Fight-or-Flight
Have you ever been in a situation where you were forced to fight-or-flight? You can thank a part of your autonomic nervous system for that. The autonomic nervous system is split into two divisions. These two divisions work together and maintain normal body function. One is the parasympathetic nervous system which calms a person through relaxing the nerves in their body (rest and digest). The parasympathetic nervous system usually comes into action after the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system returns blood pressure, the breathing rate and hormone flow all return to equilibrium after it is changed due to stressful situations. The other is the sympathetic nervous system, which is located in the spine and stimulates the nerves and gets them ready to either fight-or-flight and is what we are going to focus on today. When put into a stressful or dangerous situation, the body releases a flood or hormones which boosts the bodies alertness and heartrate and sends extra blood to the induvial muscles. The persons breath rate increases, delivering more fresh oxygen to the brain along and glucose is released into the bloodstream as a boost of energy. Most of the time people do not even realize these responses are taking place.
In my lifetime I have experienced many situations where my sympathetic nervous system played a huge role and I was in a fight-or-flight moment. I am from Northeast Pennsylvania where I spend a lot of my time out in the woods hunting. Hunting season in NEPA usually runs from the fall into winter. My fight-or-flight moment happened in the fall, when I was hunting out of a tree stand. The day before, somebody harvested a deer at the location I was hunting and left the scraps in the woods. I saw them and thought nothing of it and got in the tree stand and sat there for hours. Just before dark it sounded like someone threw a boulder down the hill behind me, and I could feel my adrenaline start pumping because I thought it was going to be a group of deer and my season would be over that night. Unfortunately, that group of deer ended up being a large adult black bear who was looking for a meal while bulking up for hibernation. I didn’t know what to do at that point, I could feel my body change as the feeling of danger overcame me. All I saw was a large bear towering high on its hind legs trying to locate the bloody deer carcass that was fifty yards in front of me. I didn’t know what danger felt like until it was ten yards away from a hungry bear in a twelve-foot-high tree stand with only a bow and three arrows. At that moment there was no thinking, my body was instantly preparing me for the worst and telling me to get out of the area or if I had to, to try and eliminate the threat and fight for my life. The bear made a beeline to the gut pile and started ripping it apart, I figured that was my opportunity and I climbed out of the tree and quickly walked out of the woods.
At that time, I didn’t realize it until my parasympathetic nervous system started to calm me down, but my sympathetic nervous system was playing a huge role in that experience. It immediately took over and started making my body do things I didn’t realize I was doing until I was out of that situation. When I later thought about it, I felt the adrenaline flowing, my heart beating crazily out of chest, my body stared pouring sweat, and my breath rate was through the roof. And this is just one major situation, I’m sure we experience situations where both systems come into play weekly. We should be grateful these systems exist, because they play a huge role in human survival, and without them who knows where we would be.
Sources:
Complete Autonomic Nervous System Management for Any Coach. (2019, July 11). Retrieved from https://simplifaster.com/articles/autonomic-nervous-system/
Fight or Flight: The Sympathetic Nervous System. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/65446-sympathetic-nervous-system.html
Hey! I really enjoyed hearing your story as it related to the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. Like you, I have experienced many moments where my body is reacting to situations that my senses are perceiving as life threatening. There was a particular situation where I experienced a similar fight-or-flight response as you. I grew up in rural upstate New York and spent a lot of time trail riding in the woods on our property. I often find that my horse could pick up signs of danger before I was even aware of something going on. Because of this, I trust my horse’s intuition and do not push him farther along when something is scaring him. There was one instance where I was trail riding on horseback deep in the woods at sunset by myself. All of a sudden, my horse started tossing his head and prancing in place. I immediately looked around to see if there was something that was spooking him. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I tried to calm him down, but he was not having it. He started jumping and tried turning around to run away. Not only was my horse experiencing a fight-or-flight response, but I was as well when I heard rustling in front of us. The noise in combination with my horse acting in a way that he only does when something is clearly wrong, sent my heart racing. I started breathing heavy and felt like my heart was about to beat out of my chest. Without thinking, I turned my horse in the direction of the barn and let him take off through the woods. I kept checking over my shoulder as we ran away to make sure something wasn’t following us. Luckily, I listened to my horse’s fight-or-flight response when he initially felt threatened. Even though the noise could have just been a deer, I did not want to stick around long enough to find out. I totally related to your story.
I really enjoyed that exciting story and great representation of fight or flight. I have had similar experiences. In the summer, I stay in Bethany Beach, Delaware. It is the typical summer at the beach, all day on the beach and then go straight to work. One day I was in the Ocean when I saw something in the water in front of me. I automatically processed in my head that it had to be something dangerous, being that big and dark colored. My fear of sharks may have sparked an even faster response to this. My heart started beating fast and I immediately ran/ swam out of the water as fast as I could. Although I’m not sure how harmful this could have been, it turned out to be a large sting ray. My immediate reaction to get out of the water was due to my sympathetic nervous system. Calming down after the fact was due to my sympathetic nervous system.
This story was exhilarating and really showed how the sympathetic nervous system kicked in to gear you to fight or flee the situation and how your parasympathetic nervous system calmed you down afterwards. I live in a wooded area like the one you described and often times go running down trails. One time I almost stepped on a snake while doing this had an immediate reaction similar to the one that you described where your heart was beating out of your chest, you started sweating profusely, and breathing heavily. But instead of speedily walking out of the woods I automatically jumped into the air and almost hit into a tree. This was the “flight” response of my sympathetic nervous system because I felt like I was in danger of the snake. It did take my a while for my parasympathetic nervous system to kick in though because I had to continue to run out of the woods and was fearful of another snake being on the trail. That was the last time I ran through the woods. Great story!
That was such an exciting story about how we should appreciate our sympathetic nervous system! I can actually relate to that so much because my entire family are huge about hunting. My dad often goes to Canada to hunt, so he has had his fair share of being in dangerous situations with unexpected wildlife. As for myself, I will never forget the time my sympathetic nervous system took over. Now of course its not as life threatening as your experience, but I was actually scared for my life. Back in may, I was driving home from my friends house that was not even 5 minutes away from me. What could possibly be so dangerous about that right? I was just pulling out of my friend’s neighborhood making aright hand turn when I saw an animal catch me off guard in my rear view mirror, not realizing that I had rolled through the stop sign running over the curb and hearing a huge bang. I was scared for my life and the first thing running though my mind was if I just killed an innocent animal, my heart was pounding and I was sweating and shaking. I pulled my car over and It was just a flat tire. I was all by myself at night on the side of the road expecting and thinking the worst, of course I was also worried my parents were going to kill me. After a while my friend’s parents came out and helped me temporarily fix it so I was able to drive home safely. That had to be one of the scariest things that has really ever happened to me, but I know it was all fight or flight from there after I heard that loud bang.