🥊 Fight or Flight ✈️

🥊 Fight or Flight ✈️ 

Well, Hello There 👋, it's great to have you back!

How do you like the top picture today? I stumbled upon this blog-inspiring graffiti "Run away as fast as you can" this morning on my dog walk through a local park. It got me wondering about the fight-or-flight response. 

Just reading this graffiti on the park bench, made me feel unsettled, like I was under threat and at risk, I naturally lean towards flight mode. 

In every scenario we automatically judge our present status, this particular park bench is in what I consider a safe area, on an oceanfront promenade, with many people walking past, it's easily visible and at night it is even well-floodlit. So luckily for me I did not have to run away and break into a sweat!

During our lives, we are presented with situations, often out of our control where we must face our fears.  Our immediate reaction can be to run away, which could be a good option, although sometimes we have to stand our ground and fight. "fight or flight" is a concept that describes our body's natural response when we perceive a threat or danger. This response is meant to aid our survival when we are presented with a threatening situation. However, our bodies and minds calculate the same response even when we are in ordinary, everyday situations.

For example, if a harmless mouse ran across my foot I would no doubt scream and run! This is my natural reaction, it's my stress response.

I have been studying my little dog Oli as to how he responds to situations. During our walk along the promenade this morning Oli became nervous as the path is next to the ocean and a big wave slapped the lava stone wall. The noise and sea spray scared him and he turned and ran, in his mind this was a big scary noise which made no sense plus he really hates water, so this prompted him to "hot foot it" in the opposite direction.

I have also been looking at how my grandson reacts, he is 11 months old and although born with "fight or flight" it's not easy to see it in him. At his age, he is learning from trial and error, so if he were to touch a sharp cactus his body would react appropriately. However, he may well take a few goes to work out that it's always going to hurt, so should be avoided! Another example of survival is that babies can swim underwater without drowning as their dive reflex is activated automatically, so their bodies fight back to keep them alive.

Although it is instinct to react to situations, I wonder if we had a choice, how we would choose to react. If we had time to be calm and assess, sometimes it would benefit us and sometimes not! If I were to burn myself on a flame it's brilliant that my body removes me from danger instantly. 

What I am getting to here is, sometimes we react to situations automatically where if we were given time to think first we would have a better outcome. When did you last automatically react to a situation which was not life-threatening, was your reaction positive or did it create a negative result?

Had my little dog Oli not been overwhelmed with fear on our walk this morning, and had time to make a judgement call, he would have worked out that he was not in imminent danger and may have enjoyed a little cooling off from the sea sprey.🐶

                                                        Catch up soon X💜X