Panic vs Blankness: The Two Opposite Trauma Responses We Misinterpret

Panic means the trauma is loud. Blankness means the trauma is perceived as life-threatening.

Image generated using AI under the creative direction and composition of Mint Achanaiyakul.

© Mint Achanaiyakul — Founder of Crimson Cat Events & Psychomedia

Abstract

Trauma expression is often categorized by intensity: crying, shaking, panic attacks, or visible distress. Yet many survivors of severe trauma exhibit the opposite pattern: emotional silence, detachment, or blankness during triggering situations. These opposite presentations are frequently misinterpreted in clinical, social, and diagnostic settings.

This paper argues that panic and blankness are not different levels of trauma activation. They are opposite survival strategies based on the nervous system’s prediction of whether emotional expression will maintain or threaten safety. Panic occurs when accessing the memory feels survivable. Blankness emerges when accessing the memory feels intolerable. This paper proposes a mechanism-based, testable model: panic reflects permitted emotional access, while blankness reflects protective inhibition when predicted load exceeds capacity.

By defining panic and blankness not as gradients of severity but as opposing forms of protection, this article challenges common assumptions about emotional expression and proposes a clearer model of trauma-based autonomic decision-making. This panic vs blankness trauma response framework reframes both reactions as protection, not personality or motivation.

Panic vs Blankness in Trauma Response Patterns

1. The Panic vs Blankness Trauma Response Myth: “More vs Less”

In many clinical and social settings, visible emotion can be equated with deeper pain. A client who sobs is assumed to be “in touch” with their trauma, while a client who becomes expressionless is assumed to be detached, avoidant, or numb. This is an oversimplification. Panic and blankness do not represent high vs low emotion. They represent two different neural evaluations of danger.

A person crying may be profoundly dysregulated but still connected to body and feeling. A person who feels nothing may be protecting themselves so completely that conscious access to emotional content is not permitted. Blankness is not “less emotion.” It is total containment of emotion.

2. Panic: When the Nervous System Believes Expression Is Survivable

Panic is dramatic not because the trauma memory is “greater,” but because the nervous system predicts that emotional expression will not destroy the self. The system releases stored survival energy through trembling, crying, shaking, shouting, and rapid breathing because discharge is calculated as the safest option.

This aligns with traumatic arousal patterns described by van der Kolk in 2014 in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, where sympathetic activation can reflect incomplete defensive responses attempting to resolve and discharge. In this state, the survivor is overwhelmed but present. The body is flooded, but awareness is still online.

3. Blankness: When Expression Is Too Dangerous to Permit

Blankness, numbness, silence, and emotional vacuum occur when the nervous system predicts that expression would overload the body or dismantle the self. Instead of releasing emotion, the system suppresses it. Instead of amplifying signal, it reduces signal.

Research on trauma-related dissociation emphasizes that when mobilization is not viable, consciousness can constrict rather than expand. This is described by Lanius in 2015 in Trauma-related dissociation and altered states of consciousness: a call for clinical, treatment, and neuroscience research. It is also consistent with autonomic defense models described by Porges in 2011 in The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation, where immobilization can emerge when other strategies fail. At the level of subjective experience, this can present as a shutdown of felt sense, affect, and inner access.

Developmental affect regulation research further supports this gating logic: under extreme threat, the system prioritizes survival over integration, with right-hemisphere regulatory disruption central to traumatic attachment outcomes, as described by Schore in 2002 in Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Blankness is not apathy, indifference, or low reactivity. It is often more extreme than panic, because panic preserves awareness while blankness reduces awareness in order to preserve life.

4. Why Survivors Are Misdiagnosed

Clinical systems can reward emotional visibility and misread emotional absence. Survivors who cry may be labeled “engaged.” Survivors who go blank may be labeled “resistant,” “dismissive,” “unmotivated,” or “lacking insight.” In family systems, the pattern can repeat: the panicking survivor is seen as “sensitive,” while the blank survivor is judged as “cold.”

Both interpretations miss the same core truth.

Panic = the body predicts it can survive access to the memory.

Blankness = the body predicts it cannot.

The survivor in panic can be safer inside their trauma than the survivor in blankness, because panic implies access is permitted, while blankness implies access is blocked for protection. This same gating logic also explains why some survivors report blank inner imagery during visualization prompts: perception itself can be shut down when predicted load exceeds capacity.

This paper does not claim that panic always indicates mild trauma or that blankness always indicates the most severe trauma. Individuals can move between states across time, contexts, and trigger types. The claim is narrower: when blankness reliably appears at points of emotional access, it often functions as a protective veto rather than a lack of feeling or motivation.

Related: Blank Imagery During Visualization: Why “I See Nothing” Isn’t a Lack of Imagination — It’s Self-Protection

5. Implications for Healing

When clinicians recognize blankness as protection, not avoidance, the therapeutic stance changes:

• Safety becomes the entry point, not emotional intensity.

• Tracking autonomic shifts becomes more important than extracting narrative.

• Somatic stabilization becomes a prerequisite for memory access.

• Progress is measured not by emotional visibility, but by increasing capacity to remain embodied while approaching meaning.

A survivor crying is not “ahead of” the survivor who goes blank. They are on different branches of the same survival tree, and those branches require different pacing, different sequencing, and equal respect.

Notes on Novelty

Trauma literature has documented both sympathetic arousal and dissociative shutdown. This paper adds a clinical reframing: panic and blankness are not two ends of an emotional spectrum, but opposite protective strategies selected based on predicted survivability of emotional access.

This model also produces a simple clinical prediction: as safety and regulation capacity increase, survivors who default to blankness should show gradual return of inner access (felt sense, imagery, emotion) before full narrative recall is possible. In other words, “more feeling” is not proof of “more trauma.” It can be proof of more capacity.

Achanaiyakul, Mint. Panic vs Blankness Trauma Response: The Two Opposite Trauma Responses We Misinterpret (2025).

References

van der Kolk, 2014. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.

Lanius, 2015. Trauma-related dissociation and altered states of consciousness: a call for clinical, treatment, and neuroscience research.

Porges, 2011. The polyvagal theory: neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation.

Schore, 2002. Dysregulation of the right brain: a fundamental mechanism of traumatic attachment and the psychopathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder.