« The child becomes inert, immobile, and emotionally dead. »

Excerpt :

“ When the amount of pain assaulting the system can no longer be integrated, endorphins are mobilized to repress the experience and the memory of the event.

These endorphins, many times more powerful than commercially produced morphine, keep events out of full consciousness by interfering in the connection between feeling and the realization of feeling, between sensation and cognition.

Nonetheless the trauma remains in the system, full and intact: the person may be able to dissociate from the pain of his hand submerged in icy water, but the icy water nonetheless causes his vasomotor system to contract in pain.

Similarly a child may be able to dissociate from the pain of losing his mother for instance, but that pain still affects the child at a deeper level – be it through acting-out behavior, compulsive eating, chronic depression, or whatever.

In traumatic circumstances, the child may simply "numb-out." He is no longer emotionally reactive. He's inert, immobile, and emotionally "dead". He no longer suffers the horrendous pain of losing his mother. He goes on with life in a very "dead" fashion.

Nonetheless, there is always some physical manifestation of the presence of pain in the system, regardless of what one is consciously experiencing."