex (FPR), and is the first of our reflexes to appear. It should disappear in the third trimester, as it finishes doing its job and the Moro reflex takes over ready for birth.

However, excessive stress in pregnancy can cause the FPR to remain active in the system. The result is that we recoil, shrink, tense up and sometimes even feel slow and sluggish when we face a stressful situation, and this, of course, has an effect on emotional development and behaviour, and how we cope with the world around us.

Anxiety is a feeling of the world rushing past you, while you want to curl into a ball – just like the FPR.

Moro Reflex

A few weeks later, a very important reflex that you may have heard of, or even observed, starts to develop. You may know this better as “fight or flight”. This is the Moro reflex, and is responsible for a baby opening it’s entire body up to take a first breath at birth.

If the Moro reflex remains active in the system, which can happen if the FPR interferes with its integration, you’ll have a person who either expresses frustrations by lashing out, being excessively noisy and argumentative (fight) or being excessively demand-avoidant, potentially running away from any demands placed upon them (flight).

Let me add that this is similar to being bitten by an animal when it’s frightened – or in fight/flight… our cats are always bringing voles in, but last week, my husband decided to pick one up (because they are so sweet). He got bitten – badly. Poor little voley was in fear of its life and didn’t want manly hands picking it up.

Babkin Reflex

The Babkin reflex connects the hand and mouth and is closely related to the FPR and Moro reflex. Retaining this reflex will cause a person to be ANGRY with enormous amounts of cortisol and adrenaline in the system. People with an active Babkin find it very difficult to trust anyone, and may suffer from extreme separation anxiety.

The Babkin tends to affect adoptees, children who have been in foster care, or those who were whipped into SCBU/NICU in the first hours of their lives.

Polyvagal Theory

You may have heard of fight/flight/freeze. These are our primitive survival states, and are what we revert to when we do not have strong enough higher brain connections to understand the difference between REAL danger and PERCEIVED danger, which is not in the least bit threatening.

If we do not have strong enough brain connections to the neocortex and a dysregulated autonomic nervous system, we feel under constant threat. The result is either that we lash out (verbally or physically), avoid a situation or go into complete lockdown.

The following video explains.

The good news…

The great news for anxiety sufferers is that by repeating foetal movements, it is possible to reboot and calm the central nervous system with as little as five minutes of gentle movement per day.

An assessment with a neuro-developmental therapist involves careful observation, and, if appropriate, testing for a number of reflexes to see where attention needs to be focussed first. In some cases, it is possible to make immediate gentle shifts – but often, if a child has an extreme Moro and or FPR reflex, it is not possible to test at all – in which case, we try to show you some gentle passive movements to help calm a child down.

The stronger these pre-birth reflexes are, the more sensitive a child is likely to be, so it may be that a few seconds of movement is more than enough.

In cases of extreme anxiety, I tend to give some extremely gentle movements for a few weeks, and then suggest following up with the Safe and Sound Protocol – a five-day listening programme, based on forty years’ research by Dr Stephen Porges.

When working with a very sensitive child, it is important to work around their demand avoidance. Once this starts to diminish, there comes a time that clear boundaries can be enforced – but trying to do this during SSP or while working with Moro/FPR reflex integration can exacerbate behaviours.

The big problem with schools is that teachers and other professionals do not tend to be trauma and anxiety-informed, and can mistake this behaviour as “poor parenting”. Poor parenting rarely causes a child to be aggressive! Aggression is to do with FEAR – it is not for the sake of it. So, to help an aggressive child, we need to make them feel SAFE in their surroundings.

Drug-free help for anxiety

I love my work for Move2Connect, because I like to see people discover that they have the power to transform themselves using very simple movements over a period of a few weeks at a time.

It is important to understand that this is not a talking therapy. This reaches the parts that talking therapies cannot reach.

I have a special interest in adult and adolescent mental health, and practice from my clinics in Horsham, Dorking and Cranleigh.