Fear:
Within seconds of perceiving a threat, the primitive amygdala sounds a general alarm.
The adrenal system promptly floods the body with adrenaline and stress hormones.
Nonessential physiological processes switch off.
Digestion stops, skin chills, and blood is diverted into muscles in preparation for a burst of emergence action.
Breathing quickens, the heart races and blood pressure skyrockets, infusing the body with oxygen while the liver releases glucose for quick fuel.
The entire body us suddenly in a state of high alert, ready for fight or flight. By Minnesota State University Moorhead
Chinese medicine aproach:
Chinese medicine categorizes the major emotions as: anxiety, sorrow, fear, anger, joy, rumination, and empathy. Each of these, when excessive or fix (preoccupying the mind), harms an internal organ and disturbs the qi in specific ways.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the word shen, "kidneys," includes both the kidneys and adrenals and, in some contexts, the reproductive sys-tem. The shen are most affected by fear. Fear causes pain and disease in the kidneys, adrenals, and lower back and creates favorable conditions for uri-nary tract disorders and incontinence. When one is afraid, the qi drops down toward the sacrum and in toward the center, away from the surface of the body. The body contracts in self-protection. The circulation of blood and breath slows down, resulting in conditions of excess and stagnation in the core and depletion in the periphery. A common sign of this is cold hands and feet. One is literally "frozen with fear."
Chronic fear can lead to a host of debilitating conditions. Fear and stress; cause the adrenals to secrete large amounts of the stress hormones adrenaline and hydrocortisone, which signal the cells to break down stored fats and pro-teins into sugar (glucose). This makes energy available to fight or flee from a threat - a necessity during short-term threats to survival but devastating if prolonged. As the stores of energy are sapped, we become weak and fatigued, leading to "adrenal burnout." The body's reservoir of hormones is not infinitely deep. If we do not have time to rest and regenerate our supply, our ability to cope with stress is impaired.
The release of adrenal hormones puts many bodily processes on hold, in order to defend against the threat. This includes the shutting down of growth, repair, and reproduction by inhibiting or disabling essential chemi-cals and immune cells. If stress is constant, the body may forget how to re-turn to the healthy state, losing its ability to defend effectively against pathogens or to repair and heal damage.
In qigong theory, the kidneys and adrenals also control brain function, especially memory. Scientific research has confirmed that fear and stress can weaken memory and create learning disabilities. The stress hormone, hydro-cortisone, damages the hippocampus, a region of the brain responsible for memory and learning and rich with hydrocortisone receptors. The connec-tion between the adrenal hormones and memory has also been shown in ani-mal experiments. In the 1960s, German physiologists found that these hormones damage the brains of guinea pigs. On the other hand, when the adrenal glands were removed from middle-aged rats, the hippocampal cells were spared the damage that one would normally expect with aging. The implication of all of this for humans is that by avoiding stressful situations or by resolving or changing our reactions to them, we can restore balance to the shen, the kidneys-adrenals, and preserve the health of body and mind. http://www.sahej.com/organ-emotion_printready.html
Doctor of Psychology approach:
The Anatomy of Fear
Prepare to deal with your fear response to a crisis.
Published on July 28, 2008 by John A. Call, Ph.D., J.D., A.B.P.P. in Crisis Center
Fear is an emotion we all experience at one time or another, and its effects are important to understand when talking about disasters. As soon as you feel fear, the amygdala (a small almond-shaped organ in the center of your brain) sends signals to your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which then has a wide range of effects. The ANS kicks in, and suddenly, your heart rate increases, your blood pressure goes up, your breathing gets quicker, and stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released. The blood flows away from the heart and out towards the extremities, preparing the arms and legs for action. These effects served us well millennia ago, in situations where we were faced with beastly animals that thought they had found dinner.
In modern times, however, bodily responses to fear can be detrimental, especially since the most important one is a negative one: the brain basically shuts down as the body prepares for action. The cerebral cortex, the brain's center for reasoning and judgment, is the area that becomes impaired when the amygdala senses fear. The ability to think and reason decreases as time goes on, so thinking about the next best move in a crisis can be a hard thing to do. Some people even experience feelings of time slowing down, tunnel vision, or feeling like what is happening is not real. These dissociative symptoms can make it hard to stay grounded and logical in a dangerous situation. Essentially, the body's response to fear or stress can be stressful in itself.
Wow, since most situations require us to think first, and then act, the body's response of preparing itself for action while shutting down the brain is not a good thing! So how can we gain better control over our own physiological responses in disasters? The best advice is this: learn to breathe. Yep, this may sound like an odd statement, but gaining conscious control over your breathing is the best thing you can do for yourself. Practice deep, even, controlled breathing when you aren't scared, and you'll be prepared to breathe this way when you do feel scared. Slow, even breathing helps to slow down your heart rate and lower your emotional arousal level. It can also make you feel more like you are in control of the situation, which can help block some of the effects of stress.
In addition to deep breathing, meditation is another thing that people can practice in preparation of dealing with a disaster. Studies show that people who meditate daily have a thicker brain tissue in the prefrontal cortex, which is a part of the brain that handles working memory, attention, and emotion regulation. In short, if you want to get prepared to deal with your body's response to a disaster situation, practice breathing, meditate daily, and be confident in your ability to deal with the tough stuff! http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/crisis-center/200807/the-anatomy-fear
Person dealing with an anxiety disorder, their approach:
Fight-or-Flight Response and how it is different with regards to anxiety disorders.
The Fight-or-Flight Response is a biological and psychological change that occurs in the body when a danger is perceived.
In anxiety and panic disorders, the brain is acting as if there is a threat or danger even if there is not, in reality, one present at all. The following should explain why we sufferers cannot just “snap out of it” and remain in our excited, agitated and nervous state.
Let's start by taking an example. If you are hiking through the woods and suddenly come upon a wolf, your body and mind stop for a split second and the body begins pumping chemicals through your system and preps your body for the decision that is being made in that split-second, do you fight the wolf or run like a bat out of hell? This split-second decision is usually made while our bodies are "paralized by fear", or standing perfectly still, another instinctive reaction left over from years of evolution. Your brain becomes highly alert, and your heart starts pumping furiously and your breathing changes.
The following list of what happens physiologically is taken from the book “Principals of Anatomy and Physiology,” by Tortura and Grabowski, eighth edition.
Stress excites the sympathetic nervous system, the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal cortex. This produces the following effects:
- The pupils of the eyes dilate.
- Heart rate and force of contraction and blood pressure increase.
- The blood vessels of nonessential organs such as the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract constrict.
- Blood vessels of organs involved in exercise or fighting off danger – skeletal muscles, cardiac muscle, liver, and adipose tissue – dilate to allow faster flow of blood. (The liver splits glycogen to glucose and adipose tissue splits triglycerides to fatty acids, both of which are used by muscle fiber to generate ATP.)
- The rate and depth of breathing increase and the airways dilate, which allow faster movement of air in and out of the lungs.
- Blood glucose level rises as liver glycogen is converted to glucose.
- The medullae of the adrenal glands are stimulated to release epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline). These hormones intensify and prolong the sympathetic effects just described.
- Processes that are not essential for meeting the stress situation are inhibited. For example, muscular movements of the gastrointestinal tract and digestive secretions slow down or even stop.
In today's society, in which we aren't threatened by wild beasts very often, most people will have a fight or flight response to things like taking a test.
To paraphrase from the book, if the stress remains for a long period of time, the excitation becomes more prominent and if it remains for weeks or months it can weaken the immune system. In this state, there may be a reduction of the levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine (also called adrenaline and noradrenaline) in the brain, which are two neurotransmitters that many medications given to people with anxiety and panic disorders try to alter.
Full article : http://hardanxiety.blogspot.ca/fight_or_flight.html
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Equinox Health Clinic.
