Fight-or-flight response

It is tied to ADHD, but if you've been around for a while or if this is your first episode, around here we're always considering ADHD.

How does us being in fight or flight affect this? Because if you're a neurodivergent living in a neurotypical world, it's very likely your system is in fight or flight, and that is going to affect your relationship with time as well.

So when we are in survival mode or fight or flight, we will experience temporal distortions, meaning time distortions.

It adds to our inaccuracy with how we experience time, so it's making it worse.

So if right now you're feeling like the level of time blindness you're experiencing is so huge, just consider part of that could very well be your nervous system state, not just how your brain functions.

And I was like, okay, I see that I'm going to have to up the hours because you can't see that far out.

Nobody can.

The next consideration in our relationship with time is is the fact that if you're in fight or flight, this tells the brain there isn't enough, enough time, enough resources, not safe enough.

Yeah, no, I love this concept.

You know, we teach the kids if this sort of fight or flight instinct is very real.

Yeah.

And I teach the kids.

Right.

And then unfortunately, I was in this situation not that long ago.

And this sort of fight or flight really takes over.

So logically, I know what I'm supposed to do.

So the sympathetic activation.

And that's this fight or flight.

So I fight or I flee.

And that's where it comes from, because our nervous system makes the assessment, okay, something is not safe right now.

So I think both are the most important things, but yeah, it's just super complex.

Are there people

who are more like fight or flight and others who are more of a shutdown?

I would say you can't really separate that from each other.

So most people with mast cell symptoms, they all say the same thing.

My body is stuck in fight or flight.

And this feeling that they're having, it's not imagined.

They might be gas lit over it, but mast cell and nervous systems, they're physically and chemically connected.

Perceived threat or physiological stress leads to hypothalamic CRH and autonomic activation, which leads to mast cell activation in those susceptible tissues.

which then leads to histamine, tryptase, prostaglandins, and cytokines, which then leads to nerve activation, poor sleep, that increased arousal, which then wraps around in the circle to more stress signaling and sympathetic activation.

So you feel like you're stuck in this pattern of fight or flight that nothing can break and you feel kind of hopeless.

And this is these mast cell activation patients, whether we're seeing the mast cells in their skin with rashes or showing up in their general urinal system with, increased urination or endometriosis type symptoms.

Because this is not about ignoring your neurodivergence, ignoring the things that you've connected with and have really helped you feel seen and understood and like it's not your fault.

But there are three reasons we're going to be getting into why if you keep these diagnoses at the forefront, it's really going to interact negatively with your attempts to get out of fight or flight.

Whether this is your first episode or your 70th, let's do a little refresher of why do we care about regulation? Why do we want to get out of fight or flight? With ADHD in particular, you are going to find being in fight or flight increases those ADHD symptoms that we hear so much about, decreases your executive functioning, which I know is kind of intertwined in those symptoms.

So your ability to prioritize, plan, perceive time accurately, think logically, all of that is impaired.

you are going to be biologically blocked from enjoying life.

So if you're feeling or hearing this from your clients, that life is just get through it, rush to get it over with so I can go lay down and I have to wake up and do it again.

This is not a fulfilling, rewarding life and you're feeling resentful of life.

That is all what fight or flight does.

Just imply that what we're doing is we're accessing the nervous system through intentionally being present and through these sensory exercises.

I'm curious because I know somebody that went to a network chiropractor and they did some evaluations and they told him that he was in fight or flight all the time.

Are you finding that with your clients? And what do you do for somebody that's kind of stuck in fight or flight?

Yeah, I think that that's very common for people to be in a survival response.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

So what are some of the other things that you're talking to your clients about as far as limiting their closures? Oh,

yeah.

The nervous system, it is designed to activate or to be in what we call fight or flight mode, right? I think about that as a mobilized or activated state or to be in rest and digest mode.

People that have survived trauma, their nervous system is activated.

We will talk a lot about fight or flight.

And if you are in fight or flight, it's hard to be in the nervous system setting that we need to get sexy.

I noticed when I talked to generalist therapists, they talk about rest and digest.

nervous system.

All right.

Tiana, what have we got today? What's the title and do you want to read it out? The title of this one is Fight or Flight in My Own House, Walking on Eggshells with My Stepdaughter, When Does It Get Easier?

Oh, stepdaughter.

Okay.

I love that little girl so much, but I've endured endless amounts of drama because of her mum's manipulation, which is now massively affecting my feelings towards my stepdaughter.

I really can't do this forever.

I live in fight or flight 24-7.

I get anxious, I can't sleep, and when it's change every day to come to her house, as if I don't know I'm already going to be ignored and have a horrible note thrown at me by my stepdaughter.

It enters a state of readiness, primed to respond to whatever threat has been detected.

This is the fight-or-flight response.

The ancient survival mechanism that prepares the body either to stand and fight or to turn and run.

It readies us to act, flooding the body with adrenaline and making dozens of adjustments to our physiology in the space of a few seconds.

The heart beats faster, pumping more blood to the muscles.

Breathing quickens, taking in more oxygen to fuel the body's heightened activity, and the hairs stand on end, the erector pili muscles contracting across the skin as part of this comprehensive mobilization.

The fight-or-flight response is automatic, triggered by the brain's detection of a threat and carried out by the nervous system without any conscious input from us.

It is run by the nervous system, specifically by the part of the nervous system that handles automatic involuntary functions.