Fear was designed for short bursts — run from the lion. But humans face sustained fear situations: a child’s life-threatening illness over ten days in a hospital, war, prolonged abuse. When fear is sustained, the body can’t process it in real time. You must compartmentalize some fear to make decisions and operate, then go back and let the body move it afterward.
Joe shares that when his daughters had life-threatening diseases at different times, ten days of sustained hospital fear took months to process afterward. This is the same dynamic at play in PTSD from war — sustained trauma requires going back and allowing the body to release what it had to hold.
Animals naturally do this through shaking. Dogs shake twenty to thirty times a day, not for long, but regularly. The fear compiles daily and must be discharged. When it isn’t released incrementally, it stacks up and either manifests as subconscious patterns that recreate the feared scenario, or eventually releases all at once when the feared thing actually happens.