What you described is what most scientists view as the typical fear response. That parasympathetic system shuts down and the body cannot move.

While that is true, the fear response is more complicated. Let's take plane crashes as an example.

Often, people in plane crashes would have survived if they had just headed toward the exist. But they don’t. They stay in their seats. They freeze. And it is not freezing out of fear like an opossum playing dead. They freeze because the brain cannot imagine the consequences of something so horrible. They think - everything is going to be ok….I don’t feel my lungs filling up. Psychologists call this “pre-mortem” thinking.

No one wants to have these conversations. Rape is a disgusting topic. But we need to. Women often freeze when assaulted. Some can even have an orgasm during rape due to non-concordance arousal.

Perhaps if we understood the fear response, we might understand rape victims better.

Thanks for sharing your story.