We seem to constantly be ready to fight, flee, or freeze.
This can happen whenever someone cuts us off on the freeway; our boss gives us “constructive” feedback; a client wants to cancel his or her contract with us; or a significant other has a different opinion from us about something.
The unfortunate aspect of how quickly we choose the path of fighting, fleeing, or freezing is that it does not lead us to optimal outcomes in any area of our life, (unless we are being chased by a wild animal in a forest) and it negatively impacts our health as well.
I vote for minimizing the unnecessary engagement of our fight or flight response as a high priority for a New Year’s resolution.
Here is why:
- Would you prefer an executive CEO or a child with no experience to run your nervous system? The two major parts of our brain that engage our fight or flight response are our amygdala and our cortex. The amygdala, which perceives sensory input in eight milliseconds and holds unconscious memories (implicit memories), is like a kid that we cannot reason with. Our cortex is the executive CEO of our brain that holds great data that we are conscious of (explicit memories) from which we can make logical decisions and assessments. It takes forty milliseconds for sensory input to reach our cortex. When our fight or flight response is activated, our cortex shuts down. We no longer have access to all the precious reasoning and problem-solving resources we have collected throughout our life. We are temporarily impaired!
- Would you prefer to be a prisoner of the past or a master of the present? When we elicit our fight or flight response (except when we are facing a true threat, like a mountain lion chasing us), what happens is that a current situation, as perceived by our five senses, triggers a negative memory from the past. The trigger can be the tone of someone’s voice, the smell of another’s perfume, or a specific word that touches a “raw spot” of a negative memory of a situation that we fight with all our might to not experience again. Sue Johnson, in her best-selling book Hold Me Tight, tells us how different emotions lead us to take different actions to avoid negative feelings. “Anger tells us to approach and fight; shame tells us to withdraw and flee; fear tells us to flee or freeze; sadness primes us to grieve and let go.” If something that hurt us is in the past, why are we still carrying it along with us?
- Stress can really kill us. Being in the reactive mode of our fight or flight response means we are temporarily off-kilter. In the moment, this imbalance means that our heart is beating a lot faster than what is normal, our blood pressure is way higher than what it should be, and many essential functions are not happening, as they should. This is why we usually get sick during times of high stress in our lives. Our energy is not being used to fuel the optimal performance of our immune system. It has been hi-jacked to fight the client that no longer wants to do business with us! Long-term, the larger the sum of the things our body has to do to reinstate internal balance (our allostatic load), the higher the risk of organ and functional damage. We have learned so much over the span of several decades about the devastating impact of long-term exposure to chronic stress. For example, we know that our pre-frontal cortex and our hippocampus shrink under prolonged stress. These two critical structures are involved with mediation of rewards, motivation, problem-solving, learning, and many other executive functions. Can you imagine trying to run a profitable business without the executive CEO? Stress has been described as the epidemic of the century by WHO (World Health Organization). Stress is the true threat to our health, productivity, happiness, and performance. The good news is that changing our relationship with stress to mitigate negative events is completely within our control!
The Solution
Put yourself in control!
When you feel any signs of your stress response being activated, like an uncomfortable sense of your heart rate increasing, work with your prefrontal cortex to change your interpretation of what is happening.
Science has confirmed our brain’s ability to change based on experience. This is known as (Neuroplasticity).
The more we practice altering our brain’s interpretation of reality and the more stress-resistant thoughts we choose, the stronger these mental activities become and we grow the parts of our brain that make us more resistant to stress!
Every new year, we make a new commitment to take better care of ourselves, improve our health, and be happier at work and at home.
I suggest that we learn to care about ourselves enough to protect us from the corrosion of anger and to monitor the quality of the energy we hold in our heart toward people and situations in our life. Instead of fighting, I propose handling life’s endless stressful situations with love and compassion from an internal state of calmness.
Choosing not to fight or flee and approaching life from a calm inner state and a balanced nervous system is the one new year’s resolution that can not only create a palpable difference in our individual experience, but also create a better world for all of us to reside in. And we can do this one perception, one breath, and one person at a time.
If you could use a personal helping hand to teach your brain new tricks for a healthier, happier reality, I am here for you. http://bit.ly/contacttzeli
If you prefer to be your own scientist, you can join my online community and receive a free, one-page resource that you can use to practice working with your thinking brain toward improvements in your health, relationships, and work performance. http://bit.ly/JoinMyndZen