Fight-Flight
Feb. 6th, 2009 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyAs I type this, my body thinks I'm in deadly danger. It's preparing me to either run for my life or fight for my life. My sympathetic nervous system is lit up like a Christmas tree, triggering everything I need to get ready for action: fast heartbeat, fast breathing, alertness, tension, and intense fear, the powerful sense that I've got to act or I will die.
If this response isn't controlled, it will escalate. Rapid, shallow breathing will make me feel as though I'm suffocating or choking. Changes in bloodflow will make me dizzy and lightheaded and make my fingers tingle weirdly. As adrenaline prepares my legs to run, paradoxically, they'll feel as though they're going to give way. And so on.
Were I confronted with a sabretooth tiger, this response would save my life. The fight-flight response would turn me into an instant athlete, every part of my body cleared for action. Unfortunately, there aren't any sabretooth tigers, but my body doesn't know that. It's always got an aerial out for life-threatening stimuli. If there aren't any, it will invent them. The reason I am so stressed out at this moment is only that I'm going on an overseas trip next week.
A decade and a half ago, it would have been the plane flight itself that produced the fight-flight response. Something like one in five fliers experience some level of anxiety, and no wonder: we're helpless, strapped down, in a confined space, surrounded by sudden, random, unexplained stimuli, noises and movements. No wonder our bodies think we're going to fall to our deaths at any moment.
These days, the actual flight is less terrifying than it was; it's the preparations that switch on my (ever so badly named) sympathetic nervous system. What if I forget something important, like my passport, or any of my zillion medications? What if there's a problem getting Frank and Tim to the cattery? What if... what if... what if... what if I have a panic attack!
I have a certain amount of control over all this, short of hitting the Xanax. I can remind myself that the whole trip is highly organised and everything's taken care of, countering those automatic thoughts, that wonky thinking, with facts. Slowing my breathing is a simple physical way of muting the panic response. In fact, I haven't actually hit panic yet, it's just a constant background of worry and fear, with the inevitable consequences, over many days and weeks, of exhaustion and depression. The fight-flight is supposed to be a momentary thing, not a continuous thing. In the long-term, if it's left switched on, it'll kill you.
•
Right: why am I telling you all this? Two reasons. One: when there are scary plane stories in the news, they reassure me. Almost every time, they're about about how resilient planes are, how routine procedures resulted in a safe landing. If you listen to the extraordinary recording of radio traffic between ATC and Captain Sullenberger, you won't hear panic and horror, you'll hear calm professionals working smoothly together to handle the situation. Planes can drop suddenly, lose engines, blow tyres, parts can fall off, and they land safely and nobody dies. Lightning passes harmlessly through the fuselage. Doors are held firmly closed by the difference in air pressure. As you can hear in that recording, if something does happen, no-one says, 'Oh my God, what are we going to do?!' There are so many people looking out for the plane, and they all know precisely what the procedures are.
•
Two: as those of you who follow![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ikhet_sekhmet will know, I'm reading a pretty dreadful book called The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power. Amongst vast quantities of archaeological non-facts, it makes the claim that the world would be better off run by women, because our response to stress is different to men's. Well, we certainly couldn't do a worse job than men have. But is it true, as author Vicki Noble says, that 'under stress, males produce testosterone, whereas in women this response is buffered by the release of oxytocin, which ultimately produces a calming effect' - what she calls the 'special biological capacity in women to become calm under stress'?
Noble's refers to a 'landmark study conducted at UCLA'. Actually, it's a literature review; no new experiments were done. And here it is online: Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. Now this is solid science, published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. And like Noble, the researchers correctly point out that medical researchers have tended to use male subjects in experiments, so female responses to stress have been understudied.
However, the researchers are a lot more tentative than Noble is. They're identifying an avenue for future research, suggesting a possible explanation for differences in behaviour - they haven't found it. There's no difference between the basic fight-flight response in women and men. Both sexes produce oxytocin under stress. Nowhere does the article say that women 'become calm under stress'. Both sexes display aggression, but in different ways. Testosterone may play a role in men's greater physical aggression. The researchers are suggesting that, with offspring to watch out for, it may be in female mammals' interest not to fight or run away but to 'tend' their young and 'befriend' other females, and that hormones such as oxytocin could play a role in this. A more complex role than just prompting that behaviour, too: for example, when mothers and infants touch, both of them release oxytocin.
The researchers are very careful to underline that 'biology is not destiny' - that hormones may create tendencies which interact with culture, and thought, to produce the actual behaviour we see. To me, this suggests not that women would make naturally better rulers, but that this tend-befriend behaviour - cooperate, look out for our friends, make sure the kids are OK - could be a better model for dealing with conflict than lobbing insults and missiles at each other. One of the researchers remarks: 'It's not the case that men don't tend and befriend. They just don't do it to the same degree, in the same ways or in response to the same biological forces.' Even if we're stuck with our hormones, nothing stops us changing our cultures, our wonky thinking, and our world.
If this response isn't controlled, it will escalate. Rapid, shallow breathing will make me feel as though I'm suffocating or choking. Changes in bloodflow will make me dizzy and lightheaded and make my fingers tingle weirdly. As adrenaline prepares my legs to run, paradoxically, they'll feel as though they're going to give way. And so on.
Were I confronted with a sabretooth tiger, this response would save my life. The fight-flight response would turn me into an instant athlete, every part of my body cleared for action. Unfortunately, there aren't any sabretooth tigers, but my body doesn't know that. It's always got an aerial out for life-threatening stimuli. If there aren't any, it will invent them. The reason I am so stressed out at this moment is only that I'm going on an overseas trip next week.
A decade and a half ago, it would have been the plane flight itself that produced the fight-flight response. Something like one in five fliers experience some level of anxiety, and no wonder: we're helpless, strapped down, in a confined space, surrounded by sudden, random, unexplained stimuli, noises and movements. No wonder our bodies think we're going to fall to our deaths at any moment.
These days, the actual flight is less terrifying than it was; it's the preparations that switch on my (ever so badly named) sympathetic nervous system. What if I forget something important, like my passport, or any of my zillion medications? What if there's a problem getting Frank and Tim to the cattery? What if... what if... what if... what if I have a panic attack!
I have a certain amount of control over all this, short of hitting the Xanax. I can remind myself that the whole trip is highly organised and everything's taken care of, countering those automatic thoughts, that wonky thinking, with facts. Slowing my breathing is a simple physical way of muting the panic response. In fact, I haven't actually hit panic yet, it's just a constant background of worry and fear, with the inevitable consequences, over many days and weeks, of exhaustion and depression. The fight-flight is supposed to be a momentary thing, not a continuous thing. In the long-term, if it's left switched on, it'll kill you.
•
Right: why am I telling you all this? Two reasons. One: when there are scary plane stories in the news, they reassure me. Almost every time, they're about about how resilient planes are, how routine procedures resulted in a safe landing. If you listen to the extraordinary recording of radio traffic between ATC and Captain Sullenberger, you won't hear panic and horror, you'll hear calm professionals working smoothly together to handle the situation. Planes can drop suddenly, lose engines, blow tyres, parts can fall off, and they land safely and nobody dies. Lightning passes harmlessly through the fuselage. Doors are held firmly closed by the difference in air pressure. As you can hear in that recording, if something does happen, no-one says, 'Oh my God, what are we going to do?!' There are so many people looking out for the plane, and they all know precisely what the procedures are.
•
Two: as those of you who follow
ikhet_sekhmet will know, I'm reading a pretty dreadful book called The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power. Amongst vast quantities of archaeological non-facts, it makes the claim that the world would be better off run by women, because our response to stress is different to men's. Well, we certainly couldn't do a worse job than men have. But is it true, as author Vicki Noble says, that 'under stress, males produce testosterone, whereas in women this response is buffered by the release of oxytocin, which ultimately produces a calming effect' - what she calls the 'special biological capacity in women to become calm under stress'?Noble's refers to a 'landmark study conducted at UCLA'. Actually, it's a literature review; no new experiments were done. And here it is online: Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. Now this is solid science, published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. And like Noble, the researchers correctly point out that medical researchers have tended to use male subjects in experiments, so female responses to stress have been understudied.
However, the researchers are a lot more tentative than Noble is. They're identifying an avenue for future research, suggesting a possible explanation for differences in behaviour - they haven't found it. There's no difference between the basic fight-flight response in women and men. Both sexes produce oxytocin under stress. Nowhere does the article say that women 'become calm under stress'. Both sexes display aggression, but in different ways. Testosterone may play a role in men's greater physical aggression. The researchers are suggesting that, with offspring to watch out for, it may be in female mammals' interest not to fight or run away but to 'tend' their young and 'befriend' other females, and that hormones such as oxytocin could play a role in this. A more complex role than just prompting that behaviour, too: for example, when mothers and infants touch, both of them release oxytocin.
The researchers are very careful to underline that 'biology is not destiny' - that hormones may create tendencies which interact with culture, and thought, to produce the actual behaviour we see. To me, this suggests not that women would make naturally better rulers, but that this tend-befriend behaviour - cooperate, look out for our friends, make sure the kids are OK - could be a better model for dealing with conflict than lobbing insults and missiles at each other. One of the researchers remarks: 'It's not the case that men don't tend and befriend. They just don't do it to the same degree, in the same ways or in response to the same biological forces.' Even if we're stuck with our hormones, nothing stops us changing our cultures, our wonky thinking, and our world.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:36 am (UTC)I tend to produce pee.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-09 06:09 pm (UTC)=:o}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:49 am (UTC)I'm not afraid of flying; but I hate how much of a hassle travel by plane has become in the USA. I don't plan on flying again unless it's completely unavoidable. My next trip across country I'm traveling by train, in a sleeper room.
And I'm going to wear a cream-colored crushed velvet suit, sit on the observation deck, and watch the country go by.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:20 am (UTC)http://kateorman.livejournal.com/951243.html
(Although i think I must have missed a post at some point, since I have no idea where you're going on this trip!)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 09:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 02:45 am (UTC)Do mama grizzly bears produce oxytocin? 'Cause if so, it sure hasn't made them any less aggressive. And when they have little ones around they get MORE fight-y, not less.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 03:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-06 07:11 am (UTC)