When Movement Becomes Survival in Grief and Trauma: Lessons from Law and Order: SVU

Law and Order: SVU has been one of my favorite shows since Season 12. I wasn't sure if it was for me, but my sister got me hooked in 2011 (and I thank her for that). I have and still do wtach on live television as Captain Olivia Benson and her squad, including Sargeant Amanda Rollins, work to solve the crimes associated with special victims in New York City. Full Disclosure: I love Olivia Benson as a character and am Team Olivia all the way. I even dressed up as Olivia Benson in 2021 for Halloween. I think of her as a spirit animal, of sorts.

When Safety Is Broken, the Nervous System Remembers on Law and Order: SVU

In a Season 27 episode of Law & Order: SVU, Amanda Rollins sits across from beloved character therapist George Huang after surviving a home invasion and physical attack. No one died. But something was lost.

When asked how she’s feeling, she answers simply:“I’m sleeping fine… no nightmares.”And then, more honestly:“Well… [I think about] what I would have done differently. What could have happened. If my kids were home.”

This is one of the quieter ways grief appears—not through funerals or condolences, but through the mind’s relentless search for alternate timelines. Through the nervous system bracing. Through the loss of something invisible but foundational: the belief that your world is safe.

Grief isn’t only about death. It’s about loss. And trauma often takes from us long before death ever does.

When Movement Becomes Survival

Watching her, I realized this wasn’t simply dedication or strength. It was something deeper—something the nervous system learns when safety has been broken. Movement had become survival.

In the scene, the therapist names something profound:“It’s easy to acquaint movement with survival. Evolutionarily, it makes sense.”

And Amanda responds: “Yes. I don’t like being still.”

This is the grief of the shattered assumptive world—the loss of the internal map that once said, I am safe in my home. I can protect my family. I have control.

After trauma, stillness can feel dangerous. Stillness is where the nervous system catches up. Stillness is where the body remembers.

So we move.

We return to work quickly. We stay busy. We focus. Amanda says, “I feel focused.” And on the surface, focus looks like strength. It looks like competence. It looks like resilience. But often, focus is survival.

The Helpers Who Learned to Brace

This pattern doesn’t live only in fictional law enforcement characters. I see it in grief professionals, caregivers, and helpers every day—people whose nervous systems learned that vigilance was necessary to stay safe.

And if I’m honest, I see it in myself.

Many of us did not arrive in helping professions untouched. We arrived shaped.

When Amanda is asked about her childhood, she explains she grew up with an abusive father and an addicted sister. The therapist gently reflects:“That must be a very unsettling way to grow up.”Amanda responds, “Yeah. I’m always waiting for the shoe to drop. Brace for impact.”

Brace for impact.

This is a nervous system that learned early that safety was not guaranteed. That stillness did not equal peace. That vigilance was protective. For many helpers, caring for others didn’t begin as a profession. It began as an adaptation.

In grief groups, I often hear participants say things like, “I don’t know how to slow down,” or “If I stop, I’m afraid everything will catch up to me.”

And they’re right.

Because slowing down is not just behavioral—it’s neurological. It requires the nervous system to relearn safety. This isn’t dysfunction. It’s adaptation. It’s what a wise nervous system does when stillness once meant danger.

Healing Is Not the Opposite of Survival

Healing doesn’t begin by forcing stillness. It begins when the nervous system slowly learns that stillness is safe again. After loss or trauma, movement can feel like control. Productivity can feel like protection. Helping others can feel like purpose when our own internal world feels uncertain.

But beneath the movement, grief waits patiently—not as an enemy, but as a messenger.

Not to break us, but to be acknowledged.

The therapist offers Amanda one final piece of guidance:“What I would like for you to do… is to slow down.”

This is perhaps the hardest instruction of all.

Not because slowing down is simple. But because slowing down requires trust. It requires the nervous system to believe that it is no longer in immediate danger.

Grief work, at its core, is not about forcing stillness. It’s often about creating enough safety that stillness becomes possible.

Many support professionals carry their own histories of trauma and loss into the rooms where they sit with others. This is not a flaw. It is often the very thing that allows them to recognize grief in its many forms—the grief of safety lost, the grief of identity shaken, the grief of a nervous system that learned too early to brace.

Healing does not mean we never move. Movement helped us survive.

Healing means we are no longer only surviving.

Healing means, slowly, gently, learning that we are allowed to be still and figure out the next steps. We are allowed to gently relearn the world around us after a loss has changed our sense of safety and trust.

Law and Order: SVU Episode: Season 27, Episode 11, "Career Psychopath”

Want to Explore Shattered Assumptions and Loss of the Assumptive World Further?

Read Death, Grief, and Shattered Assumptions article by Eleanor Haley, What's Your Grief

https://whatsyourgrief.com/shattered-assumptions/