Fight or Flight and Negative Thoughts

First…Happy Holidays! I wish you and yours a VERY safe and happy Holiday season. Also, I’ll be taking a break next week. I need a week to recharge and set some goals for 2015.

OK…on to the good stuff.

Fight or Flight

In a previous post we talked about the Fight or Flight Response and when the Fight or Flight Response is triggered, the mind immediately focuses on the area of perceived danger. It is intent on finding what’s wrong.

It’s looking for danger, evil, enemies, wild beasts.

It’s a good bet that our friend Zugg didn’t spend too much time appreciating the color of the sky or the fragrance of the flowers as he squinted in the direction of the twig snap.

No.

He was looking for trouble. His mind automatically filtered out anything that didn’t pertain to the perceived danger. If the evidence wasn’t bad, it was no good.

The mind is a marvelous filtering mechanism. It shelters us from large amounts of unnecessary information. If it didn’t, we would probably go mad. We simply cannot pay conscious attention to every single detail being collected by our five senses.

Without moving it, be aware of your tongue.

Were you aware of it before I asked?

Probably not.

The sensation was there, but your mind filtered it out – you didn’t need that information. Look carefully at the font in the newsletter. What’s the type of font? Had you noticed it before?

Unless you’re a font expert, probably not.

Are there any smells in the room?

How about noises?

Ticking clock?

Air conditioner?

Feel the sensation of your body against whatever you’re sitting (or lying) on. Have you forgotten about your tongue again?

When the Fight or Flight Response is activated, we begin to look for everything wrong with a situation, person, place, or thing. And, boy, do we find it!

There’s always something wrong. We’re living in a material world. Material things are, almost by definition, imperfect. So there’s our mind, automatically filtering out the positive while automatically focusing on the negative. Sounds like the perfect recipe for misery.

But it gets worse.

Zugg’s mind, you will recall, also reviewed past moments of his life in which snapping twigs played a devastating part. There was, of course, that terrible time with Zuggrina. Poor Zuggrina. Then there was that time with OggaBooga. Poor OggaBooga.

Zugg is now looking not just for twig-snap memories, but for memories of all wild beasts devouring anything. He even thinks back to times he thought about wild beasts devouring anything. He is searching his memory for real and imaginary images of mutilation, and there are plenty to be found.

We often do the same thing. If someone cuts us off in traffic, our mind goes reeling back to all the rude and inconsiderate people we’ve ever seen driving cars, then to all the rude and inconsiderate people we’ve ever seen anywhere, then to all the rude and inconsiderate people we’ve seen in movies, on TV, or in the theater of our imagination.

If someone is five minutes late for an appointment, we often spend four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of that five minutes remembering every other time the person was late, all people who were ever late, and every situation–either real or imagined–of being disappointed or feeling unloved.

The mind – an incredibly perceptive tool – is looking both within and without for negativity. It finds it. That thought triggers a more intense Fight or Flight Response, which demands an even more enthusiastic negative mental search, which discovers even more hideous evidence, which kicks off a stronger Fight or Flight Response, which . . . .

Get the idea?

It’s known as a temper tantrum or losing one’s cool or an anxiety attack or getting steamed – or life as we know it in this (and most likely the next) century.

Negative Thoughts and the Body

The Fight or Flight Response puts a body through its paces. All the resources of the body are mobilized for immediate, physical, demanding action – fight or flee.

All the other bodily functions are put on hold–digestion, assimilation, cell production, body maintenance, circulation (except to certain fight-or-flee skeletal muscles), healing, and immunological defenses.

In addition, the body is pumping chemicals – naturally produced drugs, if you will – into the system. The muscles need energy and they need it fast.

Zugg was luckier than we are in this respect. Often he would actually use these chemicals by running them off, climbing them off, or fighting them off. In our civilized world, we usually don’t. At most we bang our fists or throw stuff (which only hurts our hands and breaks things).

Occasionally we yell, but that’s not physical enough. Our body has armed itself to fight or flee for its life – but usually we just sit and seethe.

The repeated and unnecessary triggering of the Fight or Flight Response puts enormous physiological stress on the body.

It makes us more vulnerable to disease (the immune system being told, “Hold off on attacking those germs – we have wild beasts to fight!”), digestive trouble (ulcers and cancers at the far side of it), poor assimilation (preventing necessary nutrients from entering the system), slower recovery from illnesses (conquering a disease is less urgent than conquering a wild beast), reduced cell production, sore muscles, fatigue, and a general sense, as Keats put it, “that if I were underwater I would scarcely kick to come to the top.”

Sound bad?

It gets worse.

The emergency chemicals, unused, eventually break down into other, more toxic substances. Our body must then mobilize – yet again – to get rid of the poisons.

The muscles stay tense for a long time after the response is triggered – especially muscles around the stomach, chest, lower back, neck, and shoulders. (Most people have chronic tension in at least one of these areas.) We feel jittery, nervous, and uptight.

The mind always tries to find reasons for things. If the body’s feeling tense, it wonders,

“What is there to feel tense about?” Seldom do we conclude (correctly), “Oh, this is just the normal aftereffect of the Fight or Flight Response. Nothing to be concerned about.”

Usually we start scanning the environment (inner and outer) for something out of place.

And, as I mentioned before, there will always be something out of place.

The mind’s a remarkable mechanism. Given a task, the mind will fulfill it with astounding speed and accuracy. When asked, “What’s wrong?” it will compile and cross-reference a list of grievances with blinding swiftness and precision.

Everything everyone (including ourselves) should have done but didn’t and shouldn’t have done but did is reviewed, highlighted, indexed, and prioritized. All this elaborate mental labor sparked by a sensation in the body.

Naturally, this review of negative events prompts a new round of Fight or Flight Responses, which promotes more tension in the body, which promotes more mental investigation into What’s Wrong?

Do you see how this downward mind/body spiral can continue almost indefinitely? It’s not surprising, then, that some people make a decision deep inside themselves that life is just not worth living…until next time.

Again, I’m going to be taking a break next week, so Happy Holidays!

Until then, if you’d like to get started on controlling your Fight or Flight Response pick up a copy of Develop the Mental Strength of a Warrior today!