Fight, Flight or Freeze

As I was headed into Home Depot, on an errand to fix a leaky toilet, (as most novices are tasked to do), I realized I forgot to lock the car door. Without pausing to fix this error, I reached into my pocket, felt for the keys, pushed the lock button, heard the satisfying 'beep beep', and removed my hand from my pocket, relieved having rectifying the situation. The bored security guard watching on the security cam (or perhaps a drone overhead) would only have seen a girl slide her hand in her pocket then take it out. I mused at how this correction didn't slow me down and how the ability to correct my faux paux was a commonplace occurrence that bordered on mundane.  Instead of having to go back to the car and lock the door, I was able to move on with my day so easily.

Now you're wondering if I am so bored that the only thing to blog about is to boast my ability to lock my car door. Not the point, I assure you. Being in the novitiate, I find I am becoming so introspective and newly aware of everything around me, from my emotions to my inner spiritual shifts, that everything turns into a reflection. I wonder if I am becoming overly reflective, as the simple act of locking my car door mentally catapulted me into a reflection on the contemplative nature of society and our delayed ability to act. (Then I wondered how much I wonder about and started to worry that I might be worrying about this).

The punchline - whereas our society used to respond to threats with 'fight or flight', so many of us now just freeze. They call this phenomenon tonic immobility (wiki link). Some animals respond to tense situations by intensely not moving, like a deer in headlights or how they tell you to play dead with black bears. (Or is it brown bears you play dead with and black bears you run??).

By Victor Bezrukov - Port-42, CC BY 2.0, Link

Like my millennial compatriots, I find I stare in fear when the phone rings, angry at the intrusive invader disturbing the peace of my day, wishing it were a text that I could attend to in my own time, analyze the message and contemplatively craft the perfect response. On a phone call - what if I say something wrong? I have to respond immediately!! What if I don't know what to say? It's hard to convey tonic immobility over the phone but I am sure it will happen.

Or, when I am in a weird situation, when someone has a big outburst around me or I find myself in some sort of confrontation, I stand there dumbfounded, unable to move, mumbling something incoherent and stew about it later. Afterwards, I find the conversation replays in my head, over and over, my brain transfixed on crafting the perfect response to have ready for next time. I continue to over-analyze the situation until I realize that the outburst might have triggered something deeper than the event itself. There might be some underlying root cause from the past or a real reason I am still upset. The funny part is that this awareness always surprises me, like I haven't had same profound thought many times before!
 
Deepening into new levels of over-analysis, I think how it doesn't surprise me that we are a paralyzed society. We have lost our caveman and cavewoman instinct to react, in part from expectations that we have to say the right thing and in part because having to be nice to each other eliminates all confrontation from our society. Fr Mike Schmitz has focused a number of his recent homilies on how toxic the Minnesotan (and I would say American and Canadian) need to be nice is. Don't make trouble. Don't disturb the peace. Oh please don't raise your voice! Now that wasn't very nice, was it?

I am coming to learn that confrontation might be good. While I have heard this in many leadership classes including workshops on 'healthy confrontation' (both professionally as an engineer and personally as a novice), I am only now starting to see the wisdom in it. In moving to New York and encountering cultures that yell at each other as a way of communicating, coming from my near-puritanical background as a sweet southern belle, it has been jarring. I regularly hear arguments on the train resulting from someone being shushed for talking too loudly or in line in a store where people are screaming at each other for all sorts of reasons (cutting, getting too close, talking on their phone, not moving ahead fast enough, etc). I have even been asked my opinion about their argument. To which I reply - "I ... uhhh... ummm.. were you arguing? I didn't notice" What is amazing is that at the end, both parties seem happier to have said their piece and life returns to normal. They often conclude with a form of apology, reconciling what happened, (sadly, transferring all of their tension to me). Perhaps they are not afraid of being wrong or showing their passion. If we regularly get into confrontations and address the obvious issues in front of us, we might be more willing to see and admit when we are wrong.

The meandering, seemingly disparate thoughts listed here reinforce for me the importance of contemplation. Perhaps taking the time to meditate each day not only allows you to be more mindful in the moment of the confrontation, but to also process the situation afterwards to discover the true root cause. Contemplation, then, creates an alternative to 'fight, flight or freeze', leaving the argumentative New Yorkers and my dumbfounded immobility behind. Perhaps someone with a contemplative approach can respond thoughtfully, instead of reactively or no reaction at all!

As a novice in a religious congregation, I am signing myself up to spend an hour in personal prayer each day to strengthen my relationship with the divine. As an engineer, I look for evidence and results to evaluate the effectivity of a process. It is assuring, then, to see that this time of contemplative prayer might already be positively influencing my ruminations and perhaps even my actions. My name is Libby, and I am a recovering tonic immobilizer.