“However, I’ve always wondered whether the nervous system has some kind of mechanism to protect the organism from the physiological effects of prolonged stress.”
Generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, depersonalization, derealization, withdrawal, anti-socialism, multiple personality disorder are all “mechanisms” to “shield” the person from the initial event.
They’re all types of psychological “displacement behavior”.
When your brain can’t cope with the real trauma, it will often manufacture other more generalized and vague anxieties to keep you from focusing on the real injury.
Those sound to me like symptoms of the action of whatever mechanism is present. Kind of like saying that rhinitis or asthma are mechanisms to fight allergens.
great post, thanks.