Lecture 6 Fight or flight Explain it with examples and make class interactive We humans don’t come with an instruction manual. If we did, I suspect we’d do a better job of getting through life with less pain and more joy. Human behavior has evolved over time. What worked for us humans a few thousand years ago may not be as helpful today? So while our behavior adapts to the changing times and environment, it is thought that it never completely forgets its evolutionary roots. One of the driving forces of some human behavior is something called the “fight or flight response” (also known as the acute stress response). This is the psychology term that describes one of the ways we can react when under stress. Understanding the purpose of the fight…
The fight-or-flight response is the reaction when a person perceives a threat. This person has now has two physiological options, to stand up to that threat and fight, or to run away (Grohol). To understand what happens during fight or flight, one needs to understand what chemicals and hormones are used during the process. First, the nervous system is broken down into two major systems: Central and Peripheral. The central nervous system consists of the brain and the spinal cord, and deals with…
You can feel a rush of energy go through your body. Your hands start to shake, you are alert, the energy you have is through the roof. It’s called adrenaline. The hormone secreted by the adrenal glands, especially in conditions of stress, that gives you that extreme rush of energy that makes you feel like you can do almost anything. Most of the cases, when you get an adrenaline rush, are in fight or flight situations. The fight-or-flight response is a physiological reaction that occurs in…
the hazard, but you see no one. Your heart starts racing. You begin to sweat. Your mouth dries and you feel butterflies in your stomach. Your hair stands on end. You feel a surge of energy and in a split second you find yourself running away from the noise. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your body just went through a response known as the fight or flight response also known as the acute stress response. The fight or flight response evolved as a mechanism enabling humans and other mammals…
For example, people with ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes, will get the fight-or-flight feeling when looking at a photograph of a snake. There is no way that the snake in the photo could hurt them, but they are still afraid, making it a phobia. Phobias are sometimes caused by traumatic events causes in childhood. There are three main types of phobias: agoraphobia, social phobia, and specific phobias. Agoraphobia is a fear of places where escape might not be easy or where help might not be…
Introduction Adrenaline refers to a natural stimulant created in the medulla in the adrenal organs. And also partly by certain parts of the central nervous system's neurons. In a few minutes time amid a distressing circumstance, adrenaline is immediately discharged into the blood, sending impulses through the autonomous nervous system to organs to make a particular reaction, for instance the production of sweat and saliva, pupil dilation and heart rate. It is responsible for the human…
quality of trust or confidence in themselves to do so. Overall it leads back to their instincts as a reference in its definition. Instincts come from the word instinctus or better known as an impulse, stating that an organism's biological nature is to make decisions over one another. It's just another tool that the body uses to survive It is pre-programmed into organisms to recognize any potential danger, also known to be the fight or flight response. (Your Gut Feeling Is Way More Than Just A…
them to make extreme decisions. Both of these pieces of literature include examples of physiological changes in humans in order to keep them healthy, emotional contagion amongst the group of characters so as to form a community, and a large focus on the natural fight or flight response when subjected to immense stress. Accordingly, all are adaptations that help the…
Stress is defined as “appraised by the person (of a situation) as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering well being, ” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and is commonly regarded as something people experience when they attend hospital. Having a high stress level may impact negatively on communication between patient and staff within the hospital, with communication being defined as “The process of passing information and understanding from one person to another" (Theo Haimann SAY WHAT…
At one point in time, I felt helpless, and at other moments I felt entirely alone. When I would speak to family members and friends, they would tell me: it was all in my head” and that I was simply “overthinking”. No one had any idea on how to help me, I could not even help myself. My mother never wanted me to seek help because she did not want me to be categorized as "crazy", or just simply mentally unstable. But what she didn 't understand, is with so many things going on in my head and…