GHIA: When the Entire System Stays "High On"
Interview with Somatic Experiencing Teacher Mahshid Hager
Introduction
My colleague Saskia, with whom I run terugnaarhetmidden.nl, drew my attention to a podcast about GHIA: Global High Intensity Activation. Two months ago, I wrote an extensive article about GHIA, a topic that has an important connection with early life stress, Somatic Experiencing® (SE™), and polyvagal theory.
In the podcast conversation, host Lisa Danylchuk interviews therapist and SE teacher Mahshid Hager about GHIA. The conversation is titled “Global High-Intensity Activation, Rhythmicity & Healing with Mahshid Hager.” Danylchuk’s podcast series is called “How We Can Heal.”
Very fascinating, in my opinion, because there isn’t much good information available about GHIA. The term comes from SE, so it’s particularly interesting when a teacher speaks about it. Once I started listening, I was captivated by Mahshid Hager’s pleasant tone and substantive knowledge, and before I knew it, I was already halfway through. So I quickly grabbed my notes and made a summary!
Global High-Intensity Activation
Mahshid describes GHIA as a state in which not only your thoughts or emotions accelerate, but in which the entire body, the entire physiology, shifts into gear in one movement. According to her, it’s about an overall or global response of the nervous system: a surge, a tidal wave of energy and activation that moves through the system, and in which the person as a whole can end up in extreme survival strategies. It’s not simply being “busy,” “stressed,” or “hyper,” but a way in which the body organizes itself, as if something important is constantly at stake.
She links GHIA to situations in which physiology approaches the most extreme limits of survival. She mentions examples such as severe fetal distress (an emergency in the womb), suffocation, (near) drowning, dangerously high fever, and electrocution. These are events in which the body not only experiences tension but is overwhelmed and switches to end-stage survival strategies. The core is that the system must process an enormous amount of activation, and that activation doesn’t always naturally return to a baseline of rest.
Activation as “Default Setting” Instead of a Temporary Reaction
What Mahshid emphasizes here is that GHIA doesn’t only occur after such acute, extreme events. She also sees it in people who grew up in circumstances where safety, attunement, and rest were not reliably present. When caregivers themselves are in a survival mode, and the child thus grows up in a field of threat, unpredictability, or emotional absence, activation easily becomes the baseline. This is not a free choice; the body has learned: staying alert is wise.
The result is that for this type of nervous system, calm and rest are very difficult to achieve. The person can function, study, care, perform, and receive admiration based on that, but internally the system remains at a setting that was originally intended for short periods of mobilization (action). Rest becomes something that isn’t self-evident, often even something the body distrusts.
Why Slowing Down Can Feel Threatening at First
An important point in her explanation is that slowing down isn’t automatically experienced as safe for someone with GHIA. She says it very directly: for people living in “global high,” slowing down can be a danger signal. For their physiology, safety lies mainly in higher mobilization. That’s what worked, what provided rescue, what has been a reliable strategy. From that perspective, it’s understandable that stillness, pause, or rest doesn’t immediately evoke relaxation but rather unrest, discomfort, or even panic. The body knows the path of keeping moving better than the path of becoming still.
Mahshid illustrates this with her own experience in therapy. She describes how her therapist gave her a simple assignment: take a short rest between work and picking up the children, and the car ride doesn’t count. In her perception, that was absurd. She had no time, there was so much to do. The reaction was exactly what she later describes as characteristic: an inner conviction that rest isn’t possible, that it’s dangerous or irresponsible, that you must keep going. Yet she noticed an effect almost immediately, even with the agreed-upon mini-variant of rest. Not that she suddenly became “zen,” but the ability to downshift from mobilization was rediscovered by her nervous system: there was more space, more presence, and less rush in contact with her children.
With this, she also tells something important, something she repeats several times in the conversation: it doesn’t have to be big. When GHIA is the fundamental tone, the first step isn’t immediately pursuing lots of rest and stillness but rather creating a small moment in which the nervous system can taste something different.
Rhythmic Capacity: Rediscovering Natural Shifting
Mahshid uses the word rhythmicity as a core concept. For her, Somatic Experiencing isn’t about “making people calm” but about restoring the ability to shift. She speaks of an innate rhythm directed toward more coherence, health, and being present. The problem with GHIA is that the system has lost that rhythmic capacity or no longer dares to use it.
She connects this to a classic physiological idea: mobilization is a function of the sympathetic system (the mobilization system, which gives us the energy to fight or flee). According to Mahshid, one of her teachers, Kathy Kain, formulates it this way: the sympathetic system is meant to lift you up and move you. That’s how our biology works. The problem arises when that mobilization continues for a long time, becomes chronic, and the movement toward recovery, healthy metabolism, and rest doesn’t sufficiently come into play. In her words, it's as if you’re constantly using the “gas pedal” and the “brakes” are no longer in view. And it’s precisely that shifting, that interplay, and that natural pendulation that are essential for well-being and growth.
Mahshid also explains that the side effect of prolonged mobilization isn’t only physical exhaustion but also relational impoverishment. She mentions less connection with loved ones, but also less connection with yourself, with the here-and-now, and with playfulness. There may be a desire to connect, but the physiology is in a mode where connection isn’t the primary task. Survival is the task. And survival is generally not playful.
Mini-Pauses as Gateway
Mahshid’s practical recommendation is modest and, precisely therefore, achievable: start small. So not with the goal of immediately desiring rest, but to gather information and thus learn step by step. What she invites is curiosity in that brief stillness: what happens in your body when you do nothing for a moment? Where is tension located? Where is energy located? How does your system respond to standstill?
In this approach lies an important shift: rest isn’t something you “must be able to do” or “must do well,” but something you approach carefully and may explore. For someone with GHIA, it’s often better not to immediately frame rest as a solution but as an experiment. A few minutes, sometimes one minute. For example, as a short transition between two tasks. To let the nervous system experience that it can be safe to not accelerate for a moment.
GHIA and the Detour Through Freeze
One of the most essential pieces from her explanation concerns the relationship between chronic high activation and freeze. Mahshid describes that some people who have been “high on” for a long time only come to rest via a detour: by pushing themselves even further beyond a point where physiology takes over and shifts into energy conservation. Then comes a kind of hard standstill, a shutdown, not as nourishing rest, but as an emergency brake.
She thus sketches a pattern that you recognize in daily life in some people: the system cannot gradually descend but pendulates between two extremes. High activation, then collapse. Then push up again and then collapse once more. In that phase, the internal organs often begin to protest. She mentions examples such as chronic digestive complaints, autoimmune problems, fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and chronic inflammation. In her reasoning, this is very understandable: both extreme systems (high activation and shutdown) are designed for short-term emergencies. When they replace the daily rhythm and natural pendulation, damage occurs.
Importantly, she doesn’t present this as a simple causal story but as a way to understand how a body that has never learned to land safely still organizes “pauses.” Only those pauses are then costly and heavy.
Difference Between GHIA and Hyperarousal: A Nuance, Not a Hard Boundary
Conversation host Lisa Danylchuk asks about the difference between GHIA and hyperarousal as we know it from post-traumatic stress. Mahshid describes hyperarousal as something that frequently relates to a defense reaction that hasn’t been able to complete. She sketches a kind of blueprint of self-protection with phases: orienting toward threat, possibly seeking a solution together with others, then fight/flight/freeze, then survival and completion, and then returning to a state of relaxed alertness. If that sequence is interrupted somewhere, the body doesn’t get the signal that it’s over. Then the system remains in a continuous threat posture, as if the danger is still around the corner.
She describes GHIA as a different flavor, a state that can persist even long after the event, and that relates to a more global overwhelm and a different organization of safety and threat. She says it herself: it’s nuanced, and it manifests differently. With this, she doesn’t give a strict diagnostic boundary but does give a clinical intuition: some nervous systems aren’t only triggered but structurally switched to “high on.”
The Work Remains the Same
Later comes the question about bipolar disorder and other diagnoses. Mahshid is clear about this: Somatic Experiencing has changed her view on diagnoses. She acknowledges that a diagnosis can sometimes bring relief to clients because it gives a name and something to hold onto. But for her, the primary work isn’t the label but the regulation. She essentially says, If the diagnosis helps you, fine, but my work doesn’t change. She wants to offer tools for explicit self-regulation so that someone gains more access to rhythmic capacity.
She doesn’t call Somatic Experiencing a miracle cure for everyone but adds something important: regulation work doesn’t hurt anyone. It can always help to understand what happens in a threat, what your trauma history does to your symptoms, and how your system responds. With this, she positions GHIA not as a diagnosis to use as a label, but as a concept to understand the body again.
Curiosity as Key
If there’s one sentence that Mahshid offers as a working principle, it’s this: curiosity is an antidote to the trauma response. She explains why: in pure survival, curiosity is no longer available. But as soon as someone can say “yes” to what is and can also ask, “And what else is there?” something shifts, because the lens of attention becomes wider. In sessions, she uses that question precisely when someone is completely consumed by the siren of trauma: by pain, memories, and contraction. Then the intervention point isn’t to focus but to expand.
This fits with her description of empowerment: Mahshid sees herself as someone with a flashlight. Something is already functioning; otherwise, a client wouldn’t be in the practice room. Together they look for what does work, to strengthen it. From the idea that the body always carries traces of health and rhythm within itself, even if it has often been overwhelmed.
Collective Activation
In the final part, Mahshid connects GHIA to modern life without stating that we must give up all achievements for the sake of our nervous system. She emphasizes balance and talks about a year of absence from social media. On the outside, this seemed like disconnection to many of her online relationships, but she actually felt more connection. She checked the news in the morning, responded where she wanted to respond, and then went on with her day: present with clients, present in SE groups where she taught, and present with her family. She describes how the elimination of the constant feedback loop of online presence helped her to be the kind of engaged person she wanted to be: present and focused.
Mahshid also describes another mechanism: people see a headline in the news or an item in the news broadcast, and the activation is immediately palpable in the space. Our nervous system, designed to respond from connection, sees suffering and responds by wanting to act, but there’s no physical possibility to help. According to her, this is a recipe for disconnection: you have the idea that you’re engaged with the world but are actually less present in your own life. Your system wants to respond to a situation where you have no direct influence, and it shuts you off from that feeling. That’s why it’s essential to keep returning to what’s actually happening now in the body, in the space, in the moment.
Take-Home Message
According to Mahshid, dealing healthily with Global High-Intensity Activation isn’t about forcing toward relaxation but creating conditions whereby the system can experience rhythm again. That begins small, with short rest moments that may be uncomfortable, as long as there’s curiosity and the experience that there’s a choice.
And perhaps that’s her most important point: the rhythm is still there. The body isn’t “broken.” It has only learned to stay “on” and remain high in energy. That was survival. The therapist’s work is then teaching the body again that slowing down doesn’t always mean danger.
A Beautiful Conversation
It’s not clear to me whether Mahshid Hager sees herself as someone with a nervous system that carries GHIA. She has experienced many years of high activation (and there isn’t a hard boundary between the two). Born in Tehran (Iran), she fled with her parents to Germany at age 10 and moved to the US at age 20. She always had to prove herself and was always “on.” When she collapsed and came into contact with Somatic Experiencing, she rediscovered contact with her body, and a healing process began for her. And there remains a deep wound in the form of being cut off from your homeland, because Mahshid has never returned to Iran, and it doesn’t look like that will happen soon. She talks openly and fascinatingly about this in the conversation.
In any case, it was a pleasure to hear Mahshid, a wonderful example of embodied speaking. Someone with deep and experience-based knowledge, capable of clearly illuminating a difficult and heavy subject and giving hope without it becoming false hope.
You can watch and/or listen to the conversation below.
Want to Know More About Global High-Intensity Activation?
There are possibilities for support and guidance. Three excellent starting points are:
I already wrote an extensive article about it.
Of course, the website terugnaarhetmidden.nl. Here Saskia Ebus and I offer weekly online lessons, specifically for people with GHIA. There’s a page where interested parties can take a look behind the scenes.
Mad in the Netherlands has compiled a very informative and comprehensive quarterly issue about this subject.
If you want to search for a Somatic Experiencing therapist in your area, look at this page of SE-Nederland.
If you found this article worth reading and (not yet) feel like getting a paid subscription, you can always treat me to a cappuccino!