The fight or flight response is a very well known concept. For anyone who isn’t aware, it’s the idea that under stress your body will react by physiologically gearing up to either fight or flee. The term was coined by American physiologist Walter Cannon in 1915, and is still most people’s go-to thought in terms of stress reactions. However the response has subsequently been expanded to include the other most common reactions, so that now we have:
Freeze - freezing up and being unable to react
Fawn - attempting to placate or please your attacker in hopes of avoiding the conflict
Flop - losing control of your muscles and collapsing
Fight and flight are the most well known, but the others are also key in understanding our behaviour. We like to think that we’d react in one of those two ways, because both seem like fairly positive, proactive responses. Do either of those, and we’ve ‘done our best’. But the truth is you’re more likely do one of the others, and there’s no shame in that. Instinctive survival reactions are not choices, but the belief that they are clouds our judgement after the fact. This can be particularly harmful in cases of sexual assault, where not only can a person feel ashamed of themselves for not fighting or fleeing, but they can also be perceived by others as not having done enough to resist, and therefore blurred the lines of consent. If an understanding of these reactions does nothing more than help dispel that harmful myth, it will be worthwhile.
There’s a lot of talk around this topic of what someone would do. People say ‘fight or flight would kick in and I’d start swinging and not stop until they were on the floor’. Or with less bravado, ‘I’d run away’. In either case, it’s a strange thought. Why do we think that in potentially the most stressful and traumatic moment of our lives, we’d suddenly do something we’ve never done before, and do it efficiently? It’s the attacker who has instigated this theoretical conflict and they’re the ones who’ve had time to come to terms with what’s about to happen.
Accepting a conflict
This is another reason we often don’t react the way we imagine we would - we haven’t yet accepted what’s happening. In an unexpected situation instigated by someone else, you’re in the process of finding out the nature of the encounter as each step or escalation develops, and attempting to react appropriately. Put it this way; if someone ran at you with a knife expressing a desire to stab you to death, an extreme reaction would be called for. But that level of reaction is no longer proportionate if someone merely stands too close and asks the time. They may be acting suspiciously, but not knowing yet how this situation is going to unfold (and societally we are conditioned to be appropriate), you concede your personal space. The attacker may still be intending to stab you, but you don’t know that yet. They already know how far they’re prepared to go, whereas you’re hoping that each escalation is the peak, right up to the point when a knife is pulled or a punch thrown, by which time it’s too late.
This is a seemingly impossible situation. We can’t know what’s in the mind of another or how far they’re intending to go, so how can we start with a reaction appropriate to their finish?
Perimeters
I advise students to set up perimeters for themselves, mental zones radiating out from them with increasing intensities of reaction. For example, if someone comes within fifteen feet of you, be aware of their presence. If they come within ten feet keep a definite eye on them. Five feet and you take action to increase the distance between you, three feet and you’re actively warning them to back off. These perimeters should be flexible to account for your surroundings. They’d be much tighter on a tube, much wider in an empty field for example.
Verbal boundaries
Setting strong verbal boundaries as someone approaches your inner perimeter will give you the information you need to establish to your own satisfaction at what point you’re in a conflict. If someone gets closer to you than you are comfortable with and you clearly state this, you have accumulated data. Either they back off and you aren’t yet in a confrontation, or they don’t and you can deduce that they have bad intentions and you must react accordingly. Let’s return to one of our five Fs, fawning. We fawn because we’re trying to avoid a confrontation, to deflect the antagonist in the hope that the problem will go away. If however we are sure that something’s already happening, within our predetermined view of what we are prepared to accept, then we are better placed to act.
Training
Picture a scenario, and visualise what your genuine reaction would be. This can help expose pitfalls you may encounter. If you think to yourself ‘a strange man comes up to me behaving threateningly, I would run away’, are you fit enough to run? Where would you run to? Or ‘I would punch him!’ Do you know how to throw a punch? Where to aim? Whether you could make it effective? If the answer to these questions is ‘no’, then maybe change that. Get fit, go for a run. Take some classes in a combat sport, and be taught how to throw a punch. Interestingly, when I’m introducing someone to sparring in boxing or kickboxing, it’s often the fear of hitting someone as much as the fear of getting hit that can cause a hesitation.
Conclusion
There’s no sure way of predicting how any of us will react in a situation that has hitherto been completely alien to us, nor any accurate way of replicating the trauma and stress we’d be under. That being said, the things I’ve mentioned above can give us an edge. Visualising a currently unknown situation and walking it through can expose our weaknesses. Training in a combat sport, or at the very least a physical sport can acclimatise us to giving and taking knocks. Setting yourself clear boundaries that enable you to recognise a conflict happening will give you information to react with. Not getting in such a situation in the first place is always the best outcome, but if it can't be avoided, it’s best to be prepared.