hey there everybody and welcome to this brief presentation on the form
and function of the six f's of the stress response i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
so let's talk about the stress response first the stress response also can be thought of as your hpa
axis when your hpa axis when your brain perceives there's a threat the hpa axis kicks into gear
and secretes a variety of excitatory hormones and neurochemicals to give you energy to help you stay
safe to help you focus to help you basically fight or flee but we've recognized over the years that
people respond to stress differently and it's not just fight or flee so exactly what happens
when your stress response system is kicked off the first one we'll start with is fight
some people when they encounter adversity when they encounter a threat when they encounter stress
drop back into fight mode and this can be verbal or physical and it can be aggressive or assertive
fight does not necessarily mean punching somebody out it can mean deciding you know
i don't like the way this is going so i am going to fight i am going to do what i need to do i'm
going to direct my energy to trying to change the situation so fight does not always mean aggression
sometimes it does when people feel like they are backed into a corner
or if they feel that there is a imminent threat they may become aggressive as a means of
pushing people away pushing people back or trying to regain some element of power and control
flee is the next traditional option that we talk about in terms of form and function and that
doesn't necessarily mean running away that's what you first think about when you think fight or flee
but flee has a variety of different nuances to it you can emotionally leave the situation some
people just flee the situation by shutting down they shut down their emotions they may
flee the situation by avoiding it you know that a confrontation with somebody is sort of inevitable
the next time you see them so you may avoid them so you're fleeing or avoiding that situation
you can also flee by choosing to let it go and not every threat
requires a response some things are not worth your energy so sometimes you may just leave
the situation either emotionally or physically by choosing to let it go now obviously you can
physically flee as well you can leave physically leave situations avoid interacting with people etc
the third f now now we get into some of the more um newer concepts in terms of f's is frantic and
one of my viewers brought this up and i thought it was a really good point and it was an f that i
added to the stress response and it's frantic sometimes when people experience that threat
they don't necessarily perceive it as fighting and and you could think of
frantic in some ways as fighting but frantic has an element of anxiety to it people who react in a
frantic way to fears of abandonment to fears of losing a job or whatever the case may be
when they react frantically they may plead with the other person please don't do this
they may do whatever they think is going to pacify the other person or change the situation
they may try to cajole the person or manipulate them and sometimes when you're talking about
frantic it's not necessarily even with another person if you get diagnosed with a
illness you may frantically try to deal with that you may all of a sudden start eating a whole bunch
better or you know trying starting to exercise and changing your life just totally upheaving
everything that you normally do and that may be a frantic response to an unpleasant situation
the next f is freezing um some people freeze kind of like a deer in headlights and this is can kind
of be thought of physically as an adaptive response when you aren't moving you're not
as noticeable so in some situations people freeze they try to blend into the background they try to
not be noticed other times they may freeze because they just don't
know what to do they don't know which direction to go so that is going to be
important to evaluate how do you freeze in situations how do you fail to respond
now the last one is eff it forget about it um forget it whatever you want to call it and this
is different than freezing because when you get to the forget it stage you're often exhausted
and you just give up you've tried you've tried fighting you've tried fleeing you've
tried frantic and nothing's working it's just like screw it i ain't got the energy
and we see this a lot in people who experience chronic stress they get to this p
place of physical emotional cognitive burnout and they just they just can't things happen in
their life and they're just so burned out from everything else they look at this new stressor
and they're like you know what i just can't and that is an indication that your body has been
exposed to extreme stressors for a lot of time and is really struggling when when your brain says you
know what i just don't have any anything left to give and it's important to start addressing
uh that as well even if you're not responding to a situation if you don't have the energy
that that's a clue that other things are going to start to go amiss pretty quickly
journaling prompts what does each f look like for you when you're in fight mode what does
that look like in what ways do you flee some people again flee physically other people may
flee emotionally go through each of your f's and figure out what they look like for you
how if those behaviors been rewarded in the past we don't do things that haven't been
rewarded most of the time so if your go-to is frantic or your go-to is fighting in what ways
has that response been rewarded why is that your strongest response and is it the most helpful
and finally do different things trigger different f's for you maybe certain situations trigger
a fight response and other situations trigger a flea response and i'll give you
an example when it comes to my kids something goes wrong mama bear comes out and it's a fight
response i am going to advocate for them and make sure that they are getting their needs met
or they are in a situation that's safe or whatever the case may be when it comes to dealing with
authority figures i've always had issues with that so i tend to be more on the fleece side and i know
that's one of my responses and whenever i have to deal with authority figures it's important for me
to use a whole bunch of those other cbt tools that we often talk about to avoid automatically
fleeing to avoid making emotion-based decisions when it comes to dealing with authority figures
which takes us to many people respond to their hpa access to that perception of a threat with
emotional rather than factual reasoning so their hpa axis kicks off they feel anxious they feel
angry they have that threat perception going on and instead of stepping back and saying is there
really a threat right now they just go with the feeling i feel anxious therefore there must be
the threat response is designed to alert you that there might be a threat it's like a fire
alarm every time your fire alarm goes off does not necessarily mean there's a fire sometimes it
means that somebody got the shower too steamy and they open the door and it set off set off
the alarm it's your threat response system like a smoke alarm like a fire alarm is designed to tell
you there might be a threat and you need to check it out it's important to check it out by examining
the facts of the situation in this context at this time so in this situation at this workplace
with this supervisor at this time is there a threat identify the controllable factors what
aspects of this situation can you affect and what is the probability in this context at this time
if you do what you're capable of doing what's within your control what is the probability
that the worst case scenario is going to play out and that there's actually a threat
finally mindful awareness of your feelings and beta testing may help you more effectively deal
with stress and beta stands for breathe examine the situation and your options
of those options try something you can't just sit there and ponder forever you gotta
take action and a stands for assess effectiveness so breathe examine the situation and options
take action and assess the effectiveness
more in-depth resources can be found on allceus.com the impact of stress is at all
ceus.com stress and stress management strategies is found at all ceus.com stress dash manage