Musings in a Tempest

"It was a dark and stormy night" sounds I guess a bit better than "It was an incredibly windy afternoon," but it's not as accurate. As I'm writing, I'm watching leaves skitter down the street faster than the residential speed limit for cars, and feel like an old woman yelling, "HOOLIGANS!!!" at those ne'er-do-well leaves. In my head.

I'm pondering the fight/flight/freeze response, and the new information I was given yesterday. Did you know that the fight or flight response is an automatic response, governed by the limbic system, but the freeze response is even more primal than that? The freeze response comes from the most primitive part of our brains, the Reptilian Complex.
When life-threatening, or perceived threatening situations arise, our brains instantly choose what it deems as the most appropriate response to the given situation. It's more likely to respond with a fight response, though, if that has been a common response for a person in less overwhelming instances. In my case, given my upbringing of being physically barricaded in my room by my screaming mother, and unable to exit without pushing her out of the way, my only option was to shut down, to freeze. And this was very, very often.
Given that, it's completely understandable that when I have been faced with life-threatening situations, or sudden emergencies, my first response has most often been to freeze.

It's very important for people who have experienced trauma to be aware of this: when a person's system is completely overwhelmed, the cerebrum shuts off! It just goes offline and lets automatic responses take over. In other words, all those thoughts of "why the hell didn't I fight??" or, "Why did I do that?" or "Why didn't I do that?" or "Why did I just stand there??" are answered by this simple, yet profoundly validating fact. Your, and my, mind and body did their absolute best in the moment, instantly and automatically.