NOVA

As you can see here, we have a baseline, outlined in green, which can also be called our window of tolerance. When we're in our element and feel a sense of safety and connection to others, we are more aware, calm, grounded, and in control of ourselves. The part of our nervous system naturally in charge of this state is the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps our body rest, digest, relate to others, and heal or recover.

When there's a threat to our well-being, our body naturally turns to Fight or Flight, which is the body's mobilization to keep us safe. In this state, our sympathetic nervous system floods our body with adrenaline and cortisol. These are chemicals that activate our heart rate, speed up our breathing, tense our muscles for heavy mobile activity, and pause our digestion and immune response—because this is no time to rest or recover. It's a time to survive.

But what happens when we can't do anything to survive? What happens if we're in a position where we cannot defend ourselves or escape from what is threatening our lives?

This is inescapable shock! And we can only respond to it by freezing. Animals do this to not be noticed by their predator. (You can tell that Simon is instinctively attempting the same thing when he is Perceived by both creatures much greater than him: the Eel and the Eye.) But when prolonged freezing cannot lead us to safety, because of the nature of a danger that is inescapable, our body shuts down.

This is where dissociation comes in.

We can see that the events of the movie are not the first time Simon has experienced inescapable shock. Long-lasting relational or organized trauma such as Eden is so difficult, if not downright impossible, to affront or escape that the brain's only response is to either freeze, fawn (a common trauma response in abuse), and/or flop (collapse). But an even greater, physically inescapable shock is enforced in the SM-13, which retraumatizes an already traumatized Simon. And though he tries his hardest to argue, maneuver, bargain, and plead his way out, he still can't. And worst of all, in order to be free, he has to repeat it all over again in thirty minutes.

This is why he begins to heavily dissociate in the third act of the movie. Being in a prolonged state of hyperarousal (a state of panic and rage), but without the ability to carry out fight or flight, was too much. So he instead swung to the other extreme: hypoarousal. This is why he was unresponsive to what he saw in the camera after being warned by (what we assume to be) his mother's voice about the trap the Eel had set.

He stared at the screen for a long time, but he didn't seem to assimilate it despite the many times he took a picture of the wreckage of SM-8. If anything, coughing blood was what temporarily snapped him out of it, but not for long, as shown by the following shots:

The camera blurring in and out of new shot compositions tells us he lost time again, staring at his bloodied hand and later standing by the console, unmoving. We don’t know for how long he stood like this—neither does he. What brought him back to a semi-grounded state was the computer’s alert that it was connecting to the SM-8. His hand recoils away from the accelerator when it does. This implies that, while heavily dissociated, he was pushing the SM-13 close enough to establish that connection, while knowing it could be a trap and it could lead to his doom. Here’s this short but amazing sequence in video form to clarify what i’m trying to get at here:

It's just fascinating how, if you pay attention, you can in fact pick up on simon’s earlier freeze signs, even from the very first time the proximity sensor activates, and how they're in crescendo until finally spiraling in this very impactful scene. Here are just a few shots portraying his freeze responses, they’re actually too many to count!

It’s one of the best portrayals of PTSD/C-PTSD i’ve seen in a while. Especially something as misunderstood as dissociation.

This scene is so important. It tells us that even those who fight the longest, who try to be the strongest, have a limit. It was here where his window of tolerance, his threshold, had shattered. Because what do you mean you have somehow escaped from a dark pit, a series of caves where a monster lured you, deceived you, crumbled your reality, made you see That Which Man Cannot See, only to be forced to go back in order to be rescued? Simon literally said, “I thought I died... I might've died.” Look at the way his features twitch when that sinks in. They’re very subtle micro-expressions, but they’re there.

He won’t mention this again, because trauma of this caliber is, by definition, unnameable, indescribable. The only natural response would be to put up an amnesia barrier and move on. He can’t fall into a crisis now—he has to survive.

But if survival means having to relive it all again? If survival means facing death in the eye? Is there a greater example of inescapable shock repeating itself than the fact that he had to make his way to hell against his will? Again?

This naturally explains why, even after he reaches the SM-8, is gathering its Black Box data, and has to race against time to reach Ava again, Simon becomes even slower to react and more vulnerable to getting stuck in freeze states. It becomes harder and harder to fight the inertia of stillness and produce momentum. The gravity of trauma is becoming much too heavy to bear. It comes to the point that he has to verbally spur himself forward, to varying degrees of moderate to no success. This is only compounded when the SM-8’s pilot speaks in the last recording, and he freezes in horror when he recognizes that voice. The slow coming-alive of the ship renders him equally frozen, until he drives himself into action, piloting the transforming SM-13 out of the caves. But once again, he’s left staring horrified at the fact that the SM-13 is not the only one mutating—he is too.

But then something crucial happens. Or rather, Ava speaks.

Simon refuges himself in the one source of human connection he has left, scrambling to the speaker like a lifeline (the same way he clings to a holster in the search of fleeting touch). He sounds slightly dazed when he tries to communicate that he’s ill, but he can’t seem to find the words for it. Ava tries to silence him to enlist him in one more task, but it’s actually the Eel that succeeds in rendering him mute with terror once more. Throughout the entire time that Ava was held hostage, he was visibly unable to move.

But she brings him a small moment of connection—a repeated call to his name, a genuine apology, and the weight of her belief in humanity’s chance to survive as more than the both of them. This connection allows for her death to not bring the collapse that the Eel expected in Simon. Instead, he felt rage.

gifs courtesy of @blursbian (idk why i can’t link them to the post)

Because Ava tried to rectify her dehumanization of Simon, re-humanizing him by believing he has a purpose for good and the power to make a difference—that he is the only one who can do this. She believed this to the point of sacrificing her life for his own. She showed him there was worth not just in his survival, but in his fight for the world’s survival.

This single-handedly switched his mentality from helplessness to defiance. In spite of his certain coming death, he had enough hope to do go down fighting.

A person died for a person died for all people.