Monday, September 14, 2015

Is it ONLY Fight or Flight?

"Fight or Flight" is a cliche phrase that we have been taught since a young age; meaning that, according to certain circumstances we encounter, our bodies naturally produce chemicals that cause our body to either fight a problem or flight a problem. This isn't new to anybody, right? But yet, here I sit in a health course, and I am listening to this same lesson. Again.

It's become tiring to me to hear people talk about this phrase because I've had certain situations in my life that have caused me to ask, "did I fight, or did I flight?" And for years I had never been able to come up with a decisive response to my question. Because of this, I didn't understand why I didn't do either of them! It made me angry and upset with myself as a result. Was I broken? Did I have a terrible chemical imbalance? Was there a cord that didn't connect properly within my brain? Was I just simply insane? These questions plagued me. I didn't understand why I wasn't a normal human being. And then it would lead to the thoughts of "well if I was a normal human then things would be SO much different!" (Hindsight is 20/20, also: hindsight can be super annoying!)

And then, a couple months back, it hit me. There are actually three responses the human body can have:


There may be instances in your life when you don't fight. And you don't flight. But guess what! You are not "broken!" Your biological response to that situation isn't "wrong!" It's just different than you were taught. For me, there have been times where I have been so filled with fear/anxiety/distress that rather than punching the problem straight in the gut or running a thousand miles away from the problem as fast as I could; my mind, heart, and body simply decided to freeze. And it sucked! But let's be honest, fighting or flighting wouldn't have been anymore fun! It was just the psychological and biological response my crazy self decided to produce at that moment. But understanding what happened inside me is a breath of fresh air.

My biggest reason for writing this is that hopefully, if you didn't understand this concept, it brings you a little bit of relief as well. 

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