Are You Fight or Flight? Are You Sure?
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Our brains have a built-in response to the dangers we may face in our lives that is meant to aid us in reacting to those threats. The Fight-or-Flight Response is the term for the automatic physiological reaction in our body to those threats. This blog will cover what your stress response is and how chronic activation can impact you. Check out the end of the blog for strategies to help manage your stress response and how parents can help their children begin to regulate theirs.
When our ancient ancestors were faced with a large predator they would have to fight it for food/survival or flee from it for safety. This choice often needed to be immediate and their body would respond by initiating the release of neurochemicals and hormones, like adrenaline, to their extremities (arms/legs) to give them the ability to fight or flee from the threat. All this time later and our bodies still respond in almost the same way to danger. We also know of a third response, freeze, which can occur in situations that we can’t escape physically or mentally, where we feel a sense of frozen awareness or temporary paralysis.
The Fight-or-Flight Response would prime our body to react and then it would shut-off the release of hormones once the threat was over, leaving us to slowly come down from the physical effects of their release- like a racing heartbeat or shakiness in our arms and legs.
In modern times, though, we aren’t fighting for our food or lives typically, yet our fight-or-Flight Response can still be activated frequently and it still responds similarly to that of our ancestors. This can be a problem for us. Lets talk about why.
Imagine that you are driving your car and another vehicle pulls out quickly in front of you. Your Fight-or-Flight Response will kick in, flooding your brain and body with adrenaline so that it can hyper-focus on the road in front of you and communicate with your hands on the wheel and your foot on the brake- hopefully allowing you to navigate the situation safely and quickly. Once you avert the collision and realize you are safe again, your Fight-or-Flight Response will shut off. It can take a few minutes for your heartbeat to return to normal or the shaky feeling in your limbs to subside, but eventually your body will return to normal as no more hormones are being pumped in. This is how the stress response is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, though, our thoughts- including frustration, worry, self doubt, insecurities, etc- can also turn on our stress response. If in the previous scenario you spent the rest of your drive fuming about the situation and then continued to build your anger as you told others once you finished your drive, then you are continuing to reactivate your stress response. When we focus on our negative thoughts we continue to tell our mind that we are in a stressful situation still. That means that our brain is still priming our body to protect us by releasing neurochemicals but now the threat is solely in our mind,- so we aren’t able to use those hormones effectively and we aren’t able to shut off our stress response reasonably.
The same thing can occur with our anxious thoughts about the future. Constant anxiety or worry tricks our brain into thinking we are facing an actual threat in real life, verses the possibly unrealistic one we are fearing or frustrated with in our mind. We are having a physiological response to our thoughts even though a threatening situation is not actually occurring.
Learn more about how strongly our body responds to our thoughts here:
This can be problematic because of the other aspects that occur when our Fight-or-Flight Response is on. Our stress response temporarily shuts down the areas of our body that are not essential to aiding us during a threat such as our digestive system, our reproductive system, our growth system, and certain functions of our immune system. If these areas are consistently impacted by chronic stress (also meaning chronic activation of the Fight-or-Flight Response) there can be long-term impacts on their functioning. When our threats are in our mind (anxious and negative thinking patterns) there is not a natural shut-off response because there is not a natural end to the threat. Yes, eventually the stress response does shut off, but the prolonged amount of time it was on can be very impactful.
Reflect for a moment on how long you can feel stuck in worried or negative thoughts sometimes. Can it be substantial? Is it preventing necessary actions like sleeping or eating? Not only are we experiencing negative impacts on our body and how it functions when we are chronically stressed, but also our Fight-or-flight Response can begin to shape our reactions and behaviors. Studies have shown that if we’re consistently responding poorly to stress in our lives, it can predict future mental health impacts, even 10 years from now. If we sit in negative thoughts and reactions instead of building resiliency through coping and stress management, we can impact our future mental health.
Cortisol
Cortisol is an anti inflammatory hormone that is released during Fight-or-Flight to help us calm down quickly and shut off our Fight-or-Flight Response. When our stress response is chronically activated though, it can leave our brains flooded with cortisol. Excessive or prolonged cortisol releases can lead the brain to eventually ignore cortisol and reverse its previously positive impacts. Eventually cortisol can actually begin to cause inflammation or make it worse.
Chronically stressful environments like verbally, physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive homes or relationships, poverty, war/refugee experiences, toxic work, training, and educational environments, or disordered and untreated mental environments have significant impacts on our overall mental and physical health. These experiences can become traumatic and individuals in these environments can suffer from chronic post traumatic stress disorder, CPTSD. Chronic activation of our Fight-or-Flight Response can also alter the way it functions. It can lead our brain to falsely identify cues in our environment as threatening. It can even prime our brain to find future stress as normal to functioning and times of peace or calm as threatening.
What Can You Do?
You’re already starting the first step- educate yourself on how your brain and body interacts so you can be more aware of it in the moment. When you catch yourself focusing negatively on the past or the future, engage in grounding or coping strategies to reduce or shut off your stress response. This does not mean ignoring or numbing yourself to the stressful areas of your life. Instead, it means allowing yourself to be in a better physical and mental state to effectively process and address those areas with compassion and support because your stress response is off. Just like our body has a stress response, it has a relaxation response when we initiate it. Emotional regulation activities like positive visualizations, deep breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation can trigger the relaxation response. Also, journaling, talking with someone you trust, or attending therapy can be great avenues for processing reoccurring stressors or worries.
This video is my Top 10 favorite evidence-based coping strategies. It can help you engage in coping techniques to shut off your stress response more effectively and to address negative thinking patterns that can be triggering it.
When it comes to chronic stress, if you aren’t able to remove yourself from the causes of your stress, then working with mental health professionals to address the impacts of chronic stress can be extremely beneficial. Working with a trauma specialist can help you with processing your experiences and healing from the impacts of them. A blog on one form of trauma therapy- EMDR- Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing can be found here:
Parents
Your child’s stress may not be to the same level as the experiences adults face daily, but their perception of their stress and their body’s stress response is still similar. Teaching them about their fight-or-flight response can help them build a sense of self awareness and control in times that can feel overwhelming. It is also a great way to discuss how calming strategies are important to turning off that stress response and helping them communicate and address their big emotions.
Find strategies to help them with their reactions to daily frustrations, bedtime fears, or other overwhelming feelings with helpful tips below or in the main blog list under Tools for Children.
Anything else you want to know about the fight-or-flight response? Leave a comment below:
