Fight, Flight or Freeze
Author: Steve Hanafi (Silat Sharaf Practitioner, Malaysia)
Arm yourself with the right mindset, skills, and tools… and Don’t Freeze.
The two most commonly heard response under stress is the Fight or Flight Response. I call these the “Oh, shit!” response. The fight or flight is also known as the acute type response, in which the body prepares itself to face the threat that is present by either fighting the threat or running away to safety. A car crash, a bank robbery, home invasion, gunshots, mad man stabbing random pedestrians with a knife or a group of people taunting and threatening you at the parking lot. However, there’s another response which is known as the Freeze Response.
Fight response
The body engages to fight and confront the threat aggressively, to beat the shit out of it, until it is no longer a threat by either making them unable or unwilling to continue. The fight response is not just limited to physical but also a verbal response where one fights back with their voice. A mental fight can also happen when one is trapped and found themselves to be in a state of helplessness, they will be fighting their thought to prevent their brain and bodily function from shutting down.
Flight response
To run away from the dangers and threats to a place of safety where there are cover and concealment from the threat. During this stage, the eyes will dilate and the person running will have a “tunnel vision” of the place that he intends to go to get cover from incoming harm.
Freeze response
The person finds himself/herself unable to move to engage the threat, or to run away from the threat, this happens when the brain is unable to decide what’s the next move. The legs feel heavy as if they’re planted to the ground, unable to take any step, what more to run. The hands are locked to its place, unable to defend one’s self from incoming harm.
A lot of people happen to freeze under times of extreme stress especially when the shit hits the fan on days they least expect it. And like it or not, you are also most likely to freeze under these circumstances. Unless you’re someone who’s constantly exposed to these kinds of stress and dangers, like policemen, paramedics, firemen or soldiers, you will most probably freeze when it hits you in the face. Or unless you’ve gone through our Warrior Mind Combat Blueprint.
The human body and brain will respond to the threats present where the final goal is to minimize the threat, avoid getting injured or hurt and to return to the normal state of feeling calm and in control. Both the mind and body are programmed to avoid danger and to protect itself and to survive using any methods or tools available, and these responses are one of those many methods. The acute type response could last from a few seconds to a few minutes. During this response, these physiological changes happen:
Adrenaline hormone is released
Heart rate speeds up
Pupils dilate
Veins constrict to send more blood to the muscles
Begin to perspire
Muscles tense
Lungs take in more oxygen
Digestion and immune systems shut down so energy can be used for dealing with the crisis
Why do we freeze?
The brain needs to decide before the body can act, regardless if it is the conscious or the subconscious brain making the decision, the body cannot move without the brain first commanding it to do so. Under stress, the brain will try to collect as much information as possible to make a decision that will best increase one’s odds of surviving the situation. Once the brain is flooded with information or overwhelmed, it will be unable to decide which will cause your body to freeze. You don’t want to freeze when your life and your loved ones’ life are at stake.
… Unless you’re a Wakandan Warrior
How do we get into the fight and then flight?
In simpler words, how do we fight our ass out of trouble and stay out of it?
1. Mental preparation
Make the hard decision before the time comes. It's about asking yourself the hard question before the real shit happens. “If my car blew up, who am I going to save first, from which direction, how?”. “If some crazy assholes decided to come up and point a knife at me & my family, should I engage that asshole first or should I take my family to safety first?”. Making those hard decisions before they happen can help a lot when it comes to making one in real life when shit goes down.
2. Exposure
Expose yourself to as much as stressful situations, situations or activities that challenge both your mind and your body. Activities that will get your adrenaline pumped, get you sweaty, in or through a lot of challenges. Join marathons, cycle downhill, do bungee jumping, abseiling, pick up a martial art and join a tournament or heck, join survival camps. These are just a few examples of things that you can do to get used to being under stress. Once your mind is used to stress, when facing one that involves life and death, it will be better prepared to make a good decision that can save your ass.
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again until you get sick of hearing it,
“Your odds of survival depend on how you prepare for when shit hits the fan, the more you prepare, the more you train, the higher are your chances of survivability”
Do train a lot. Both physically and mentally.