When we feel threatened, we have three responses typically.
1. If we think that we can defeat our opponent, we fight.
2. If we think there is not much chance of that, we flee.
3. But suppose we can’t fight or flee, then our nervous system goes into a kind of shut
down; we freeze.
The autonomic nervous system has two parts – the sympathetic nervous system and
the para-sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is actually what
activates us to get ready to fight or flee. You need more blood, you need more oxygen,
you need muscle tension to run – it stimulates all those things. The para-sympathetic
nervous system is actually what helps us rest, relax; this is what is active when we are
digesting or taking a nap or lazing in the sun. In effect, when we feel threatened, our
sympathetic nervous system says fight or flee, and it gets our whole body activated to
deal with the threat, and when the threat is over, then the para-sympathetic nervous
system comes in and says, you are safe, you relax, you made it. Imagine an animal in the
savannahs... a deer being chased by a lion. Once it survives, it doesn’t fret that the lion
might come back. But with humans, it is different... the threat is gone but we are still
fretting that it might come back!
In some situations when an animal can’t flee so fast, can’t fight, its sympathetic nervous
system gives so much adrenal and cortisone and thyroxin to the body to fight, that it
is as if a fuse goes off. And that’s when the para-sympathetic nervous system says, oh,
the body can’t take this, so it presses the brake. So, the accelerator and the brake go on
together and that’s the freeze response. The freeze response is not that one is checked out;
one is over activated and the brake is on as well.
When we feel threatened, we go into a fight, flight or freeze response. But why is it that
sometimes we know that this person doesn’t mean us any harm, or if I lose this job I will
find another one, or it might be nice as it would give me time to be with my family, but
still we feel stressed out? Why does that happen? You tell yourself that it is not as bad as
it looks, but still you feel really bad. Or if you feel there is a snake, though your mind tells
you it is a stick, but you still feel not very sure.
This is because we have three different brains, within the skull. One is the neo-cortex,
which is the topmost part, where the grey matter is – that is what actually typically
we think of as being human – ability to self-reflect, to make meaning out of things,
communication skills. The next is the limbic brain, which we have in common with the
mammals, and this gives us the emotional information about things – ‘that thing feels
good, that thing makes me sad’. And then we have the reptilian brain, which we have
in common with the reptiles and which hasn’t changed much since the reptiles – and
that’s what kicks into action when we are threatened in some way. Whether we like it or
not, unconsciously, first we respond from our reptilian brain when we feel threatened;
in the beginning we have very little access to our emotional brain, and almost no access
to neo-cortex.
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