fight or flight response ?? What is it

[HURRAY4ME]

Hi, I've been reading a lot on here in the last few days and the words 'fight or flight' keep coming up. Please can anyone explain what it means? Thank you.

[ash1807]

It is a natural response to a perception of danger.

An animal will either fight or run when faced with danger
Sadly we have this older reptilian part of our brain that reacts the same way. This reaction starts a chain of events within the body like releasing hormones and glucose. the muscles also tenses up for the response.

Unfortenetely, humans are not faced with having to run or fight so these hormones and extra glucose are sloshing around tring to do their thing. This is quite an unpleasant effect, but that is all it is.

[Utility]

Hi

Look under Panic Attacks on the left hand side and it will explain all

[Hel_is_heaven]

Hello, I thought I would add a little in here as over the years I have read many many books on panic and feel I know a fair bit about fight or flight.

As said before it is the animal instinct which is in all animals, including humans, which helps decide what to do when threatened.
So if a cat for instance is cornered, it will either snarl and spit and scratch you, or it will attempt to dart round you.
Adrenaline is pumped into your body, making your heart beat faster, and your muscles get ready for some kind of action.
The thing is with panic is that we feel threatened about non-threatening things (like going out for instance) so we get these feelings of the body getting ready for fight or flight, which are the panic feelings. Now if we were cornered by a large grizzly bear, these feelings would be acceptable and we would be using instinct to get out of the situation. However as I said before these instincts come about in situations where they shouldn't.

Feeling like your going to be sick, or mess yourself etc actually makes a lot of sense if you think in terms of fight or flight because if we did do those things when threatened, it would make us lighter so we could run away faster.

Scientists have also discovered another instinctive response to threats, which is fight, flight or FREEZE. Think rabbit in a headlights kinda thing. Why do they do it? Because they have learnt that some predators will either not be able to find them or will ignore them if they stand stock still.

I hope this helps anyway. If you want to ask me any questions - feel free.
Helen x

[HURRAY4ME]

Hi, thanks for the comments above. Helen, I always run when this happens but need to stay and fight it out, however am now finding the attacks getting much worse than the last one, especially the after effects, I am now having to sleep afterwards, have you got any advice or suggestions, am reading lots again, but would rather have suggestions that read the books again and am finding this website one of the best for help and advice. Thanks again for your time, Samantha