The article
below discusses (instinctual) flight or fight, (now called freeze, flight or
fight responses), or (volitional choices of) run, hide or fight. Cognitive appraisal is not a tai chi
option. None of these make up good push
hands. The article below discusses these options but I leave it to you to think
about what we are doing in push hands that leads to fearless being with,
allowing, letting go, releasing. How do we get from instinctual responses to
non-strategic strategies? A puzzlement. Tom.
New
York Times
December
18, 2015
‘Run, Hide, Fight’ Is Not How Our Brains Work
IN
this age of terror, we struggle to figure out how to protect ourselves —
especially, of late, from active shooters.
One
suggestion, promoted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of
Homeland Security, and now widely disseminated, is “run, hide, fight.” The idea
is: Run if you can; hide if you can’t run; and fight if all else fails. This
three-step program appeals to common sense, but whether it makes scientific
sense is another question.
Underlying the idea of “run,
hide, fight” is the presumption that volitional choices are readily available
in situations of danger. But the fact is, when you are in danger, whether it is
a bicyclist speeding at you or a shooter locked and loaded, you may well find
yourself frozen, unable to act and think clearly.
Freezing
is not a choice. It is a built-in impulse controlled by ancient circuits in the
brain involving the amygdala and its neural partners, and is automatically set
into motion by external threats. By contrast, the kinds of intentional actions
implied by “run, hide, fight” require newer circuits in the neocortex.
Contemporary science has refined
the old “fight or flight” concept — the idea that those are the two hard-wired
options when in mortal danger — to the
updated “freeze, flee, fight.” While “freeze, flee, fight” is superficially
similar to “run, hide, fight,” the two expressions make fundamentally different
assumptions about how and why we do what we do, when in danger.
Why do we freeze? It’s part of a
predatory defense system that is wired to keep the organism alive. Not only do
we do it, but so do other mammals and other vertebrates. Even invertebrates —
like flies — freeze. If you are freezing, you are less likely to be detected if
the predator is far away, and if the predator is close by, you can postpone the
attack (movement by the prey is a trigger for attack).
The
freezing reaction is accompanied by a hormonal surge that helps mobilize your
energy and focus your attention. While the hormonal and other physiological
responses that accompany freezing are there for good reason, in highly
stressful situations the secretions can be excessive and create impediments to
making informed choices.
A vivid example of freezing was
captured in a video of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996
Summer Olympics in Atlanta. After the bomb went off, many people froze. Then,
some began to try to escape (run), while others were slower on the uptake.
This variation in response is
typical. Sometimes freezing is brief and sometimes it persists. This can
reflect the particular situation you are in, but also your individual
predisposition. Some people naturally have the ability to think through a
stressful situation, or to even be motivated by it, and will more readily run,
hide or fight as required. But for others, additional help is needed.
In my
lab at New York University, we have created a version of this predicament using
rats. The animals have been trained, through trial and error, to “know” how to
escape in a certain dangerous situation. But when they are actually placed in
the dangerous situation, some rats simply cannot execute the response — they
stay frozen. If, however, we artificially shut down a key subregion of the
amygdala in these rats, they are able to overcome the built-in impulse to
freeze and use their “knowledge” about what to do.
We can learn a great deal about
the basic mechanisms of how the brain detects and responds to threats through
studies of rats. But people are not rats. We have additional cognitive
resources, such as the ability to conceptualize our situation and re-evaluate
it.
Studies
by the psychologists James Gross at Stanford, Kevin Ochsner at Columbia and
Elizabeth Phelps and me at New York University have shown that if people
cognitively reappraise a situation, it can dampen their amygdala activity. This
dampening may open the way for conceptually based actions, like “run, hide,
fight,” to replace freezing and other hard-wired impulses.
How to encourage this kind of
cognitive reappraisal? Perhaps we could harness the power of social media to
conduct a kind of collective cultural training in which we learn to reappraise
the freezing that occurs in dangerous situations. In most of us, freezing will
occur no matter what. It’s just a matter of how long it will last.
If we could come to use the fact
that we are freezing to trigger a reappraisal in a moment of danger, we might
just be able to dampen the amygdala enough to accelerate our ability to shift
into the action mode required for “run, hide, fight.” Even if this cut only a
few seconds off our freezing, it might be the difference between life and
death.
Joseph
LeDoux, a professor of science at New York University, directs the
Emotional Brain Institute. He is the author of “Anxious: Using the Brain to
Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety.”
