Is Your Fight or Flight Reflex Harming Your Relationship?

I was on a hike once in northern Michigan with my friend, Dale. It was isolated, but we camped in an area near a few others, including a woman and her dog. She told us there had been a bear nearby, so it was good to have the dog for protection. Properly cautious, we hung up our food, pitched a tent, and enjoyed the evening–both of us planning on outrunning the other if the bear showed up.

Shortly before dawn, we were peacefully sleeping when suddenly, a few inches from our heads, there was a loud growling, snorting, and snuffling as paws scraped at the tent. I shot up in a flurry of zippers and gear and ended up outside on the picnic table, still partially in my sleeping bag. Dale began shouting, and eventually, through the chaos, I heard what he was saying: “It’s the dog, just the dog!”

Source: Pexels/Krivitskiy

Freaking Out

You have probably heard the term fight-flight-freeze or just fight or flight. These words describe defensive instincts that kick in when a threat appears. This happens when a beast growls near your head–your heart skips a beat, and your body jumps and readies for action. It occurs instantly before any reflection and thought occur.

In the tent, I didn’t take a few moments to ponder the snarling (Gee, what could be going on this fine morning?); I just reacted. In a full-throttle freak-out, I was outside before any thinking began: heart racing, muscles tensing, and cortisol pumping. This didn’t abate until Dale’s shouting sank in.

Defensive instincts are powerful and protective but can go awry. Some people activate fight-flight-freeze modes when they feel criticized or emotionally unsafe. When this happens, a partner might internally react to another as though they are a slobbering grizzly. One person raises their voice about the dirty dishes, and the other’s body experiences things like panic, hypervigilance, restricted digestion, increased heart rate, and adrenaline. These bad feelings can lead to overreactions.

The Mad Eye Amygdala

Remember Mad-Eye Moody from the Harry Potter books? His motto, shouted at the Hogwarts students, was “constant vigilance!” which is also the motto of your amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped piece of your brain attuned to threats and emotional responses. It is part of a system that watches, scans, and monitors surroundings. Like Mad-Eye Moody, it can be jumpy and quick to fire up at any threat.

When the amygdala lights up, the prefrontal cortex–where we do our logical thinking and reflecting–is bypassed, and our emotional brain goes on high alert. A shout from the amygdala causes a lot of feelings but very little thinking. Does that ever happen to you? Most fights have lots of emotion and accusation and little reflection and problem-solving.

Your amygdala also remembers bad events, it is hypersensitive and prone to overreaction. Our responses to threats are compelling because the information goes straight from the eyes and ears to a central switchboard in the brain, and the body instantly reacts. There is no comparable response for positive triggers. In other words, when we see something that might have a basic positive need-meeting function (like food or sex), we will respond physically, but it takes a few moments of evaluation and processing through the frontal cortex.

If I had seen a bear and thought of it as food, I would have had to make decisions and then pursue them. But because it was a threat, the reaction was instantaneous.

Mad-Eye Moody lost a chunk of his nose to dark wizards and was now twitchy and suspicious. Do you experience small things, such as big attacks of disrespect or disapproval? Do you heat up when someone is unhappy with you? Unless your partner is coming at you with claws and teeth, your freaking brain is taking you for a ride.