Fight or Flight

Imagine this…

You see an unexpected email from your boss asking to meet right away with no additional information.

You open the email and have the immediate thought that something bad will come up in that meeting, and feel a sinking in the pit of your stomach, tightness in your chest, and sweat on your brow.

This is a classic example of autonomic arousal in action. 

​The perception of a threat (being reprimanded or fired) often leads to these physiological arousal symptoms. The bigger and more frightening the threat, the stronger the physiological response.

 The tricky part is that it can happen even when the threat may not be real (your boss could be asking to see you to give you positive feedback on a recent project or to ask a very neutral question).

It is in these ambiguous situations that jumping to interpretations that trigger the fight or flight response can cause more distress than is necessary.  

Fight or Flight - what is it?

"Fight or Flight" is a catchy phrase for describing what happens to our bodies when our sympathetic nervous system becomes aroused.

Think back to our cavemen ancestors and imagine yourself out gathering berries when you look up and staring you down is a saber-toothed tiger. Your body is instinctively going to prepare to either run for your life or fight off this attacker.

In current times, you are not likely to be faced with a wild animal threatening your existence, however, our brains are still wired to have these responses whenever we do sense danger — whether the danger is physically in front of us (e.g., oncoming traffic, a dark isolated street) or perceived (e.g., anxiety, worry, stress).

Why is it important to know about this?

When our bodies experience fight or flight — aka “autonomic arousal” — we go through a very fast series of physiological changes that can have lasting effects on our mood, attention, concentration, and our hormone balance.

While this is a natural process, and part of life, it is also something that can become sensitive to overstimulation — meaning the trigger for your autonomic arousal response can become too quick to activate. Also, because this can be an uncomfortable experience, it's possible to develop learned behaviors to avoid this process that can be maladaptive (such as avoiding public transportation or social interactions for fear of panic).

The more we can feel in control of our autonomic arousal responses, the more likely we are to recover from them quickly and with fewer residual effects.

Is there an off switch?

Why yes! Our bodies are beautifully designed to be in a state of homeostasis (picture a level see-saw). So what comes up, can also come down.

Our fight or flight response is set off by our sympathetic nervous system. Its counterpart, the parasympathetic nervous system, is in charge of bringing our bodies back to baseline (to remember this is the calming system, picture a parachute gently gliding down to the ground).

We can activate our parasympathetic nervous system through exercises like deep diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and grounding exercises, like the ones we have below in the 'Tools' section. 

Tools

Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness and meditation practices serve to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Meditation sourced from Dr. Danny Penman & his book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World.

Try “Names,” a mindfulness exercise that helps you to observe and label your internal processes without reacting.

Try "Manage," a quick exercise using the breath to calm difficult emotions.

Take A Breath

Taking deep breaths with long slow exhales puts pressure on the vagus nerve and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, in effect, slowing our heart rate and blood pressure, increasing our digestion, and halting the release of cortisol and adrenaline being pumped into the body by the sympathetic nervous system. The effects of this are a sense of physiological calm, an ability to think more clearly, and reduced anxiety or panic.

One helpful breathing technique is to breathe in through the nose to the count of four and breathe out through the mouth to the count of eight.  When you exhale, purse your lips and blow gently like you are blowing out a candle or blowing a bubble.  This will help you slow down the exhale.

When doing this breathing exercise it is helpful to use diaphragmatic breathing. Take a deep belly breath instead of a shallow chest breath. Most of us tend to breathe shallow chest breaths most of the time (belly breathing is a somewhat learned skill). A belly breath is deeper, allowing the diaphragm to relax and the lungs to expand downward.  This results in more oxygen being provided to the body with each breath.

If you are feeling the impact of fight or flight, take 5 deep breaths and see how you feel. If still feeling anxious, repeat again.

If you feel like you are suffering from an overactive fight or flight response, try some of these skills on your own, set up an appointment with a therapist, or come take a mindfulness class here at Octave.