4 Ways Your Body Betrays You In Crisis Situations

4

Freezing Isn't A Choice

When it comes to "F" words in a crisis, Fight and Flight are the big two, though I'm sure "Freak The Fuck Out" would earn the bronze. Fight is the one that people usually aspire to, while Flight is treated with disdain. Who imagines themselves running away from a crisis? But there's actually one that's even worse: "Freeze."

When playing out a scenario in your imagination, this doesn't even come up as one of the options. Who in their right mind would freeze in the face of a threat? Definitely not me. And probably not you, either. At worst we'll run -- but, like, strategically. You know, so that we can be heroes from a more advantageous position.

So when veteran police officer Cordell Hendrex froze in the hallway of the Mandalay Bay Hotel during the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting while "terrified with fear," it's sure tempting to make like the media and slam him as a "coward." And don't even get me started on how sexual assault victims are treated; anyone who didn't immediately transform into a scratching, biting badger in their story is assumed to be a liar, despite the fact that 70 percent of sexual assault victims are hit with a thing called "tonic immobility," with 48 percent experiencing extreme symptoms like going numb and mute.

3

Your Senses Start Messing With You

Remember Officer Hendrex from a few paragraphs ago? Along with freezing, he blamed part of his problems on his eyes. "I also felt myself starting to get tunnel vision," he said, "and I can remember concentrating on tactical breathing to calm myself."

Scot Peterson, who failed to run into Stoneman Douglas High School during the shooting earlier this year, blamed his ears. According to his lawyer, he "heard gunshots but believed that those gunshots were originating from outside of any of the buildings on the school campus."

Let me make one thing clear: I'm not defending, let alone exonerating, either Hendrex or Peterson. I wasn't there. And they made serious mistakes. People died because of them. But law enforcement and military are aware of how the sudden adrenaline dump from a crisis situation can turn your senses into a confusing clusterfuck. Now imagine that's you, someone who presumably has a fraction of their experience.

2

You Basically Lose Control Of Your Fingers

You want to know what freaks me out the most? Those stories about a kid getting "sucked from their mother's arms" in a drowning. That messes with my head. Because I grew up around water, nearly drowned once as a teenager, and I can tell you that if my kid was at risk of drowning, I would beat down Poseidon before I'd ever let them go. So before we get into the terrible thing that you know is coming, here are some puppies playing.

1

It Takes A Lot Of Training Overcome This

I've previously mentioned that I practice getting hit, choked, stabbed, and held up at gunpoint several times a week as a self-defense student and instructor. Aside from being fun (and it is), the point is less about learning fancy fighting moves and more about training your body to do what you want it to in a crisis. There is a science to being a hero.

For instance, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who convinced a lot of students to be inhuman pricks in the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, apparently decided to go in the opposite direction and founded the Hero Imagination Project. Through training and workshops, it helps teach people to overcome the inner biases that stop us from taking action (including the "Maybe someone else will do it" bystander effect).