Fight or Flight response explained

Like I described earlier, the purpose of the fight-or-flight response is to give you the best possible chance of survival when you encounter danger.  One of the first things that happens is an increase in your heart and breathing rate.  These are beneficial for either fighting or fleeing - your lungs take in more oxygen and your heart pumps faster to deliver that oxygen to your muscles so you can punch harder or run faster.  At the same time, your body doesn't want to waste energy on anything that isn't immediately important to your survival.  So it completely shuts down your digestive system, and not only that, it doesn't want you to have any extra weight while you are running away from your attacker.  So whatever food or liquid you have in there needs to leave ASAP.  It also redirects blood flow away from your limbs so that if your arm is ripped off there is less blood loss.  Your sweat glands are turned on so you are nice and slippery to make it harder for your attacker to grab you.  Your pupils dilate so that you can better see your attacker's next move.  Okay so that all makes sense if you are trying to run from a bear.  What if you are just sitting in a restaurant?  What does it feel like?

You notice that your heart is racing.  It is extremely uncomfortable and you wonder what is wrong.  Your breathing rate increases - which you might not notice but you do feel a side effect of your accidental hyperventilation: feeling lightheaded and dizzy.  Your body turns off your digestive system so now you feel nauseous and maybe like you need to throw up.  Your body redirects blood away from your limbs - so now your arms and legs start to feel tingly or numb.  You start to sweat heavily.  Your pupils dilate and this screws up your vision - either making your peripheral vision blurry or maybe blocking it out completely giving you tunnel vision.  Your senses also become extremely heightened.  Every noise seems louder, smell seems stronger.  And I don't know if I have read this anywhere but just from personal experience I also know that you lose the ability to think rationally.  Your body has just initiated this ancient animalistic program and there is not very much room for you to use your brain and think clearly during this fight-or-flight response.  The only objective is to survive by fighting or running away.

So suddenly you get really sweaty, your heart is racing, you feel lightheaded and nauseous, your vision is blurry, your legs are numb and at the same time your mind is screaming at you to "run".  The only problem is that you are not faced with an attacker.  You are not about to protect your child from a tiger.  You are sitting quietly at a restaurant minding your own business.

So how did this happen?  Maybe you were in my position, where you skipped lunch and had really low blood sugar.  So you start to feel lightheaded - your brain needs sugar,  and it is politely suggesting that you eat something relatively quickly.  And you accidentally misinterpret this suggestion.  You instead start to worry: "What is happening to me?  Something is wrong" and with that fear, your amygdala wakes up and says "Oh there must be danger here!" and presses the ON button, initiating the fight-or-flight response.  As you are wondering what is wrong with you, you start to get more "symptoms".  Sweaty, heart palpitations and tunnel vision.  And you start to worry even MORE: "What is happening to me?!"  Your amygdala sees that wow, there is a LOT of danger here, obviously it did not give you quite enough adrenaline so it presses the ON button again.  Now you feel dizzy and nauseous and your legs are numb.  And now you are completely distraught and think you are about to die because your whole body is in chaos.

The good news is that you are not about to die.  As awful as it feels, your body is actually trying to protect you.  Your body was designed for exactly this type of response.  Think back to the days of our ancestors living on the plains.  They probably had to watch out for lions and other predators every single night.  They probably had this fight-or-flight response go off several times a day for their entire life.  It will not hurt you.  Your amygdala sensed danger and it is doing the best job it can to prepare you to survive. 

So you are sitting at a restaurant and you feel all of these symptoms.  And you don't realize that it is your amygdala trying to protect you.  You think that something is seriously wrong and your body is falling apart.  You think that you might pass out and die.  You are scared of the increased heart rate, at the dizziness and numbness.  You are scared because your vision is blurry and you feel like you can't breathe.  And your amygdala, wanting to always protect you from danger, remembers all of the details about this event.  It remembers that increased heart rate = danger.  It remembers that dizziness = danger.  It remembers the name of the restaurant, the position you were sitting in when you started to feel dizzy, who you were with, what you were wearing and what you were thinking.  It is trying to do a good job of remembering all of this information so that next time you are faced with this same "danger" it can press the ON button and protect you. 

There is one problem.

This "danger" that the amygdala has now cataloged and stored is the very same physiological response that it uses to protect you.  Your amygdala now thinks that the fight-or-flight response = danger.  And what is literally the ONLY thing that it can do?  Press the ON button again.