Krav Maga Boston | Articles On Fear & Adrenaline

Managing Fear And Adrenaline

Articles On Fear & Adrenaline

Fear And Adrenaline In Violent Situations

A large part of dealing with real-life violence is managing fear and adrenaline. For most of us we are rarely truly adrenalized, as our lives are lived in relative safety, and so when we are it is an unfamiliar and oftentimes crippling experience i.e., we don’t have an emotional and psychological reference point for the chemical changes that are affecting us etc. This means we must learn to manage our adrenalized emotional state and how we interpret it i.e., our feelings of fear, or possibly anger. We must also recognize that the fight or flight response is intended for the survival of the species rather than the individual e.g., running away at the first sign of danger is statistically a good solution, however there are certain contexts where it is not, such as those that may see you run blindly into traffic, or over a cliff etc. This is one of the reasons why we must learn to recognize when we are becoming adrenalized and manage our responses so that they are relevant and effective in the particular situations we find ourselves in.

We are born with few “natural” fears i.e., our startle reflex is triggered by loud noises and fast movements etc., but we are not born with a fear of snakes for example, this is something we learn – and not everybody learns it i.e., it is not a universal fear. Most fears are passed on e.g., if a parent has a fear of dogs, and they pick up their child every time a dog comes near, that child will soon learn to associate their parent’s action as one of them removing them from danger, and associate dogs with a threat to their safety etc. This is one of the reasons why we need to educate ourselves as to what real-life violence and danger looks like, rather than simply accept that we inherently know what it looks like e.g., we may have unconsciously been educated to associate something with danger when this is not the case. Part of managing fear and adrenaline is not to become adrenalized when there is no threat of danger or harmful intent.

At the same time, we don’t want to deny when we have become legitimately adrenalized, as this is one of our body’s ways of informing us that a potential threat is present. If you are walking home late at night and you hear footsteps behind you, the reason you do is because your subconscious fear system has drawn your conscious mind to the footsteps by changing your emotional state i.e., adrenalizing you. Your subconscious fear system is informing you of a potential danger and handing control over to your conscious mind to come up with an appropriate context driven solution. This is why it is important to know how to make effective decisions when adrenalized, and under stress and duress. It is important that when adrenalized any action and solution is deployed quickly as the physical effects i.e., that enhance physical performance, wear off very quickly, and at this stage the body starts to go into recovery to deal with the stresses that adrenaline puts on it.

References

Adolphs, R., Russell, J., & Tranel, D. (1999). A Role for the Human Amygdala in Recognizing Emotional Arousal From Unpleasant Stimuli. Psychological Science 10(2): 167-171.

Kemeny, M. (2003). The Psychobiology of Stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science 12(4): 124-129.

Olsson, A., Nearing, K., & Phelps, E. (2007). Learning fears by observing others: the neural systems of social fear transmission. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2(1): 3-11.