Relax, Fight-Flight and Freeze
Software: Survival programs
The lower brain basically runs in three modes: relaxed, fight-flight, and freeze. Again to keep it very simple, using a stoplight as a model. (from Stephen Porges, Poly-vagal Theory).
When we are in green, we are relaxed our heart and respiration are slow, we can digest our food, we can nap, we enjoy being with loved ones and can relate to them. The moment the lower brain feels there is danger; it moves the biology into yellow. The vagus nerve shuts down all the organs below the diaphragm, and speeds up the ones above the diaphragm. We get an immediate increase of available energy, or superhuman strength, enough to lift a small car off of a child. This is an amazing thing the body can do in a split second. Our bodies were designed to do this for very brief period. We don’t want to get stuck in yellow, where we cannot digest our food, we cannot sleep, and we cannot enjoy or relate to our loved ones. There are usually two reasons we get stuck in fight-flight. We are living in an unsafe situation and the accurate assessment is that we are in danger. Or we have an unresolved Trauma from the past, which the lower brain feels is happening now, in the present moment.
Being in the Red zone is more rare. This is where the lower brain perceives that the body is not going to survive the experience and shuts it down. The body becomes immobilized to play dead, anesthetized to minimize suffering, and the consciousness often leaves the body or is disassociated from it. Again, this is an amazing biological accomplishment in a split second. We see this with high impacts, with early and chronic abuse such as SRA, and in war and torture. The eyes are vacant the voice is monotone and the body is lifelessly still, meaning there is no fidgeting or normal movement in the body.[1]
References