Someone cut you off on the highway and you had to swerve andnarrowly avoided a collision.

Cleveland Clinic is a non-profit academic medical center. Advertising on our site helps support our mission. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services.Policy

While out for a morning run, an angry dog jumps out onto your path and starts growling and barking at you.

In the second before you turned on the lights in your empty house,your coat rack looked like it was a person standing right next to you.

All three of these scenarios can trigger your bodys naturalfight or flight response, which is driven from your sympathetic nervous system.This response is your bodys reaction to danger and was designed to help yousurvive stressful and life-threating situations.

The fight or flight response, or stress response, is triggered by a release of hormones either prompting us to stay and fight or run away and flee, explains psychologist Carolyn Fisher, PhD. During the response, all bodily systems are working to keep us alive in what weve perceived as a dangerous situation.

Without you even telling it what to do, your body is assessing whats going on around you and determining your options on how you most likely could survive the event.

Heres what can happen during the stress response:

During the fight or flight response your body is trying to prioritize, so anything it doesnt need for immediate survival is placed on the back burner. This means that digestion, reproductive and growth hormone production and tissue repair are all temporarily halted. Instead, your body is using all its energy on the most crucial priorities and functions.

The stress response can be triggered in a single instant, but how quickly you calm down and return to your natural state is going to vary from person to person (and it will depend on what caused it). Typically it takes 20 to 30 minutes for your body to return to normal and to calm down.

Our fight or flight response was designed to help usthrough catastrophic circumstances, says Dr. Fisher. If you think about itfrom an evolution standpoint, it makes sense because we used to have a lot morelife-threatening emergencies.

Back in the caveman days, danger was all around us andthreats were constant. We didnt know where our next meal was coming from, wehad to brave the weather and we had to fight predators all around us. Arustling bush could be a lion or something else trying to kill you.

And so our ancestors developed the stress response to helpus survive.

Fortunately in todays word, real danger is few and farbetween, but that doesnt mean weve lost our ability to trigger the fight orflight response. It might happen while youre on an airplane thats experiencingturbulence or when someone jumps out at you from a dark room. And itll morethan likely be triggered if youre in a car accident, being robbed orexperiencing something else traumatic.

Where it gets tricky is when your body starts triggering thefight or flight response during non-threating situations like giving a bigpresentation, trying to make a deadline at work or merely thinking about a phobia, such as spiders or heights. Thesesituations arent truly dangerous, but theyve triggered our stress responseand our body is reacting to it as if it was.

In evolution, the stress response was designed to help us survive, but thats not always how it plays out in todays world, says Dr. Fisher. Our fight or flight response can now be activated from psychological or mental stress. For example, some individuals can activate it just thinking about work tomorrow.

Living in a prolonged state of high alert and stress (when there isnt any real reason for it) can be detrimental to your physical and mental health.

Your autonomic nervous system is a delicate balancing actbetween your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervoussystem. Both networks involuntarily react to the environment around you.

Your sympathetic nervous system is responsible for how your body reacts to danger and is responsible for the fight or flight response. While your parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for maintaining homeostasis, which is your bodys built-in stability monitor. Think of it like a generator making sure everything from your body temperature to your water intake is functioning smoothly. Your parasympathetic nervous system makes sure things are balanced. It works to relax you and helps conserve and restore energy.

You need both systems to run properly.

Think of your sympathetic nervous system and yourparasympathetic nervous system like your cars gas and breaks, explains Dr.Fisher. You need to use both effectively for your car to run properly.

You need your sympathetic nervous system to keep you alive when true danger is detected and you need your parasympathetic nervous system to restore and relax you so that your body can run business as usual.

So if you find that your body is constantly reacting to every day stress with the fight or flight response it should be a warning sign that your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems arent working together in harmony.

Often times stressors that arent life threating dont havea clear on or off switch, says Dr. Fisher. Thats where we see some of thedetrimental effects of prolonged stress because its not going away. Its achronic stress to our immune system.

Work, bills, kids, your marriage, finances and health are some of the biggest non-life threatening stressors. How you interpret these things can affect your bodys reaction and can contribute to anxiety disorders.

Some people are having the fight or flight response whenthey go to work or see that their kid didnt clean up their room, says Dr.Fisher. It can vary from person to person in terms of the situations that cantrigger the stress response, but were finding that certain conditions orhealth states can be associated with this imbalance.

Some people who get in a car accident are too afraid to drive again or cant drive past the spot where the accident was because of fear and anxiety. It becomes a generalized fear response to a situation that isnt particularly dangerous anymore. This can also happen with work or strained relationships. The next thing you know, your fight or flight response is falsely activated, putting you in a state of chronic stress.

Dr. Fisher says stress management is critical to overallhealth. Its important to think big picture when you feel yourself starting toget worked up over something that you know is not a true threat or danger.

The fight or flight response is an important reaction that we all have and need, but its meant for true stress and danger. Everyone is going to have it in varying degrees for different reasons, but learning to slow down, be aware and conceptualize whats actually happening can help you regain control.

You need to get in touch with your individual physical,emotional and behavioral signs of stress, says Dr. Fisher. Maybe a migrainemeans youve had prolonged stress going on, so you need to tune into your bodyand whats going on before it gets to a crisis point.

If youre at the point where stress is impacting your quality of life talk to your doctor. Therapy, medication and stress management techniques can help you return to a more balanced state. Its not a quick fix and youll have to work on it daily, but you should be proactive about stress.

The fight or flight response has a clear purpose and function, but it shouldnt be activated over every day, non-threatening stressors like traffic, emails or bills. And if it is, the goal is to feel skilled at having an awareness when the response is activated, and to be able to bring yourself back to baseline.

Link:
What Happens to Your Body During the Fight or Flight Response? - Health Essentials from Cleveland Clinic

Comments are closed.