When fight or flight isn't enough (or, 'why language matters')

This is the first in a series of reflections on language, bodies, spirituality and my own experience. I’m going to tell a few stories that I think are all connected and we can see where this goes.

I’ve been thinking lately about the importance of words. Because when we don’t have the words for things that matter, we find it difficult to make sense of our own experiences (or that of others).

For instance, in science class at school we learned that when your body perceives a threat or stress of some kind, it typically triggers a “fight or flight” response. You’ll either be totally wired, fired up, and ready to hit someone – and this was always the one that a boy who wanted to be a man would prefer – or you’d run, which meant you’d get teased but would also enjoy not being hit.

But these two options made little sense to me because I didn’t experience either of those at all. When I was 14 I was tending the fire at home and I opened the door to move some coals around and a burning ember fell out and landed on the carpet in front of me. And I sat there and just stared at it. My mind went completely blank, which is what typically happens when I experience any kind of threat or stress. The only thing I knew was that I shouldn’t pick it up with my hands (at least that part of my brain still worked). But not only does my mind go blank, so does my body. It’s kind of like a conscious coma. Everything just … stops.

So, there’s a burning coal on the carpet. I guess there is nothing to be done but sit there and watch it slowly light our house on fire.

After a while, as it started to smoulder while I maintained my blank stare, my Dad came into the room and said “what are you doing, there’s a burning coal on the carpet”. It was an understandable question. He immediately grabbed the tongs, picked it up and put it back in the fire. He was equal parts bemused and concerned by my inaction, but while he stood there wondering how I nearly burnt the house down, I was looking at him in awe thinking, “how did you think of the tongs thing so fast? That was amazing. I’ve been sitting here for ages and I couldn’t come up with a single solution.”

And this sort of thing would happen all the time.

A couple of years before the coal incident, I’d been in the school library looking for a book and there was this really annoying kid called Nathan in there too. And he was being a smart ass and I was feeling cocky that day for some unknown reason. I have no idea why, I had zero basis for arrogance when I was 12 – I wasn’t cool, I wasn’t tall (which is often just as good as being cool), I wasn’t particularly sporty – I didn’t fit in any of the “cool” genres at all. I was pretty good at piano, but for some reason that did not get me in the cool club. Anyway, there I was, feeling confident for no apparent reason, and then he said something really annoying – classic Nathan – so I said “shut up Nathan”, which I’m sure you’ll agree was a witty and classy reply.

And he said “make me”.                                                               

I don’t think anyone had ever said that to me before. I’d seen other people having this kind of conversation, but I’d never been the one having this kind of conversation. It was very exciting. And so I said what I’d heard other people say when they had this kind of conversation, which was when he said “make me” I said, okay then, lets meet on the school field at lunchtime, and I’ll “make you”. He said “deal”. But he said it very quickly, and that didn’t seem good.

As we walked away he definitely did not look like he thought I was going to “make him”. If anything, he looked like he was going to “make me” which didn’t seem right at all. So I went back to my desk and told my friends and they were very excited for lunch time on the school field, but I was definitely not excited for lunch time on the school field.

As it got close to lunchtime I suddenly remembered that I couldn’t fight on the school field that day because I had cricket practice. Cricket is the perfect sport for people like me because it involves a lot of stopping for cups of tea.

So I went to cricket practice and thought that when Nathan found out that I was unavailable, he’d shrug his shoulders and be like “okay, never mind, I guess he won’t make me after all”. But it turns out that he really wanted me to “make him” because practice ended a few minutes before the end of lunch break and a group of Nathan’s friends showed up and said, “we’re here to escort you to the school field where Nathan is waiting for you”. And I was like “that seems ominous”. And then one of my cricket friends said “did you know Nathan’s dad is in a gang?”

And I did not know that.

And so we jogged to the school field, me, flanked by a group of 5 other kids, all friends of Nathan, and I was in a spin. Nothing made sense. I had tunnel vision. But I had listened during science class at school and I was waiting for the fight or flight to kick in. Surely biology couldn’t be this wrong.

Spoiler alert – the fight or flight did not arrive.

So I got to the school field and there was Nathan in the middle of a crowd of what seemed like a hundred kids arranged in a large circle. I staggered forward in a blank stupor into the middle of the crowd and Nathan put his fists up into a classic boxing stance and I thought, I’ve seen that kind of thing on TV and have never been like “oh, that looks like a place I should be”.

There’s not much I remember about the actual fight itself, my brain was disconnected from my body and all I could see were blurry images of faces and fists. I do remember that one of my friends was yelling out, he keeps punching you in the face, you should stop him from doing that!

But I couldn’t. I had such little control over my own brain and body that all I could do was stand there and get hit.

So I ended up with a bloody nose, bruises all over my face, and to this day it remains the only fight I have ever been in. That was the one time I thought I’ll try “fight” out of the two options I thought I had – fight or flight.

About 10 years later, I had an opportunity to try out the “flight” response to see if that would fit me better. I was on a church camp and three of us had gone walking away from the campground late at night, wandering down this dimly lit path next to the beach. And we were wandering and chatting for quite some time, until we arrived at the end of the path at a carpark. And on the far side of the carpark there was a crew of people hanging out quite loudly. It wasn’t clear exactly what they were doing, but it did seem clear that it was the opposite of church camp. And a couple in the crew started yelling at us to come over. They were very insistent but we said no thank you, which did not discourage them at all. So my friend Mark said: “I think it’d be a good idea for us to walk back now”, which I thought sounded like an excellent idea. And so we turned and started walking back, when we heard a bunch of footsteps running in our direction from behind. Mark observed – accurately and out loud – that we were being chased and upon this observation my two friends – who were both lithe and athletic  – immediately sprinted forward like gazelles galloping away from a lion. It seemed they had a silent code that only “flighters” must know that secretly passed between them. It was like someone had fired a starting gun and they both just disappeared at full speed into the dark away down the path.

Now I – and this may surprise you – was not lithe and athletic. If they were like gazelles I was more like an enthusiastic loris. And to make matters worse I was a loris wearing a bright yellow t-shirt and so as they disappeared into the dark night, I remember just looking down at the ground and saying out loud “ahhhhh crap”. I would have said something cruder, but, you know, it was church camp. And so I started sprinting as fast as I could, but my sprint was more of a lumbering stampede, but without the stampede. I was waiting for the “flight” response to kick in to give me some kind of superhuman speed and agility, but alas it did not arrive.

I could still hear my pursuers behind me and I realised that there was no way I would outrun them, but what if I suddenly swerved off the dimly lit pathway and down onto the beach which was shrouded in total darkness. There was no moon out that night and there’s no way they would find me, even in my bright yellow t-shirt. So I picked my moment and suddenly swerved right but what I hadn’t anticipated, or seen, probably because I was in such a state of panic that it felt like I wasn’t even present in my own body, was a small tussock of grass that lay just off the path. And at full speed – which admittedly – was not high, I immediately tripped on that tussock of grass and went BANG straight into a face plant on the ground.

I went from 2km/h to 0km/h in a fraction of a second.

And my face hit the sand and my mouth was open because I was breathing so hard from all the running and so my mouth was now full of sand, my glasses fell off and landed somewhere nearby in the dark, and my heart was beating a million miles an hour. And I lay there and I thought, this is it. This is where it happens, I’m going to die. So I lay there waiting for the first boot in the ribs, but it never came. Either they had stopped chasing me some time ago, or – and I like to think this was the case – they were chasing a bright yellow t-shirt lumbering guy, and then he had magically disappeared like some sort of wizard away into the dark.

I hope they still tell the story of the miracle they saw that night.

After lying there for several minutes I eventually got up and walked back to camp where I found my two friends sitting on a fence laughing. And in a real display of alpha-male testosterone and adrenaline I said “you guys were going to come back for me right?”

And they said “of course”, but they weren’t entirely convincing.

So I’ve tried my hand at fighting – I’m clearly not a fighter. I’ve tried my hand at flighting – I’m also not a flighter.

But this was confusing to me because I was told that fight or flight were the two options and I didn’t seem to have either. I assumed that maybe there was something wrong with my adrenal gland or perhaps I was just a weakling who Darwin would have had bad news for.

But what I did find out, later in life, is that there is a third response to stress or fear that I did not know about.

Freeze.

When I discovered this I was like “Oh my God, that’s it! That’s what I do!!!”

I’m not a fighter or a flighter, I’m a freezer.

When people freeze their brain automatically decides that the best option is to become immobile. People can dissociate so that it seems like they’re not even in their own body.

And although the language of “freeze” might not sound that admirable, it was honestly a genuine relief to have language and legitimacy for my own experiences. When it was just fight of flight I felt like there must be something wrong with me. But when they said – oh, freeze is a third thing we didn’t tell you about, I was like –  something’s not wrong with me after all!

And there’s a few reasons why I’m telling you this story – some of which will connect to the stories I’m going to tell next – and they relate to my at times awkward relationship to my own body, to my own self, to my sense of who I am and whether or not I’m valid.

But I hope what this story somehow shows is how important it is to have language for our experiences. One of the things I’ve talked about a lot via In the Shift is how difficult it can be when the experience of life and of faith you are having does not fit the script. And if we don’t have language to help make sense of that experience and to help us feel like we’re not the only ones, then we can feel weird, abnormal, like a problem, or like there’s something wrong with us. 

So my hope, as we keep having these kinds of conversations, is that we find the language to help us name and describe our own experience of life, of faith, of the divine, of our bodies, of our unique journey. And that’s why theology still matters to me I guess. At its best it is giving us symbols and language to offer some sense-making of our experience. And I hope you find some solidarity as we try to find the words to describe the journey we’re on, however different it might look.