What is the Fight or Flight Response?
The fight or flight response ignites when our brain sends chemical signals to our major muscle groups to either fight off the danger or else escape from it. NOW!
"Three things come without asking: fear, jealously, and love."
"Three things come without asking: fear, jealously, and love."
-- Irish Proverb
Fear does come without asking. It is a physiological response. If we perceive enough danger to make us afraid, whether that danger is actually real or not, our body goes into self-defense mode.
What other fun stuff happens to our bodies?
Our breathing speeds up, our blood pressure cranks, and our heart hammers the inside of our rib cage. Food digestion slows, and blood flow diverts to the major muscle groups in the body (so that they can partake in the fighting or the fleeing).
The fight or flight response tries to take over your body. We want to use that surge of energy it gives us to our advantage, but also maintain enough control so that it doesn't overpower us. To survive, we need to keep some degree of cool and focus on the task in front of us.
The Fight or Flight Response and Fear: Why they Suck.
"Fear really sucks because it means you're not focusing on what you're doing."
The downside of the fight or flight response is that if we lose our struggle to get at least some control of it, it can paralyze us. Sure, the body surges adrenalin, floods major muscles, and your breathing rate and heart rate seem to be in a neck-and-neck race to circumnavigate the Earth, but what do you do with all this?
A few things can happen. First, The Suck: You can freeze up, essentially the way a driver can flood an engine. This turns out to be a bad day for you because it knocks you off track. The Freeze keeps you from focusing your attention on accomplishing what you need to be doing, whether that be to survive that mugging, prepare for that exam, or practice your upcoming presentation in front of that client who's business you're trying to win. So that's why we train. We want to develop our mind and body to the point where our performance rises to the standard of second-nature slickness.
The Fight or Flight Response and Fear: Why it's a Gift.
“Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination … a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.”
Fortunately, people are able to forecast their fears, to imagine the "what if?" scenarios that could bring them a bad day. Those of us who have made the commitment to learn and practice martial arts understand this well. We use our imagination to realize that the awful things that happen in the world daily, could one day happen to "me" or my companions. This is a gift - our ability to conjure in our mind nightmarish scenes that haven't happened to us - because it gives us the time to prepare for them in advance, if the troubles do indeed ever present themselves. That said, I hope you walk everyday of your life without Danger ever stopping to greet you.
Three Ways to Upgrade Your Control Over the Fight or Flight Response
# 1. Practice your diaphragmatic breathing. Inhale through your nose for a 3 count - expanding your stomach instead of your chest - then exhale out your mouth for a 6 count. Do this a few times everyday. It will help calm you, somewhat, when your heart beat, breath, and blood pressure start to rocket when you're in danger. Calmness brings clarity, which enables you to perform # 2 to the best of your ability.
# 2. Keep training. Practice your martial art defenses and counterattacks so that you can perform these as automatically as breathing. It's like memorizing your multiplication tables in elementary school. Just keep practicing. Repetition will teach your brain which chemical and electrical signals to send out to the muscles you need to perform. Keep going, and...
# 3. Have faith in yourself. Embrace the confidence that you've earned by doing #'s 1 & 2. Have faith in your abilities and your practice. Have faith that you're one of the few who have glimpsed at the possibility of a fearful outcome, and you've prepared for it so that you may influence how this unwanted event will play out.
If you're reading this, that means you're already thinking about taking care of yourself and the people closest to you. I'm betting on you for sure.
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