When we are in the midst of a stressful situation, humans have a survival mechanism that has been handed down by generations of our ancestors. This involuntary internal response can be helpful when it is only activated at the right times, but if we are chronically on alert, that can cause a lot of problems. At Cottonwood, in Tucson, Arizona, we think it’s important for people to understand the “fight or flight” response and ways to manage stress, so it’s not continuously activated.
There are three parts of the involuntary response:
- A trigger: Something causes the amygdala in our brain to perceive danger and become fearful. The amygdala tells the hypothalamus what the threat is and activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is like a 911 call inside our head.
- Physical symptoms: Our brain releasing stress hormones causes our body to ramp up heart rate, breathing, sweating, blood pressure, and muscle tension.
- Psychological symptoms: Our mind becomes more alert, focused, and emotional.
Pros and Cons of the Stress Response
If you’re running from a tiger, this ability to quickly respond, without even thinking, could save your life. In our modern world, however, you probably don’t find yourself running from a tiger all that often, and your stress response might be getting triggered by things like:
- Public speaking
- Stress on the job
- Parenting struggles
- School deadlines
Beyond not being helpful in situations where there is no physical threat, if your stress response is chronically triggered, you are at increased risk of:
- Chronic fatigue
- Depression
- Digestive issues
- Headaches/migraines
- Heart attacks
- Strokes
- High blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Obesity
- Breathing issues
- Poorly functioning immune system
Types of Stress Response
When we are afraid, there are four different ways that the stress response can try to manifest:
Fight
We are ready to confront the threat, potentially angrily. We might:
- Tighten our jaw
- Grind our teeth together
- Want to throw punches, stomp, or kick something
- Cry in anger
- Have a knot or burning feeling in our stomach
Flight
Our brain decides we won’t win by fighting and tells us to retreat by:
- Making us feel fidgety, tense, or trapped
- Making it hard to keep our legs, feet or arms still
- Causing numbness in our limbs
- Dilating our eyes and causing us to look around a lot
Freeze
We are inclined to become still and quiet like a deer in the headlights until the danger is gone. We may be literally unable to speak or move and could experience:
- Sense of dread
- Pale skin
- Stiffness, coldness, or heaviness
- Pounding heart
- Decreased heart rate
Fawn
We may feel that we need to try to appease the threat with compliance, particularly after an attempt to run, fight back, or freeze did not work. This response is most common in people who are abuse survivors.
Grounding Techniques
We don’t really get to decide if our brain will tell us to fight, run, freeze, or fawn, but we do have the ability to learn:
- What our triggers are. They are often something that happened right before the stress response.
- Not to act on our first impulse.
- How to manage stress so that we are less likely to fall into a stress response and can recover faster.
- To use grounding techniques like those in our previous blog post to deactivate our stress response. Examples include breath observation, body scans, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, mindful walks, listening to music, and describing a nearby object to yourself.
Grounding exercises can:
- Provide quick relief
- Have minimal unwanted side effects
- Can be taught to people of any age
- Are portable
- Require no equipment
- Are sometimes helpful for co-occurring medical conditions
Self-Care for Stress Responses
If you find yourself having fight, flight, or freeze responses often, you might want to consider some lifestyle changes that could help:
- Avoiding intense workout routines, in favor of more moderate exercise
- Reducing your caffeine intake
- Giving up alcohol
- Attending therapy
- Addressing underlying mental health conditions, which could include anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
At Cottonwood, we recognize that the mind, body and spirit are all intimately connected and that all aspects of a person must be supported and strengthened to recover from addiction, mental illness, eating disorders, and other challenges we experience.
