Fight or Flight

In this first-ever episode of The Quiet Mind, David speaks about some of his own experiences of trauma and anxiety and discusses our bodies primal Fight or Flight response to perceived danger. 

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Hi, and welcome to the first of our podcasts now in the series, where we are going to look at some of the issues around mental health and mental well being. So we'll look at everything from anxiety, trauma, and depression, through to meditation, mindfulness, and a whole range of other things that will help us live healthier and happier lives. There's a great deal to talk about, so let's get started. I'm David Walker, and you're listening to The Quiet Mind. 

Thank you so much for joining us in this episode. And hopefully, as we go on, you'll get some value from our discussions, and it may even set you on a path to becoming a happier version of yourself. So to begin with, in the spirit of openness and disclosure, it's probably fitting that I start by telling you something about myself just to get us going. So importantly, I should say to begin with that I'm not a medical expert, or a scientist or a trained counsellor. And so any input that I provide, is purely from the basis of my own personal experience with these things that we're discussing, such as trauma, depression, and anxiety. And over the course of our discussions, hopefully, I will be able to recall some of the things that I experienced and some of the strategies I used to gain control of my anxiety. From time to time, expert guests will join us on the show, and I'm going to leave the science side of things to those who will join us along the way. 

So for my part, I started life as a very normal, well adjusted happy child. And I suppose in many respects, I had quite a privileged upbringing. Due to my father's job, I left and went to school in various places around the world. We spent some time in Canada and South Africa before returning to the UK. And when we did return to the UK, I developed an interest in acting. And so that's what I did, I went to drama school and became an actor. I did that for several years until I give up and joined the place in 2005. And it was really during my police service that I first experienced trauma and anxiety, but strangely enough, it didn't come from the kind of place you may expect, because it wasn't the job itself or even the challenging and sometimes upsetting situations that we had to deal with. But actually, it came from the toxic culture of the police as an organization. And when I say that, I mean things like racism, sexism, narcissism and bullying and all this kind of thing that was endemic within the culture, of the police. And it just didn't gel right with me, I didn't suit that kind of environment, although I did put up with it for 11 years, and I suppose that's where the problem was. But I never experienced a single incident of trauma such as being the victim of a car crash or the victim of a crime, but rather what happened to me was a kind of sustained, insidious, daily exposure to a toxic kind of blame culture, bullying, and an oppressive management style. Ultimately, there was this sense of hopelessness I experienced because I couldn't speak up about any of it. The culture in the police at that time (as it still is) was such that if you did speak up about these things, then YOU were seen as the problem. And so there was really no one to turn to. And there wasn't anything in the way of understanding of how this culture might affect anyone, or even any interest, to be honest, as to how people may be affected by the kind of oppressive management and bullying culture that existed. And so after about 11 years of service, the daily exposure to these feelings, ultimately ended up in me having a nervous breakdown. This happened while I was at work, it happened in the afternoon one day, when all of a sudden, whilst sat at my desk, I started to feel the kind of physiological things that are associated with a nervous breakdown. Now I can look back on it and see that's what it was, but at the time, I didn't have any idea what was happening to me at all, and I had no control over it. I could feel that my heart pounding in my chest, and the blood pumping in my veins and I also had this kind of gnawing, cold, horrible, twisted kind of feeling in the pit of my stomach as well, My blood pressure was rising and it was a horrible, horrible feeling. I knew that if any of my colleagues had attempted to speak with me, I would just have broken down there and then, and so the most important thing to me at that time was to get out of the building as fast as I could. And so that's exactly what I did, I got up got my jacket, walked out the door, got into my car, went home, and I never returned since. 

During my 11 years as a police officer, I eventually specialized in the investigation of domestic abuse, because it was an area of investigation which caught my interest. Since then, I have dedicated a lot of my working life to the field of domestic abuse, working with both the victims and the perpetrators of domestic abuse in different ways. So with regards to the perpetrators, I used to run training program of behavioural change, to ask them to address the some of the toxic behaviours that they were showing, and try to rehabilitate them in some way. And now I provide support for the victims of domestic abuse as part of a crisis intervention service to help them get on and get the things they need to move out of these toxic relationships. Interestingly, one of the things that I have noticed while dealing with the victims of domestic abuse is that a lot of the things I'm hearing from these victims are very similar to the kind of feelings I had experienced when I was in the police. Albeit the circumstances giving rise to their anxieties were very different from my own. However, the actual physical experience of trauma and anxiety is the same. And to understand this, I think we need to understand how and why our bodies respond to trauma in the way that they do. And to understand that, we need to go right back to our primitive ancestors. 

Over the course of evolution, our bodies have changed significantly to adapt to your surroundings, and to ensure our survival as a species. However, in many respects, our brains actually still function quite primitively. And one of these primitive functions is our fight or flight response. This survival response is simply our body's pre-programmed way of dealing with perceived danger, and it's extremely important for our survival. However, the problem lies in the fact that the dangers that we may have faced back in the Neanderthal cave-dwelling days are no longer the same kind of dangers that we know face in modern life. And this is where things start to get a bit more problematic for us. 

Back in Neanderthal times, when we were living in caves, the main threat that we faced was animals, such as tigers coming into the cave, and attacking us, and so we developed this fight or flight response that would pump blood to our muscles to prepare us for to fight, or to prepare us to run away from the danger. This survival mode would also sharply focus our attention on the danger itself, ignoring everything else around us. Our bodies would flood with cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and this, in turn, would suppress our appetite and would put us into a state of extreme alertness, or hypervigilance, which is another term that we'll discuss quite a bit as this podcast goes on. 

Now, cortisol is a very important and necessary chemical in our bodies when it comes to survival, however, long term exposure to cortisol can have quite bad effects on our health. Ideally, when we are in danger, our bodies get flooded with cortisol, which allows us to deal with the danger, but once that danger passes, our levels of cortisol will decrease again and return to normal. The kind of threats that I'm speaking about in modern-day life are things like confrontations with our bosses, or our colleagues, work pressures, deadlines, and financial difficulties. The fear of perhaps losing our jobs and not being able to provide for our families, or not being able to pay our debts. In fact, when you start to think about all the different ways that we could potentially experience threats and conflict around us in our life, we realize that actually, these threats are almost constant, and so, therefore, is our exposure to cortisol. Over time, this drip-drip effect, builds up the levels of cortisol inside our bodies, until we can't take it anymore and our bodies simply shut down. We have a nervous breakdown. That was my experience, but imagine a victim of domestic abuse where the danger is actually living in the same house as them, there's no escape from the abuser or the dangers they pose, victims of domestic abuse don't have that option. So their exposure to the stress hormone is constant. In fact, many victims of domestic abuse tell us that they were almost willing the abuser to hit them because waiting for the unknown to happen, was actually much worse. Their view was that it was much better to experience the abuse sooner rather than later, in the hope that once the abuse was over, they could return to some sense of calm, because the effect of living in a constant state of hypervigilance, wondering if and when something was going to happen, was actually wreaking untold damage on their body and mind. 

The stress hormone is a stimulant, it keeps us awake, suppresses our appetite, and affects our memory function. Long term exposure to stress or trauma of any kind, can cause us to become exhausted, and develop problems such as high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and stomach ulcers amongst lots of other things. It's just horrible, horrible stuff. 

Our brains respond to modern-day threats, using the same fight or flight response as it used when our neanderthal ancestors had to escape from tigers. What we need to do, is to try and break this cycle and tell our brain that the danger has gone and that it's safe to relax. We almost have to trick our brains to come out of this survival mode. So how do we do it? Well, that is a really tough question. And it's something that was at the root of deciding to start this podcast in the first instance, and hopefully, this is something that we are going to work out as we go along. I will try and explore this from every possible angle as we go through this podcast. We're all different, and what worked for me, may not work for you, however, I have researched and tried a variety of different strategies and techniques over the years from counselling to cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, and meditation, and it appears to me that there is one consistent theme throughout all these approaches, and that is the need to change our relationship with our emotions. We need to create a sense of detachment from our emotions, (which is easier said than done). That's not to say that we have to try and stifle our emotions or ignore them in some way, but rather, we should acknowledge how we're feeling in a particular moment, and do it in such a way that we create some distance between ourselves and the emotion itself. Don't worry if this idea seems a bit vague or unattainable because it's something that will become much clearer as we go on. Ultimately, what we're doing here is we're having to change habits that we've had for years, and it takes practice and time to change these things. 

To help us along the way, we're going to be looking at a variety of different techniques, strategies, and technologies. We are also going to hear from experts and listen to the experiences of others. 

So there's lots and lots for us to explore, and this is just the beginning. If you enjoyed this podcast then please do so click the subscribe button and join us for the next episode, but until then, take care and stay safe. 

I'm David Walker, and you've been listening to the quiet mind.