Coexistence
By choice, Tina and I live in the near proximity to the natural world. Close to 80% of the land in our region is national forest. It has wilderness designation which helps preserve its natural state and protects flora and fauna by prohibiting any development. We both enjoy the bioenergy diversity of the plants and animals around us. Even more than that. I feel a spiritual connection with a natural world, an experience of unity with life, and with everything else that supports it. It reminds me of my days as a little boy playing in the jungle-like tick forest of Bosnia. I imitated Tarzan by swinging from a vine trying to shout in the way I heard him yell in the movies. When I travel in my mind like this and go back to the age of innocence, I find myself immersed in existence that overflows with intensity, newness, and potency of life. It's as though nature and I were dancing to the beat of music at a fast pace filled with joie de vivre.
I will now put an end to this time travel journey no matter how pleasant it is and return to the present. Because that’s where the story in this writing resides. The residential community we are now a part of was built by encroaching on the natural environment. Therefore, the ecology of the area has been disturbed in many ways. Yet many animals still consider it their territory, especially at night when human activity seizes. Then is the time when coyotes, bobcats, jackrabbits, javelinas, rattlesnakes, and occasionally even mountain lions roam the streets, wooded areas, park, yards, and everything else that has been taken from them by humans. We have come across most of these animals. It is fascinating to watch them and stay on the safe distance from them so that we don’t trigger defensive behavior in each other.
Living is surviving
The mindset of curiosity and respect toward all life forms doesn't prevent automatic responding to danger. This reaction occurs below the level of consciousness and before we get scared. Natural selection has refined the survival strategies within us humans because we are the descendants of the survivors. They are innate, require no learning, thinking, feeling, or long-winded decision-making. There is no time to waste on cognitive processing when milliseconds determine life or death. After writing these words, my associative memory takes me to the title of the manuscript of one of the greatest researchers in the field of neuroscience of fear. His name is Joseph E. LeDoux. In his paper he paraphrased a quote from famous American essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson when he wrote, "As soon as there was life, there was danger"(1). With this statement, he wanted to point out that the mechanisms that support survival in dangerous situations have been present in all life forms including the most primitive single-celled organisms.
Freeze response
Following this introduction, I will now focus on my wife and the event that serves as an illustration of the innate freeze reaction to the danger she faced. I mentioned it in my previous book, so I'm citing myself here.
One time my wife and I were walking down the street in the warm evening hours, when visibility was reduced, and nocturnal animals came out of hiding in search of food. Suddenly, Tina stopped moving with one foot in the air. We both heard a loud rattle and hiss, and immediately afterwards saw the curled body of a rattlesnake with its head raised ready to attack. We had never experienced a situation like this, although we had seen rattlesnakes in the vicinity. This one gave two warning signals that it was ready to defend itself and attack if Tina continued to approach. I calmly advised her to step back and go around the snake from a safe distance. Everything ended well (2).
Today, I spoke with Tina about her recollection of the event, especially if she was frightened when she came to a standstill. Her answer was that she wasn’t. She said, “I'm scared of rattlesnakes, but not at that time. I reacted instinctively to the sounds without knowing what they were or who produced them. Fear came afterwards.” What she reported is aligned with what I read in the literature on this topic.
One of the first to write about the freeze response was Charles Darwin. He named it astonishment in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. The adaptive role of the freeze response is to orient us to the threat stimulus in the manner of ‘stop-look-listen’ before proceeding further. During freezing we are in a state of attentive immobility (“orienting response”) with widened pupils, muscle tension, hypervigilance, immobility, and initial reduction in heart rate because the activation of the two opposing parts of the autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, hence the bradycardia (3). After that initial “shock” and with the help of cognitive processing related to the assessment of danger and using previous experiences, we are able to proceed either with flight or fight behaviors. In Tina’s case, she didn’t want to attack the snake (not her cup of tea), so she wisely retreated to avoid being pounced by the serpent.
Immobilization
Another type of immobilization is associated with life-threatening situations when escape or defensive assault are extremely unlikely to avert danger. In this situation, the physiology of the body shifts from hyperarousal to hypoarousal, and the dominance of the oldest survival strategy takes precedence. "Playing dead" is the ultimate defense we inherited from animal ancestors. It is a motionless state most often triggered when there is a direct and close encounter with a dangerous perpetrator. This defensive response can be found in a wide range of animals, from insects to mammals. The animal appears dead and unresponsive to outside stimuli, hence the name “playing dead.” The survival value of this unusual strategy has to do with the notion that most predators only take live prey. Paradoxically, the faith of inevitability (what happens happens) has a survival value; hence it is preserved by natural selection as one of the most unlikely but still instinctive response to danger.
Because tonic immobility is caused by extreme fear and helplessness, young people and the physically weakest among us (that is, children and women) will show this type of reaction with higher likelihood and frequency compared to adult males (3). Physiologically, the dorsal vagus (the unmyelinated branch of the parasympathetic nervous system) leads to altered state of consciousness called dissociation, detachment from reality, leaving the body in a state of tonic immobility of long duration, with decrease in heart rate and diminished pain perception. In this state, physical or emotional injury are handled without struggle, awareness, or even fear.
I know that my brother was prone to dissociation in childhood (sleepwalking, fainting), which may explain why he and I responded differently to our father's "attack." While I ran away and hid behind my mother’s skirt to avoid corporal punishment, my brother stood like a “deer in the headlights” not flinching to the blows he was receiving. More severe example of dissociation was reported to me by my patient who was in a car accident. He told me felt numb and disconnected from his emotions. His perception of time was altered, slowed, and his awareness was split off with significant memory gaps. He felt as if he was watching a movie and whatever was going on around him had nothing to do with him.
The wisdom of natural selection
All life forms have mechanisms built into their structure to help them survive when they encounter a danger. Depending on the characteristics of the threat, different behaviors are deployed based on their likelihood of succeeding in the mission of keeping alive endangered individual. The two defensive strategies I refer to in this text are on the spectrum of instinctive strategies, the wisdom of the ages, that are given to us as a gift of survivors who successfully navigated the field of danger using everything they could to stay alive at least until they were able to transfer information (secret of life) to the next generation.
(1) As soon as there was life, there was danger: the deep history of survival behaviors and the shallower history of consciousness, by Joseph E. LeDoux, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B., 377: 1-15, 2021
(2) Reflections of a psychiatrist, by Zelko Leon, Independent publishing, 2022
(3) Dissociation Following Traumatic Stress, by Maggie Schauer and Thomas Elbert, Journal of Psychology, 218(2):109–127, 2010
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