Fight or Flight ?

[Fight, Flight & Freeze …] by Dr. Vivian Tu

The reactions of Fight or Flight have been widely used as a behavioural information. However, without knowing much into how they work and where these tendencies come from is to permit the patterns of behaviours to continue. I am hoping this article could explain the Autonomic Nervous System in a simplest way and so we get to understand cognitively ourselves a little bit more.

Fight, Flight and Freeze are regular responses to external threats or the perceptions of threats. The most common scenes are how the dogs react to one another on the streets that you might notice on your way to work. One dog is feisty (fight), ready to scare off the other walk-by dog even though they never met one another before, whereas one dog crutches down, scared, (freeze) when the other dog dashes the other direction to escape from any commotions of encounter (flight). 

Let’s presume all four dogs mentioned here are unharmful without any intention to hurt the others and there have no pre-existent social interactions among them before today. Why they react so differently to the circumstances? It might be the personalities, their familiarity (exposure) to the dog world, their previous experience with other dogs. These behaviours are demonstrating how they would react to their own perceptions of the threats. 

Imagine if one person has had been hurt by the betrayal of the partner’s lies and cheating, this deeply heartbroken experience in prior love could easily inflicted by the ‘seemingly’ similar scenario – her past hurts could motivate herself to accuse the current romantic partner (fight) before checking in the reality, immobile her willingness to furtherly involve in any bonding interactions (shut-down) or persuade herself to leave and give up (flight) a potentially great relationship. These reactions are triggered by the subjectively perceived interpretation (for example, the unreceived miscalls) and are administered as auto-pilot behaviours without consciously awareness of own acting behaviours. 

The Autonomic Nervous System has three parts, located from the lower spine to the brain section. The Sympathetic Nervous System is usually the first to react in the face of the seemingly threats with activeness in motions - fight or flight, to resolve the confrontational stress. When the stress is not reduced, the perception of threats continues, the Hyperarousal state of Sympathetic system makes one’s aggression uncontrollable (in emotions) and the symptoms of diarrheal induced (in biophysics). 

As the hyperarousal state reaches it’s extreme –  the physical body unable to handle or contain the overload of chemical reactions, the failsafe survival mechanism kicks in to spike the Dorsal Vagal System to overwhelm the Sympathetic arousal and activate the exhaustion state of the person. Then, the person enters the state of freeze, shutting down, spacey, depressing mode and numbing.     

Now we know why we react to certain situations in such a way, how we could be regulated between these two nervous systems? Here is how we introduce the third part of Nervous System – Parasympathetic’s Ventra Vagal. This part of the nervous system can be nurtured, cultured by the slowness in the breathing and calmness in the heartbeats, in the physical state, and by being in a trusting and safe environment, in the psychological state.    

There are several ways to regulate our own nervous system:

1.     Recognising and understanding our own defence system (for example, what are considered the risk triggers);

2.     Regularly calming the physical body, by mindfulness breathing and soothing the defence system, by doing mindfulness Yoga;

3.     Reaching out to find the Psychotherapy Counsellor with whom you could form a safe and trusting relationship;

4.     Rounding yourself in the group of people who support and embrace you for who you are; 

And, the last one but not the least, 5. Readiness to accept ‘this is how I am at this current moment,’ the state changes all the time, sit with the state of mind (emotion) and allow the state of mind to pass; be gentle, be kind and be caring with yourself.

The knowing might not necessarily guaranty a magical transformation or a recovery from issues, like anger issues or emotional detachment, but this knowledge might provide us a bit of understanding into recognising the patterns of behaviours in ourselves. Often, by just noticing ourselves having choices and options in how we react to the situations, the frequency of us falling into the old patterns would reduce. Even if we still react in the same way, in the old patterns, that is okay, too, because, by noticing this repeated reaction, it has reduced the force/power of the routine.  

And this recognition, this awareness, is already a significant step into being an authentic self.    

And, as for then discomfort and difficult breathing under the face mask, there have been several studies behind how the Nervous System is in action. How the surgical masks trigger the past memories of visiting a senior relative in hospital, remind of the death and illness. These triggers activate the Sympathetic Nervous System to release the chemicals in order to tackle the fear and terror from the memory (Amygdala). The Hyperarousal state increases the frequency of the breathing cycles, as a result of the shallower depth of breathing, and consequently the heart starts racing. This is the ripple effect triggered by the past memories how our brain associates surgical, facial masks with death, illness and loss. In the past months of Covid lockdowns, I have been wondering how we could take the control back from the panic brain:

1.     Purchasing some washable masks in the colours and fabrics that you find comfort in; sewing the initials or personal ‘magical touch’ onto the corner of masks.

2.     Preparing your connections with the masks before you head out of the door, by having your mask on, holding the face with the pawns, building that connections of trust and protection between you and the masks - knowing that these masks are the guardian here, acting and accompanying to keep you safe.

3.    Pause and slow down your breathing, whenever you notice the shallow, fast breathing is happening. Bring yourself to a space where you could concentrate on the breathing than anything other tasks, and find a wall to lean (can be a bench, a tree, a bookshelf), then -

inbreathe for two seconds, out breathe for three seconds; repeat.

inbreathe for three seconds, out breathe for four seconds; repeat again.

inbreathe for four seconds, out breathe for five seconds; repeat.

… until your Sympathetic nervous system is not hyperactive anymore, and the safety signal of Ventra Vagal system is back in place.

4.    Practising wearing the facial masks from a short 30-minute corner-store visit to an hour of stroll at the nearby parks. Gradually building your skin’s familiarity to the masks, and allow the masks start blending into the necessities of the outfit.

This is a new beginning of the beautiful future…

Dr. Vivian Chiahua Tu, Psychotherapy Counsellor and Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Teacher. Artof-Living.Org