Psychogenic reaction of flight. limbic reactions

The limbic brain is responsible for our survival as a species. That is why, in dangerous situations, he takes control of our actions and at the same time makes us demonstrate a sufficient number of non-verbal emblems. In this classic way, he once protected primitive people from Stone Age predators, and today protects workers from stone-hearted bosses.

An exceptionally effective brain response to stress or danger is expressed in three forms: freeze, run and fight . Just like other animal species whose limbic brains protected them in this way, humans who retained these limbic responses were able to survive because these behaviors were programmed into their brains from the very beginning. nervous system. ..Because we have been able to maintain and improve this wonderful way to successfully cope with stress or danger, and since these reactions cause our bodies to give non-verbal signals that help us understand people's thoughts, feelings and intentions, then we should spend some time on detailed study of each reaction.

Freeze response

In order for the first humans to survive, the limbic brain that we inherited from our animal ancestors developed a strategy to compensate for the superiority of predators. The first defensive tactic in this limbic system strategy was to use the freeze response in the presence of a predator or other danger. Movement attracts attention, and in order to help us survive in dangerous situations, the limbic brain made us choose the most effective of all possible behaviors and instantly freeze in place. Most carnivores chase moving targets on the instinctive urge to "chase, grab, and bite." Some animals, when confronted with predators, do not just freeze, but pretend to be dead, which is an extreme form of the freeze response.

For example, reports of shootings at Columbia University and Virginia Tech indicate that students used the freeze response to escape their killers. By keeping still and pretending to be dead, many students were able to stay alive even when they were only a few meters away from the perpetrators. They instinctively copied the behavior of their distant ancestors, and this technique proved to be very effective. Complete immobility can often make you almost invisible to others, and every Spetsnaz soldier knows this.

In today's society, the freezing response is less obvious in everyday life. It can be seen in people caught at the scene of a crime or convicted of lying. When people feel defenseless, they act in exactly the same way as our ancestors a million years ago - they freeze ... Scouts show exactly the same reaction in war. As soon as the one in front freezes, everyone else freezes - this signal is understandable without words. Either way, our brains need to decide what to do in a potentially dangerous situation.

Sometimes the limbic brain uses another kind of defensive freeze response and makes us shrink to look small and inconspicuous. Naughty children demonstrate such limbic freezing reactions. In a sense, these helpless kids are also trying to hide in the open, using the only survival tool available to them in this position.

Flight reaction

When the freezing response does not help to avoid danger or is not the most the best way out from the created position (for example, if the danger is too close), then the limbic brain chooses the second option of behavior - the reaction of flight. It goes without saying that escape as a survival mechanism can only be useful if it is physically feasible, and so our brains have adapted our bodies for thousands of years to use this prudent escape tactic. If you try to remember all the types of social interactions that you have had to participate in your life, you will surely remember many times when you tried to elude the unwanted attention of other people. Just as a child at a dinner table turns away from bad food and points his feet towards the exit, an adult can turn his back on someone he doesn’t like or avoid discussing a topic he doesn’t like.

For the same purpose, people use blocking behaviors : Close your eyes, rub your eyes, or cover your face with your hands.

To increase the distance to the person who is sitting next to you, you can tilt your torso back, put some object (handbag) on ​​your knees, or turn your feet to the nearest exit. All of these behaviors are controlled by the limbic brain and mean that someone wants to distance themselves from an unpleasant person, group of people, or any potential threat. Again, our ability to understand this behavior is due to the fact that for millions of years people tried to stay as far away as possible from everything that we did not like or could cause harm.

These actions may be accompanied by blocking behaviors. For example, a businessman may close or rub his eyes, or cover his face with his hands. He may lean off the table, move away from his opponent, or turn his feet in the direction of the nearest exit. These behaviors are not signs of deception, but rather indicate that the person is feeling uncomfortable. All of these forms of the age-old flight response are called non-verbal distancing signals and signify that the businessman is unhappy with what is happening at the negotiating table.

Fight reaction

The fight response is an aggressive tactic that the limbic brain uses as a last resort in a survival strategy. When a person who is faced with danger does not help to remain unnoticed and he cannot escape or retire to a safe distance, then he can only fight for his life. According to Professor Jack Panksepp, an animal behaviorist at Bowling University, in the course of our evolution as a species, we, like other mammals, have learned to turn fear into rage, helping to successfully repel an attack. However, in modern world physical manifestations of rage may be unacceptable or even illegal, and so the limbic brain has developed other, more sophisticated techniques based on the primitive fight response. One of the modern manifestations of aggression is a dispute. In essence, a heated argument is the same struggle, only without the use of physical coercion. Today's civil lawsuits are nothing more than socially approved forms of struggle or aggression in which both sides aggressively challenge two opposing points of view. However, the fact that people today sort things out through physical means much less often than at other times in our history does not mean that the limbic brain has eliminated fighting from its defensive arsenal.

Although some people are more violent than others, our limbic response finds many ways to manifest beyond punching, kicking, and biting. You can be extremely aggressive without physical contact at all. To do this, it is enough to use a threatening posture, look, puff out the chest or invade the personal space of another person. A threat to our personal space provokes a limbic response on an individual level. When a person uses the fight response to physically attack, their behavior is understandable to everyone.

But more subtle forms of behavior associated with the reaction of fighting . Just as we notice modified expressions of limbic freeze-and-flight responses, modern decorum dictates that we refrain from exercising our primitive tendency to fight in threatening situations. Because the fight response is the last line of defense against a threat and is used only after freeze and run tactics fail, you should avoid it if possible. In the state of emotional excitement that results from a good fight, we almost lose the ability to reason sanely . Daniel Go-Ulman explains this by saying that the limbic brain, which needs to use all available Brain resources, simply turns off our cognitive abilities. The elements of non-verbal behavior are also important to study carefully because sometimes they can alert you to someone's intention to use physical force against you and thus give you time to avoid potential conflict. Non-verbal communication can tell a lot more about a person than we can understand from the words of the person himself. If a contradiction arises between two sources of information (verbal and non-verbal): a person says one thing, but something completely different is written on his face, then, obviously, non-verbal information deserves more trust. Australian Specialist A. Pease claims that 7% of information is transmitted with the help of words, 38% of sound means, facial expressions, gestures, postures - 55%. In other words, it is not so important what is said, but how it is done.

Back in the 1920s, the physiologist W. Cannon developed a theory of emotions that considered sthenic negative emotions as defensive reactions of “fight or flight” (fight-or-flight). From this point of view, such negative emotions, like anger or fear, are biologically expedient: they prepare the body to develop the most intense muscle activity, entering into a fight or fleeing. In this case, the activation of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system occurs - adrenaline is released into the blood, causing a rapid heartbeat, an increase in blood pressure, redistribution of blood flow; breathing quickens, the level of glucose and cholesterol in the blood rises. All these physiological changes are necessary for the body in order to prepare for motor activity - accordingly, it is better to provide the muscles with oxygen and nutrients in order to develop maximum muscle effort - to fight (fight) or flee (flight). This mechanism is inherited by man from evolutionary predecessors and works in him in the same way as in animals. But if for primitive man this mechanism was extremely important for his physical survival, then for modern man it creates only problems, because it conflicts with the rules of behavior in a civilized society. Indeed, in most situations, neither physical nor simple flight helps in solving problems. And although a person, faced with unpleasant information, internally tenses up, preparing for action (and the pressure also rises, and the pulse quickens to provide the muscles with energy, and the muscles tense up), but the action itself does not occur. Physiological shifts, which are the vegetative provision of unreacted emotions, remain. Over time, they can undergo chronicity and lead to the formation of certain diseases. It can be said that, according to this model, the cause of psychosomatic disorders lies in the contradiction between the biological and social evolution of man.

The type of protective-instinctive reaction that is activated in a stressful situation - fight or flight - depends not only on the situation itself, but also on the individual-typical characteristics of a person. These are both characterological and psychobiological features, and at the deepest level, metabolic features. It is known that described by M. Frankenhäuser (1970) the division of people into “lions”, in which the level of norepinephrine in the blood increases in a stressful situation and which react mainly according to the type of “struggle”, and “rabbits”, in which, in similar circumstances, the level of adrenaline increases, and at the behavioral level, manifestations of the "flight" reaction are observed. People of the “mixed” type (according to V. N. Vasiliev), occupying an intermediate position between the described types, are characterized under stress by predominantly anxious-passive behavior.

What happens to a person under stress? What is the mechanism of the anxiety reaction?

In 1935, American physiologist Walter Cannon first defined it as a fight-or-flight response. Or, in mathematical terms, reaction A or B.

Information about the anxiety reaction through the senses enters the brain, where there is an important "relay station" - the hypothalamus. Within fractions of a second, information is transmitted through the nerve endings of the sympathetic nervous system to the adrenal glands. Having received the "SOS" signal, this organ instantly releases into the blood a huge amount of "combat hormones" - adrenaline and norepinephrine, which are carried by vessels throughout the body. There is a redistribution (pumping) of blood: it moves to where it is more necessary for the response of A or B - mainly to the muscles. Signals from the brain immediately go further - mental tension increases, attention increases, preparation for action is carried out. All this happens at lightning speed - tension, and hence stress, is growing at a monstrous1 speed. The hypothalamus mobilizes the neurohumoral apparatus: impulses are transmitted through the nerve endings to smooth muscles and endocrine glands, which begin to intensively produce hormones.

Not so long ago, it was proved that during physical stress, the adrenal glands secrete mainly norepinephrine, while during mental stress (anxiety, fear, rage) - first of all adrenaline, Adrenaline and norepinephrine increase heart rate and respiration and increase blood pressure. They also contribute to an increase in the amount of certain substances in the blood (in particular, triacetylglycerols), which chain reaction leads to the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases: atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke. It is the increase in the amount of acetylglycerols that is one of the possible causes of the onset (under the influence of stress) of mental illness.

Relaxation

As already mentioned, the stress reaction causes in the body in the usual reflex way a natural response - reaction A or B. Our today's "natural" lifestyle with its "accustomed" lack of movement does not provide a stimulus for an active response. For us, more and more familiar in such situations is the reaction B - flight. And this combination of inadequate lifestyle and biochemical and hormonal responses to stress can lead to serious health problems.

What way out of this situation can and should we find? There is only one way out - first of all, to change the way of life, to move from passivity to activity. After all, sufficient activity does not allow harmful substances to accumulate in the body. But what about those situations when you are not able to eliminate a stressful situation from your life? You should learn to actively influence it, thereby "absorbing" the stress blow. This means learning to manage stress in spite of the natural automatic reaction and respond to it in an autoregulatory, or, as doctors say, relaxation.

For a long time there was an opinion that the anxiety reaction (A or B) is unpredictable and unsafe and in a different way a person can not react to stress. However, many years of experience shows that it is much more useful, using the reserve capabilities of the body, to master the method of conscious and active self-regulation. This will allow you to respond to stress more calmly.

The secrets of the response to anxiety (A or B) were revealed by the American physiologist Walter Cannon. The Canadian physiologist Hans Selye penetrated the mystery of the origin of stress. It was physiologists who suggested the possibility of conscious autoregulatory intervention, the penetration of a person into himself, into his own "I", and gave him a scientific justification. These were the great Russian physiologist Pavlov and the outstanding American researchers Wallace and Benson.

They showed that a person is also able to regulate some natural physiological processes, i.e. has the ability to purposefully use its capabilities. Thus, his reaction to stressful stimuli can promote health - both mental and physical. This in itself is logical: after all, if you are "able" to harm your own health, then why not use the same abilities for good. And then the efforts will be directed not only to dysregulation, but, on the contrary, will be used positively for autoregulation. This very important ability is probably not known to many of us, and for most of us it remains untapped.

When a person suddenly learns that he does not have to become a victim of stress at all, that he can quite rely on himself and has the ability to defend himself, this naturally gives him confidence in his abilities and makes him want to do something. But for this it is necessary to know the means and methods by which you can control your physiological reactions to stress impulses.

The automatic alarm reaction consists of three successive phases (according to G. Selye's theory): 1) impulse, 2) stress and 3) adaptation. In other words, if adaptation occurs, then the stressful state soon subsides - the person somehow calms down. If adaptation is disturbed (or absent at all), then some psychosomatic diseases or disorders may occur.

Therefore, if you do not want to direct your efforts to maintaining health, then you must consciously respond to the stress impulse with relaxation. With the help of this type of active defense, a person is able to intervene in any of the three phases of stress. Thus, you can prevent the impact of a stress impulse, delay it, or (if the stressful situation has not yet occurred) reduce stress, thereby preventing psychosomatic disorders in the body.

By activating the activity of the nervous system, relaxation regulates mood and the degree of mental excitation, allows you to weaken or relieve mental and muscle tension caused by stress.

"From the point of view of our modern scientific understanding, a person is an exceptional system, since he is distinguished by a stage of autoregulation", - these words belong to I.P. Pavlov.

Triggering a fight or flight reaction in the body is tantamount to declaring war by the head of government. When war is declared, all the industrial resources of the nation are thrown into the production of armaments. Mobilization begins and young men are drafted into the army. The military takes control of the country's communications and transport systems. Borders are closing, security measures are being tightened everywhere. All those involved in the country's life support systems are moving to martial law.

The forebrain, with its large frontal lobes capable of supporting speech and abstract thinking, is a relatively recent evolutionary innovation. Humans have had symbolic thinking for about 200,000 years, which is just one moment in terms of evolution. Reptiles, for example, manage to survive just fine without such a sophisticated tool. The body's survival intelligence is much older, about four billion years old. In order for a species to survive long enough to develop such a thinking machine as the frontal lobes, it needed a very good alarm response system.

However, when you are in danger, the body does not have to use the frontal lobes. It relies on ancient reptilian instincts to survive. The reaction of fight or flight whips up all the systems of the organism, which is likened to a country about to fight. Muscles tense to act immediately, and blood rushes to horse * pus. To get enough blood to the muscles, it drains from the digestive, reproductive, and cognitive systems. The skin turns white to prevent unnecessary blood flow. Pupils dilate. Your blood sugar spikes, your blood pressure rises, and your heart rate rises - you have extra energy at your disposal.

However, there is a price to be paid for such mobilization. The immune system suppressed, digestive and reproductive systems decrease. Blood flows from the frontal lobes to the muscles, which is why the sages advise against making any decisions while you are depressed.

When the crisis passes, everything returns to normal) "- if you are a dog or a cat. If you are a person, then you begin to use your powerful frontal lobes in order to play the drama in your subjective reality again and again, triggering the fight or flight reaction in your body thousands of times after the objective need for

the war has already disappeared.

If you believe you are being besieged, your body has no way of telling you that these are just abstract thoughts of a neurotic mind. The old survival system has been activated. That is why spouses or partners who are constantly at war with each other, as well as patients suffering from depression and anxiety disorders, are characterized by a decrease immune function. Their cortisone levels rise, and the function of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and regeneration, is suppressed in favor of the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which is involved in the fight-or-flight response.

The limbic brain has an interesting and very important place in the study of non-verbal communication. It is responsible not only for adaptation in stressful situations, but also for our survival as a species. At the moment, he takes control of our actions, and at the same time makes us demonstrate more non-verbal emblems.

Freeze response

Her goal: To become less visible

The limbic freeze response can often be seen during witness interviews when people hold their breath or begin to breathe rapidly and shallowly. The witness himself does not notice it, but for everyone who watches him, this reaction is obvious. It can also be seen in people caught at the scene of a crime or convicted of lying. When people feel defenseless, they act in exactly the same way as our ancestors a million years ago - they freeze.

How it manifests itself non-verbally:
- decrease ,
- Decreased mobility.

Verbally:

— ,
- Ask again the question (gain time to think about the answer).

The higher the discomfort, the more it manifests.
The moment when the mobility of the hands stops is important: a sign of evaluating actions or processing situational information.

Flight reaction

Goal: Escape the unwanted.

When the freeze response does not help, avoid the stressor, or is not the best way out of the situation (for example, if danger is too close), then the limbic brain chooses the second behavior - the flight response. Such a choice is determined by the desire to escape from danger, or at least to be away from it.

Non-verbal signs:

— ,
-different kinds body lock,
- lapel towards the body, head, feet,
— ,
- shifty eyes
- shifting from foot to foot.

Verbal signs:

- deviating from the topic of conversation.

Fight reaction

The purpose of which is to get rid of the stress factor with the help of an aggressive attack.

This aggressive tactic, the brain uses as a last resort to get rid of the stressor.