A few years ago, my son came home from school and told me he had learnt all about the fight and flight system. The school had bought in an ‘expert’ to prepare the children for their upcoming exams. (Across England, all children sit specialist exams – on the same day and at the same time – to check attainment progress when they are aged 10-11).
He told me that he had learnt all about the bodily feelings you get when you are scared and nervous, including sweaty hands, funny tummy, thumping heart and twitchy legs. He then declared that he was very scared and worried about the exams and these feelings.
As an expert in emotion science, I sat my son down and asked him how he felt last Saturday when he was really excited about going on a big ride at a theme park… I asked him what were his bodily feeling then?
He declared that he had felt all twitchy and could feel his heart thumping.
I then asked him how he felt when he was getting ready to play football – a sport he really loves. He said, that when he is waiting to come on the pitch, he has a funny tummy and again gets a bit twitchy.
Isn’t that funny that your body has the same feelings when you’re scared as when you’re or excited? I replied.
Yes ‘nervecited’ he exclaimed!
So, could it be you are not scared before an exam, but you are nervecited? I in return exclaimed!
After giving him some time to ponder this, I then provided him with the same explanation I’ll share with you now. But for you, lucky readers, with a bit more science and a bit more adult content.
That is, we do not have a fight, flight or even freeze system, that is a fallacy. We have two arms of our automatic nervous system – one, the ‘sympathetic nervous system,’ readies us for action and is involved in activities associated with energy expenditure. The other, the ‘parasympathetic nervous system,’ increases the body’s supply of stored energy. They are like two sides of a coin – one prepping us for action, and one prepping us for recovery.
And guess what? Activation of the sympathetic nervous system – or SNS – can also indicate fun. The release of adrenalin, noradrenalin and glucose stimulated by the activation of the SNS results in very similar bodily feelings when we are excited, as when we are scared or stressed – but how we are educated to interpret these bodily feelings can potentially have profound effects on our mental health.
I don’t suppose many of you feel scared or frightened when you ejaculate or orgasm – but that is also part of this same SNS system. I wonder how many of you knew that?
So, for children in our emotion regulation training interventions, we correctly educate them to the “fight, flight and fun” system …and for adults, well I’ll let you choose your own third ‘f’!.
Critically, if we only educate individuals to interpret these bodily arousal feelings as negative then that is a very dangerous wellbeing journey to take.
In the programs we run with both children and adults, we make it very clear that there is more to the SNS then fight and flight. Its perhaps no wonder then that our published results show the programs combat anxiety and improve emotion regulation. We educate kids (and adults) to when they are in ‘over-threat’ or ‘over-drive’ (not ‘anxiety’ or ‘hyperactivity’) and we teach all the skills to recognise their bodily response for what they are; as well as practices to regulate these responses when needed.
At this point let’s also consider fainting goats ..just for some fun. These goats have a genetic condition that affects their ability to activate muscles effectively, typically following SNS activation. So, when startled, the sudden stiffening of muscles as the animal attempts to flee sometimes causes them to fall over. However, these goats don’t only show these ‘fainting’ responses when startled but when excited (e.g. feeding time) or, for bucks, even during mating season.
So next time you think you are in fight or flight, understand that your body is preparing you to take action, that is what the SNS does …and you never know, you might actually be nervecited and about to experience some fun. Indeed, understanding the fun element of the SNS might just make you feel a little better.
For more about Professor Maratos’ work see Compassion in Education
To understand impacts from the children themselves see: Garnteg Primary School