Flight Or Fight - What Are 'U' Made Of?

"When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotions, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity." Dale Carnegie

Rationale:

Driving down to work early morning I see this Toyota sedan overtaking the cars and desperate to get ahead. Its 7 am, roads are packed with school buses, cars and people trying to get to work. The fine gentleman thinks he can sway his beautiful sedan through the busy road and make it to wherever he was getting to. Research has shown that rash driving or speeding only gets you a few minutes ahead of those who don't. So please don't rush, you are putting yourself and all the others in the harm's way. (Ravenscraft, 2014) Says mathematically speeding helps you on long car trips but this does not mean that you have to speed, it's just not safe and in addition to that you are breaking the road rules. Please, Safety First! 

"Mathematically, Speeding Only Helps On Long Car Trips" Eric Ravenscraft

Now getting back to the topic at hand, 'Road Rage.' When the nice gentleman overtook my car, he almost hit me. Within seconds I felt that rage, pulse racing, my heart started beating fast, my whole body was turning into a hulk and I started shouting at him. While I was transforming my humble self into a road-rage monstrous hulk, the nice gentleman was miles away and had no idea that I am upset with him. In that moment, it felt nice to shout but was it of any use? Did the nice gentleman hear me? Did I put my point across to tell him to watch out? Well, the simple answer is "No." This can be related to emotional memory.

Amygdala Hijack

What exactly happened here? When I got upset thinking that the gentleman was about to hit my car my 'Flight or Fight' response kicked in, this process is referred to as the 'Amygdala Hijack.'

In simple terms, the Amygdala is the emotional centre of the brain, and the cortex is the thinking area. When I was transforming into road rage hulk, my amygdala took over the cortex preparing me for 'Fight or Flight' making it difficult for me to use normal intelligence or reasoning. Just like the way I started shouting when in reality I know that the other person cannot hear me. This whole process is referred to as Amygdala Hijack. During this process adrenaline is released and stays in the body for about 18 minutes.

There are three subtle signs of Amygdala Hijack:(PMSL-Training, 2015)

1. A strong emotional reaction
2. A sudden onset
3. Regretting your actions later

Amygdala Hijack Situations:

• Yelling at a stranger may be in traffic because of his/her rash driving
• Things you do in the heat of the moment, your sudden reaction to something that you did not expect
• Things you may say and then regret, you blurt something which you did not mean.
• You are in a meeting at work, and someone has pointed directly at you
• You are in a gathering, and your acquaintance has put you on the spot
• Trying to convince your customer and he/she lashes at you

"Human beings are not creatures of logic; we are creatures of emotion. And we do not care what's true. We care how it feels." Will Smith

Flight or Fight

For many years we were used to the idea that we have only two modes, only two responses to stressful situations: 'Flight or Fight.' Recently, it was discovered that there is more to it. We have more than two states, and these are: (Karumanchery, 2011)

1.    Freeze – a discombobulated state of mind where a person does not know how to respond to the situation

2.    Flight – a type of response where a person runs away from the situation

3.    Fight – a type of intervention where a person fights or gets angry at the other person  

Story Time

The Monday Syndrome

If Monday is the first day of your work, then this is how ‘The Monday Syndrome’ works: Do you have an overwhelming feeling on Sunday night? Do you feel uneasy Sunday evening? What is happening to you? Your body is preparing you for the anxious Monday work environment and gearing you up so you wouldn't feel the shock that was felt the first time.

Story 1:

I have known Samantha for almost over a decade now. She works for an IT firm and with the same boss for past 2 years. When we had family dinners over the weekend I could see her literally happy and cheerful on a Friday and if lucky, Saturday. Sunday afternoon her behaviour changes and she turns into a person full of anxiety and frustration. Her husband has started complaining that she starts planning for the week ahead and keeps recalling past weeks. She is mentally preparing to make her boss happy so that he doesn't shout or bully her. Recently, she had an argument with her boss and her husband has noticed a change in her behaviour at home too. Unknowingly she is opting the fight response at work and at home too.

The Mother in Law Syndrome

The same as 'Monday Syndrome', I have for you 'The Mother in Law Syndrome' which can be related to our personal lives. This is dedicated to all the partners out there who are in a relationship and silently suffering in the hands of their Mother in Laws or relatives. (A light-headed joke to illustrate my point, no pun intended) 

Story 2:

Henry, an excellent friend of mine, been married for a year but his in-laws have not come to terms with the marriage. He tells me whenever he is at family dinners he is ignored and made felt unwelcome. He has tried everything under the sun, but nothing has worked so far. So now Henry’s way of dealing with this situation is that he makes excuses when they have family gatherings and lets his wife attend them. He has not disclosed this issue to his wife thinking she would feel bad but now his flight response has caused problems between him and his wife.  

Verbal Assertiveness

(Smith, 1975) Introduces a new concept into the fight/flight response. I have taken the liberty to divide the responses into three stages: 

Stage 1: Flight or Fight

Stage 2: Freeze, Flight or Flight

Stage 3: Introducing Verbal Assertiveness

Stage 1 deals with flight or fight response; the second one introduces freeze as the beginning response. And at the last stage, we are looking at verbal assertiveness. Here at stage three, we have introduced verbal assertiveness in the equation. Hence arriving at four physiological states instead of two: 

1.     Freeze

2.     Flight

3.     Fight

4.     Verbal Assertiveness

Deploying Verbal Assertiveness

The first three states discussed above are detrimental to your mental health, making the fourth state the best and viable one for you. How do you use verbal assertiveness?

·        Talk to the person who you think is responsible for your state (freeze, flight or fight)

·        Tell them how you feel

·        Talk to yourself about the situation, ask yourself what is troubling you and how would you approach this situation (this is my favourite) 

·        Make notes on how you feel and what do you want to do about it

·        You can speak to a real friend but not a toxic one, you don’t want to make the situation worse

Tools to Deal with Amygdala Hijack

Mind-map developed by the author based on (PMSL-Training, 2015)

The above mind-map illustrates another way of dealing with stressful situations. By activating your thinking part of the brain, you are giving full control of the situation to cortex and cutting the amygdala's hijack.

Conviction

I do not intend to give you magic solutions but some thought-provoking ideas which would activate your cortex to actually spend some time reflecting on the issues discussed above, especially next time you face The Amygdala Hijack!

References

Karumanchery, L. (2011). Understanding Emotional Intelligence: The Amygdala Hijack.

PMSL-Training (2015). Amygdala hijack.

Ravenscraft, E. (2014). Does Speeding Really Get You There Any Faster? [online]: Lifehacker. Available at: https://lifehacker.com/does-speeding-really-get-you-there-any-faster-1556767685 [Accessed 01 Jan 2019].

Smith, M. J. (1975). When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: Random House Publishing Group.