On The Other Side of Fight or Flight

You have no doubt heard the term “fight or flight.”  The term was first used in 1932 by a researcher named Walter Cannon, who found that when humans are faced with a threatening situation, they experience a cascade of neurochemical responses that mobilize their bodies to either fight the threat or flee from it. 
 
The physiological responses include increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, and slowing down of the digestive system. (You don’t need to digest a meal when you need to escape from a threat.) We’ve all experienced that, right?
 
For around seven decades, it was believed that all humans react to extreme stress by moving into the fight or flight mode – and to some extent, that appears to be true.  But Cannon’s subjects were all males.
 
In 2000, a researcher named Shelley Taylor and her colleagues at UCLA published a study in Psychological Review that looked at the way females respond to stress. They concluded that, in addition to the “fight or flight” response, there is another response often shown, especially in females.  They named this the “tend and befriend” response.
 
The researchers write that “tending” involves nurturing activities that protect oneself and one’s offspring and that these activities promote safety and reduce distress.  They also believe that “befriending” includes the creation and maintenance of social networks.  They claim that this is an evolutionary process because, among our human (and other) ancestors, males were largely the ones who fought or fled the danger, while females stayed behind to protect their children.  The females who were good at that were the ones who survived, as did their offspring.
 
So human beings have not only the “fight or flight” response to threats and danger, but also the “tend and befriend” response.  Of course, those responses are not 100% correlated with gender. [There is also a “freeze” or appease” response, which I’ll write about another time.]
 
Tend and befriend is a way create feelings of safety and balance in the nervous system.  By engaging in fun and nurturing activities with someone who makes you feel safe and supported, you can shift your nervous system from a “fight or flight” state to a “rest and digest” state.
 

We can also tend and befriend ourselves in a variety of ways.  As Sarah Peyton says in Your Resonant Self, “We are built for connection at every stage of life…and if we don’t have others who can provide that, it is possible to become our own compassionate self-witness.”
 
For example, we can take walks, do yoga postures, breathe, connect with nature, or visualize a supportive presence in our life, and many more things, including just noticing that we need more rest. We can practice self-compassion and become better friends with ourselves, which can have a strong calming effect on our nervous system and bring us to “rest and digest.”
 
Do you have any tools or strategies for tending and befriending yourself?
 
It can start with building skills for noticing how you feel – emotionally and in your body.  And then perhaps tell yourself, “Of course you feel that way…” Rather than shaming or blaming yourself.  (That’s a tough habit to break.)
 
It can also be, for example, choosing one pose that you love and doing that.
 
My favorite pose is Constructive Rest, lying on my back with my feet on the floor and my knees bent, then releasing a little more to gravity and noticing what I feel. That is usually the beginning of a feeling of tending and befriending myself.
 
I invite you to consider what you do – or could do – to tend and befriend yourself in healthy ways.
 
 I’ve created a short yoga course with five 15-minute gentle practices plus some bonuses. You can check it out here: Tend and Befriend Yourself
 
 

P.S. If you want to check out more from these authors, here are a couple references:
 
Peyton, Sarah, Your Resonant Self (WW Norton, 2017)
Taylor, Shelley, The Tending Instinct (Henry Holt & Co, 2002)