Re-calibrating The Fear Response
By: Brielle Ford
Tags: Fear Response, Fear, Abuse, Mental Health, PTSD

Now as I compare the events of this situation to those events where I was actually in physical danger, I am still puzzled by why my responses were so different.

A few years ago I was shopping at a local market, looking for mock duck and water chestnuts for dinner when I heard what seemed to be yelling from the back of the store. The angry voice became louder and louder until all the customers in the store paused to listen. The yelling wasn’t in a language I understood, but the intonation and emotion was vibrantly clear to me; my gut interpreted the yelling as violent and angry. And even though the yelling was not directed at me, in fact had nothing to even remotely to do with me, my brain immediately shut down. To this day I have no memory of purchasing my groceries, driving home, or how I ended up on the living room carpet, curled in a ball sobbing incoherently while my partner tried to determine what the hell was going on. In a situation that was not life threatening to me, my brain had initiated the dissociation response (a PTSD response, as I discovered later when I was diagnosed and treated). My therapist suggested that perhaps at a time before I had language capabilities, I was yelled at in a similar fashion where I couldn’t understand the words but I understood the meaning; in my case this verbal abuse was perhaps reinforced with physical violence. Now as I compare the events of this situation to those events where I was actually in physical danger, I am still puzzled by why my responses were so different.

According to David Eagleman, quoted in Psycology Today, “what happens in a really scary situation is that all the nonessential processes like that get shut down and your whole brain, or as much of your processing power as you have, gets devoted to this one thing going on.” Even though the market situation was in no way life threatening to me, my brain, conditioned from my previous experiences of abuse, interpreted the yelling as a “scary situation” and reacted accordingly. My brain shut down to protect me from anticipated abuse, and re-engaged after I had collapsed on the carpet sobbing. The actual life-threatening experiences on the other hand, where I was potentially in mortal danger from a bomb, or dying in a fire or by knife wounds, my brain saw as nothing to be concerned about. My fight-flight-or freeze response never kicked in because I hadn’t physically experienced consequences to these stimuli and therefore my brain never interpreted them as threats. I was able to maintain my calm because my brain didn’t alert me to any danger.

I’m more afraid of my mother than I am of getting stabbed.

While this lack of panic might be advantageous in an emergency situation, it certainly isn’t healthy. When I think about my mother, I can feeling the beginning of a panic attack curling fingers around my throat; my fear response is on a hair trigger with all things related to my past abuses. But when I think about how close I came to being stabbed with a knife in that resident hall incident, I don’t feel anything other than satisfaction that I acted in a calm and logical manner. I’m more afraid of my mother than I am of getting stabbed.

Which leaves me with the final questions: how do I re-calibrate my fear response in a way that is healthy and appropriate to the situation? Or do I leave this response intact, calmly waltzing through dangerous events, while having a meltdown over simple, everyday occurrences? I’m not sure there is an easy answer. For now, I’m earning my certifications for Emergency First Aid Response, Mental Health First Aid, and Emergency Preparedness Training. Because if I have this ability, I might as well continue to help others. Perhaps some good can come out of the remnants of my brutal childhood.