The fight or flight response is something that occurs when you are scared. The sympathetic nervous system mobilizes our body for action by releasing adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones cause our pupils to dilate, heartbeats to accelerate, bladders to inhibit contraction, blood pressure and blood sugar to go up, and much more. We are hit with a surge of energy, and nothing else seems to matter besides getting out of harm's way.
When the emergency passes, we don't fully calm down right away. It takes some time for our parasympathetic nervous system to get our bodies under control and acting normal again. Slowly our our heartbeat begins to slow, bladders contract, bronchi constrict, etc.
I wasn't thinking rationally when I heard the door open and the alarm go off. My body just took over thanks to the fight or flight response. If, G-d forbid, I would have actually been in a dangerous situation that day, this response could have potentially saved my life. Our bodies really know what's up.
Funny that people are always in situations like this...it's almost as if the mind plays tricks on you. Thankfully this was created for our ancestors who needed to frequently run from bears. However, nowadays this doesn't help people so much. For instance, has anyone ever been very scared or stressed and then felt sick right after? Unfortunately for us modern day people, our natural processes tend to kick start into overdrive [and occasionally make us ill] when we realize that there was nothing there.
ReplyDeleteLily, I'm sorry you had to go through that kind of a scare. On the plus side, you now know what it feels like for your body to use the fight-or-flight response. Since we have been discussing the nature-nurture-debate in class, it is interesting to note that the fight or flight response came about as a result of environmental influences. In prehistoric times, people needed a bodily mechanism that would help them run away from the mammoth that was chasing them. Since then, it has become a part of the common human genome. In other words, all humans have this response as a means for survival. In conclusion, this trait comes from both nature and nurture.
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