The Fight or Flight Response

Anxiety is one of those things that everyone experiences to greater or lesser degrees, and it happens to be a modern word for an often unnecessary and rather dated fight or flight response.  It is not as useless a leftover from earlier days as wisdom teeth or the appendix, but for the most part when you experience anxiety actually fleeing or literally engaging in battle are not options, and you sit there in whatever anxiety provoking situation, feeling your heart race and maybe your hands shake or sweat, unconsciously probing for exits and sizing up everything not nailed to the floor as possible weapons, wondering frantically what you've just studied for that test, whether or not that person texting is going to merge right into you, how soon it will be before the plane crashes or lands, if that dentist is actually going to sadistically torture you to death or let you leave with your life and all your teeth, when will this meeting with the boss be over, do his/her parents even like you, and so on.  On the positive side, that bit of anxiety before an exam can make you more alert and access the otherwise hidden compartments in your brain that hold the answers, but for the most part we just find anxiety frustrating.

It wasn't always so.

In fact, back in the day, it was quite handy.

Take Harold the Troglodyte and his wife Suzie Q. here for example:

Way back in the day, cave men and women had ferocious enemies and it was important for their bodies to know -- before their heads did -- whether to stand their ground or take off like the devil was after them.

Here is an example of a time for being macho and a time for running for Harold:
 


And here is an example of the same for Suzie Q.:

(Girls, when multiple men are after you, like towards the end of this movie, the correct response is still RUN.)

But like I said before, we have no sabertooths on the prowl these days, and often anxiety gets in the way rather than being helpful.  Still, thinking about those fight or flight characters can be enlightening and rather fun.

For instance, I don't know about you, but my fight or flight response takes on a different personality for every occasion.  This is my "Who are you and why are you invading my personal space?!" fight response:
This is my "No matter how little time I have left due to inexcusable procrastination, I will defeat the evil thesis" fight response:
And this is my "I. Will. KILL. You. Sneaking fiend from Hell!" fight response:



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