Paralyzed by Perfectionism: How My Body Saved Me From Myself

One day, my body just stopped. My leg wouldn’t move. It took me months to realize—this was my body’s way of forcing me to listen.

I was in my last year of college, double majoring in movement science and global health. I knew I had a lot on my plate: doing full-time school with several difficult classes, working over 20 hours a week, writing my thesis, and volunteering multiple hours a week with clubs. Oh, and, I was newly sober, trying to figure out how to be a sober college student. But it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I had been working my way through school for several years now and had already won several awards for my work and research. I would wake up early to finish homework and stay up late to start new work projects. I prided myself on my 16-hour days and my ability to keep it all together.

The thing was that I did not consider myself an ‘over-achiever’ or ‘perfectionist’. I did not even think that it was abnormal to be putting in 16-hour days six days a week. I just had my to-do list and had to get it done. I had a perfectly ‘tetris’ed schedule and had even wiggled in going to the gym a few days a week. It was working and I was fine. I was doing well, even. 

Don’t get me wrong: I felt tired -  but feeling tired was a badge of honor as a college student. I needed caffeine like water and could fall asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow. I would have regular surges of anxiety but they did not interfere with my to-do list. But nobody would have suspected anything: I always showed up with work done and a smile on my face.

Unfortunately, like most of us, that smile was hiding a much more complex inner life. I had also just experienced two separate traumatic events, just a year apart from each other. When I would finally slow down enough to share what had happened with friends, they would often look at me, amazed that I was still in college. They used words like “resilient” and “inspiring”. I shrugged their reactions off. I mean, what else do I do? Lay in a puddle of pity, hoping for handouts? No. That was not an option. I was to finish school. Once I was done with school, I could figure out the rest. But for now, processing emotions was not a luxury I could afford.

That is where my ego and my body disagreed. Unfortunately (or fortunately), my body won. 

I woke up early, like any usual morning, and my leg felt a little funny - nothing terrible, just like it had gone to sleep. As I got my socks and shoes on, I noticed I could not move my foot and toes. I thought that was weird but I continued on with my day. There was no pain so I figured it would work itself out. 

Later that morning, as I went to stand at the end of my class, I realized I could not move my leg. I told my leg to move, to walk, to do anything at all, but nothing. My leg was paralyzed.

A funny thing happens when your world suddenly stops like it did when my leg paralyzed. One would expect racing thoughts or panic to set in. But it was quite the opposite. Everything went quiet: the type of eerie and tense quiet in a horror movie where you can hear your heart beating but nothing else. Other classmates would walk past me, oblivious, moving about their days. My friend came up and must have been saying my name a few times because as I came to, they had a concerned look, “Sarah! Are you coming or not?” 

I shook out of my eerie quiet fog, only to say calmly, “I can’t move my leg”. 

I honestly do not remember what happened after that. That’s the power of the brain and dissociation. Somehow, I got some crutches which would become my main mode of mobility for several months. The next thing I remember is being in the emergency room, giving them my information and the reason for my visit. “I, um, can’t move my leg”, I said sheepishly. The nurse looked at me, impatient, “How did you injure it, ma’am?” 

I shook my head. “No, I didn’t injure it. I just… It’s paralyzed.” 

It was the first time I said that word: paralyzed. The first time it started to sink in that my leg was paralyzed. I was paralyzed. I shook it off. I needed to stay focused. 

“We will call you back shortly, ma’am” the nurse nonchalantly informed me like a lunch lady saying the pizza is almost out of the oven. 

I crutched back to the waiting room where eyes were looking at me. I looked down at the ground, trying to hide myself away in my jacket. I remembered my tetris’ed schedule. My to-do list. My anxiety surged - I did not have time for my leg to be paralyzed. 

The doctor ran the tests and ordered imaging. Nothing. There was no medical reason for this to happen. It was to be the first time in a long, long list of times, that a doctor would look at me and say, “All the tests are normal, it’s probably just anxiety. Have you been under more stress lately?”

I loathed this response. For all the times I kept my composure over the last several years, I just barely suppressed the rage I felt being asked such a stupid question.

“I mean, I am in my last year of school and have a lot of hard classes,” I said, hoping the tone of my inner rage did not leak through. 

I crutched out of the hospital with more questions than answers. 

My friends all had their opinions: “Well, you do have a lot of stress, Sarah”, “Maybe it’s the food you eat”, “You should try losing weight”, “Maybe you just hurt your back”, “Maybe your pants are too tight”, “You need more vitamin Z92”, and my ‘personal favorite’, “you need to just give this over to God.” Their nonsensical attempts to lessen the agony of being a 22-year-old with a paralyzed leg only isolated me further.

I did what I knew best. I went to Google until the wee hours of the night and tried to find some answers, something, anything, to explain why my body turned on me. Why did my body start a war against my mind?

I landed on multiple sclerosis. I was in the right demographic and the symptoms were aligned. I read up on the tests I needed to diagnose it and took it to my regular doctor. She agreed to run the tests and referred me to a neurologist.

Finally, relief. Someone listened to me and did what I hoped they would. But, of course, all of the tests, were again, normal. And, yet again, another doctor, who I affectionately nick-named, ‘Dr. Suck-A-Lot’, told me “You have shell shock, you need a therapist”. 

It is hard to fully express the unique combination of feelings of shame, rage, frustration, and indignation I felt hearing those words. I knew I should feel relief, nobody wants to have MS. But I had been dealing with a paralyzed leg for over a month now with no explanation as to why except for “anxiety”.

Over the next several months, my paralysis worsened to include both of my legs. Pain started as well - excruciating, breath-taking, shearing pain that I would have to learn to live with because there was no other option. I considered getting a wheelchair but I forced myself to learn how to use my crutches with both legs paralyzed, relying on my core and momentum to propel myself through my college campus. 

I would go to more doctors over that time, some of whom listened, some of whom didn’t. All of whom had no idea why my body was at war with me.

I decided that I probably should see a therapist - not because I thought it would fix my legs but because my whole life had to change if I had to accept my legs were paralyzed now. I needed to change career paths. I needed to figure out how to go to the grocery store; cook for myself; do laundry. I needed to figure out how to live.

By some good grace or karma or whatever one believes in, I was matched with a therapist who had some idea of what to do with me. That therapist was the first one to ask me questions about my paralysis and be curious as to what my experience was. Over time, I started to get honest about how much I was doing: getting sober, experiencing the traumas, working my way through school, double majoring, and writing my thesis. I expressed how annoyed I was at how my perfectly ‘tetris’ed schedule had been blown to smithereens with all the medical appointments and new challenges. 

She was the first one who made me acknowledge how much stress I had been under - to really look at it and say, “Huh, I guess that is a couple of things”. 

That is when she started to introduce me to somatic experience therapy. I was reluctant at first, my science-oriented brain feeling wary of anything that was too “woo-woo”. However, she encouraged me to do some research and watch a few videos before forming any opinions. 

I did not know it then but it would be the turning point in my recovery.

Somatic experience therapy, created by Peter Levine, I would learn, could not be less “woo-woo”. It is heavily rooted in neuroscience and biology.

It is a well-studied phenomenon that when wild animals experience a stressful event if they are not able to fight or flee, they freeze - essentially play dead. Once the threat is gone, the animal goes through a process of shaking where it completes the stress response cycle and finishes running, fighting, etc.. After the animal (quite literally) shakes it off, it can return to its prior state and move on with its day. This process has been filmed with polar bears where wildlife researchers shoot a tranquilizer dart to sedate the bear so they can update the tracking system (the bear is unharmed - it is a process that researchers do often). As the bear wakes up, the bear is seen completing their stress response of running until they regulate their nervous system enough to continue with their day. 

I highly suggest you watch the video to watch the process unfold: Nature's Lessons in Healing Trauma: An Introduction to Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) 

(The video is nearly 30 minutes long and is full of good information but the part with the polar bear starts at 10:54 and ends at 14:02).

The same process happens with all mammals - humans included. The difference between our friend, the bear, and humans is that we have a frontal cortex. That lovely frontal cortex, which is responsible for our advanced cognition and logical reasoning, allowing homo sapiens to evolve as far as we have, is also our demise when it comes to regulating our autonomic nervous systems (Levine, 1999). Our frontal cortex essentially makes us reason and/or numb our way out of completing the stress response, resulting in a backlog of frozen stresses. The unshaken freeze response festers in our bodies, causing all sorts of bizarre symptoms, like irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, sleep issues, and the list goes on (Levine, 1999). 

I was rather taken aback when I first read and learned about this process. My therapist had alluded to some of it along the way but seeing the video and reading about other people’s experiences completely changed my perspective on the mind-body connection. That night, falling asleep, I let myself scan my body, including my paralyzed (or frozen) legs. To my surprise, they started twitching. Before I knew it, they were shaking, trembling, like I was fighting something off and running away. 

My therapist was, of course, thrilled. She guided me through multiple exercises to continue to dispel this frozen energy and encouraged me to practice my shaking daily. 

The shaking was weird. Sometimes the shaking would be subtle and I would fall asleep before anything seemingly happened. Other times, my legs would shake so hard that the bed would start to move. I would worry that I was making it up and just making my legs do it, but, every time I had that thought, my legs would just “do their thing” and I would know I did not have conscious control over it. 

As I got more comfortable with this very bizarre phenomenon, I started to notice when I needed to shake - usually when stress levels were rising or when I would feel triggered. I learned I could just as well allow my arms to shake to dispel that energy and release the freeze before an anxiety response took over. 

Within just a month of practicing shaking, my legs were back to normal. The full journey took four months.

I had lost a lot of physical strength which would end up taking many years to get back. But what I gained in understanding the body, the mind, and the nervous system would be invaluable. 

Three years after this ordeal, I started school to obtain my doctorate in physical therapy. I knew I wanted to share this experience with others and help people tap into their body’s inherent wisdom. In the four years of my physical therapy practice, I have had the pleasure of journeying with many clients through their somatic release. While I have not met anyone else who has had my rather extreme freezing experience, so many of my clients have manifested this freeze response in ways that seem benign at first. They report a feeling of tightness that will not go away with stretching, frequent headaches, feeling like their knee with give out, or just persistent pain that will not go away with exercise. I lost count of the number of clients I have worked with who held a particular trauma in their muscles, especially their psoas, and as the muscle tension is released, their body naturally starts to shake or cry (there are multiple ways to unlock the freeze response). The next session, like clockwork, they would come in elated because their issue would be resolved. 

As I reflect on all of those moments I had people - doctors, friends, and family alike - tell me, “Oh, it’s just anxiety” or “Oh, it’s just stress”, I mean, they were partially right. But I would argue that it’s never “just” stress. It was not “in my head”. It was in my body. Our Western society has placed so much emphasis on the mind that we have lost access to the beautiful yet fierce power that is our body. I was not “weak-minded” or “hysterical” or “shell-shocked”. My body was doing what mammals have done for millennia. It was protecting me from myself - stopping me in my tracks so I would finally slow down long enough to listen to it, telling me to rest, to breathe, to grieve, to laugh, to connect, to celebrate, and to cry. I had to learn how to live sustainably and prioritize my well-being or my productivity. 

In these last ten years, it has been a terribly imperfect journey. I have failed more times than I succeeded in listening to my body and living sustainably. I have experienced burnout time and again. I keep making adjustments so I can find that balance in a world where sustainability is the antithesis of societal success. 

You don’t have to wait for your body to force you to listen. If you’re experiencing chronic burnout, fatigue, or tension that won’t go away, I’d love to help you reconnect with your body before it demands your attention. I would love to be a part of your journey. You can schedule a complimentary 15-minute coaching call on my website or sign up for weekly newsletters to stay in the know on the latest resources available to you. 

Sources:

Levine, P. A. (1999). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma: The innate capacity to transform overwhelming experiences. North Atlantic Books.