Is it a lion or is it a mouse?

How many of us respond with big intense emotions to small situations?

Sound familiar?

The Fight, Flight or Freeze response can be a very powerful and persuasive

response. The FFF stress response is a physiological and psychological

response to stress that prepares the body to react to danger. In order to

protect the body you are then presented with a choice to either fight, flee

or freeze to survive. The stress response can be both amazing and

debilitating at the same time. Very often the stress response gets activated

for false alarms causing the individual to experience hyperarousal and

anxiety.

Take the following situation as an example; imagine opening the door to a

room and being stormed by a big lion. Most of us will either fight back or

hopefully run away. Now imagine a few months later, opening the door to

the same room and seeing a tiny mouse instead. Running away or fighting

the mouse would be considered a massive overreaction. However many of

us would associate fear with the room and react to the trigger (big or small)

in the same way. This is an example of the stress response sending a false

alarm. The brain is saying there was something dangerous here before so I

am going to prepare the body to survive the next trigger anyway.

Next time you are faced with a situation that causes a very big emotional

reaction, ask yourself first, is this a lion or is this a mouse?