A love letter to my fellow escape artists 🏃💨

Our nervous system (ANS) is designed to work in predictable ways: when first sensing an issue (ANS views these as threats to safety), it kicks into high gear (sympathetic activity) to have us first FIGHT. If our limbic brain perceives the issue (threat) as too big, the next option - the second gear is to FLEE - it is an automatic decision to save our lives by activating our FLIGHT mode (pun intended).

If our to-do list is too long, too big, or involves heavy emotional lifting - our limbic brain feels overpowered & decides that the safest thing for us to do is to flee or avoid. In comes the reflexive email checking, scrolling, “but first…” thinking.

If we live perpetually in a flee-the-beast mode the chronic flight response can feel like:

+ persistent low-level anxiety, regardless of the environment
+ worry, compulsive “what if” thinking
+ constant go, go, go
+ stuck 'on' and race from task to task
+ hypervigilant to things that might go wrong - so we can intervene before an issue arises
+ withdrawal into 'busy' work to have somewhere to escape too

If you have a Flight dominant stress response, the present moment likely feels overwhelming or uncomfortable.

Your body looks for ways to disappear and distract you. You might mutter “I can’t deal with this,” as soon as there's even a small amount of stress or you might literally need to run, taking yourself away when you get overloaded (different from consciously taking space to calm down).

The ANS works simply like this: after motivating sympathetic activity, whether fight, flight or just some healthy dopamine motivation - the parasympathetic activity (rest & digest) comes in automatically to chill us out. It’s a cycle of up and down regulation, as natural as day and night. When the time to chill out comes and our body still perceives that we are under threat, the downregulating para-activity that replaces the healthy rest and digest - it’s close sibling - the freeze response. This shows up as procrastination, or general inability to “get to it”. I will cover that in the future. Today I’ll cover how to interrupt reflexive and chronic flight responses, how our to-do lists, and if you are in the market for it - new year’s resolutions can contribute to system overwhelm and backfire by the way of flee or freeze.

How To Interrupt a Flight Response

Obviously - the flight response is just and appropriate when we are being attacked, emotionally, verbally, or physically. We do not want to interrupt a flight response when we need to flee to protect ourselves from snappish comments, and micro or macro aggressions.

We do want to interrupt a flight response when we are reacting out of proportion to what is happening and are likely to cause harm by avoiding direct action.

Step 1 - Awareness

You gotta catch yourself as the whole body whoosh of the flight response comes on. Catch the train! It is much harder to stop it once the train has left the station.

Slow it down. We tend to go into automatic ANS responses when we accelerate. Name what is happening.

”I’m getting a snack as an escape from my bottomless inbox.”
”I’m checking instagram to take a break from work.”
”I’m cleaning my closet to avoid calling xyz.”
“I’m doing dishes to avoid opening that letter from the IRS.”
”I’m cleaning the kitchen counter because I don’t have the capacity to deal with my kids bickering.”
“I’m choosing to work late because I do not want to have that conversation with my partner over dinner.”

Sometimes, the flee response is there to help us take a break and build the capacity to tackle the beast: ”I’m playing with my necklace to channel anxiety rising.”

Naming what is happening brings it to our consciousness, and this conscious awareness is half the battle.

Step 2 - Plant Your Feet & Scan Your Space

When feeling the urge to flee - slow down. Slow and invite the opposite into your body:
+ Plant your feet, feel the ground underneath.
+ Look around your space, slowly scan your filed of vision from left to right, name a couple of positive or neutral things you see (plant, chair).

Feeling the ground under you lets your limbic brain slow down and scanning your space and naming familiar things affirm safety in your lower brain.

Step 3 - Yawn & Stretch

After upregulation (sympathetic activation) comes downregulation. This will be your body’s urge to yawn or stretch. Follow it. And welcome back to neutral!

In the resources part below I added three practices to help downregulate a sympathetic Fight or Flight-prone person and to help spend time in the balanced state.

Resources

🐰 Shall we, Alice? 🕳️

🕳️ Luis Mojica on capacity, desires and the concept of self-sabotage. Start at 4m20s.
🕳️ Terry Real on of the biology of triggers (60min)
🕳️ Gabor Mate (9min) on emotions and immune system.

And by yours truly:

🕳️ My current personal contemplation practice recording - I’m purposefully not calling this mediation, because here we engage with our bodily sensations and thoughts instead of dissociating by disregarding them. The result? A more authentic balanced ventral-vagal ANS state. Listen in, enjoy and spend time there. More is more here: the more time we spend in the balanced ANS state the more easy it is to go to there.

🕳️ A Yoga Nidra mind training to more readily counterbalance the rougher emotions when triggered. Practice here trains your mind to switch to the opposing emotion, sensation or thought - which helps to avoid overwhelm.

🕳️ Somatic meditation practice - learn to be with the body sensations coming up and practice curiosity instead of dismissal.