When I went to paramedic school one of our instructors told us about how the physiology of stress works on are minds & bodies. During a stressful encounter our bodies release adrenaline, but it also releases another hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that moves up to the front part of the brain & shuts off the frontal cortex preventing higher reasoning, this was done so that a million years ago our “monkey uncles” would run from the T-rex instead of standing there wondering which course of action would be best to take. So we were taught that cortisol is apart of the whole A.dump, but is the part that shuts down the ability to think. BUT, there is a way around it.
The brain & most parts of the body have receptor sites that pick up these hormones that are floating around in the body & turn them into electrical signals that tell the body or brain to do things. When cortisol is floating around the brain the receptor sites pick them up & shut down the thinking; the way to avoid this from happening is by exposing the brain to as much of this hormone as possible.
When we have an over abundance of cortisol in the brain all the time the receptor sites start to do what is call “down regulate”, which is to get rid of some of these receptor sites that turn off the thinking. My instructor told us that we would experience this on calls where we knew what needed to be done but we just couldn’t think, we might even repeat the same question over & over again. Like asking, “So what is your name?” “So what is your name?”…(Oops sorry brain shut down there:) He said we just needed to do a lot of ride-a-longs to get exposure & run a lot of calls so that the cortisol would not affect us.
He also said that they had a class of SEALS come through their paramedic program & you could not phase these guys at all; he said they were the type that if a bullet went whizzing by that you wouldn’t even get arise out of them, because they had been through so much stress that this things just did not phase them.
JimH said,
Then you have the experienced vet, he stop on the beach and opens his pack and gets a can and fills it with sand, he has no experiences like the rest, he is calm and intent on what he is doing, he fills the can and places it in his pack where you see the cans from all the other conflicts he has been in, he is controlled because the experience is a known, the environment and all going on are not new and not scary to him.
This would go along with what my instructor taught, because the experienced vet’s brain has long ago “down regulated” the receptor sites in his brain giving him the ability to think through what he needs to do in that situation.
I remember a time when I got into my 1st car accident & time slowed down; I could see everything that was happening & even remembering telling myself to steer out of the way, but my body did not respond. Then everything sped back up after we hit. The same thing happened in my 1st fight, everything slowed down & I could see the punch coming, but could not get out of the way. What if you could train your self to see things in slow motion, but still move to get out of the way? Someone once told me that the Sub-conscious mind moves or thinks faster then the conscious mind, so when we tap into it at certain time in our lives things appear to slow down.
Of course I do not know if this is true, but it sounded cool.
Just a follow up to the STRESS RESPONSE.
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The idea of things slowing down and yet being able to respond to them quickly is part of what Bruce Lee use to call the "it". His training was such that his perception and response were automatic. Muscle memory replaced the need to reason through the problem and an appropriate response.
This is why good habits are best and bad habits are hard to break. This is also why some types of sparing, such as sports oriented sparing, are more harmful than helpful.
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