The limbic brain occupies an interesting and very important place in the study nonverbal communication. Responsible not only for adaptation in stressful situations, but also for our survival as a species. In the moment it takes over to control our actions, and at the same time causes us to display more non-verbal emblems.
Freeze response
Her goal: To become less noticeable
The limbic freeze response can often be observed during witness interviews when people hold their breath or begin to breathe quickly and shallowly. The witness himself does not notice it, but for everyone who watches him, this reaction is obvious. It can also be seen in people caught in the act of a crime or caught in a lie. When people feel defenseless, they act exactly the same as our ancestors did a million years ago - they freeze.
How it manifests itself nonverbally:
- decrease ,
- decreased mobility.
Verbal:
— ,
— Ask the question again (gain time to think about the answer).
The higher the discomfort, the more it manifests itself.
The moment when hand mobility stops is important: a sign of evaluating actions or processing situational information.
Flight response
Goal: To escape the unwanted.
When the freezing response does not help, avoiding the stressor is not the most the best way out from the current situation (for example, if danger is too close), then the limbic brain chooses the second behavior option - the flight reaction. This choice is determined by the desire to escape from danger or, at least, to be further away from it.
Nonverbal signs:
— ,
-different kinds body locks,
-turning towards the body, head, feet,
— ,
- shifting eyes,
- shifting from foot to foot.
Verbal signs:
- leaving the topic of conversation.
Fight reaction
The goal of which is to get rid of the stress factor through an aggressive attack.
The brain uses this aggressive tactic as a last resort to get rid of the stress factor.
The limbic brain is responsible for our survival as a species. That's why in dangerous situations it takes control of our actions and at the same time forces us to display a sufficient number of non-verbal emblems. So in the classic way he once protected primitive people from Stone Age predators, and today he protects workers from bosses with a heart of stone.
The brain's exceptionally effective response to stress or danger is expressed by in three forms: freeze, run and fight . Just like other species of animals whose limbic brains protected them in this way, humans who retained these limbic responses were able to survive because these behavioral elements were originally programmed into them. nervous system. ..Since we have been able to maintain and improve this wonderful way of successfully dealing with stress or danger, and since these reactions cause our bodies to send nonverbal signals that help us understand people's thoughts, feelings and intentions, then it is worth spending some time on detailed study of each reaction.
Freeze response
In order for the first humans to survive, the limbic brain, which we inherited from our animal ancestors, developed a behavioral strategy that made it possible to compensate for the superior strength of predators. The first defensive tactic in this limbic system strategy was to use the freeze response in the presence of a predator or other danger. Movement attracts attention, and to help us survive in dangerous situations, the limbic brain forces us to choose the most efficient one of all. possible options behavior and instantly freeze in place. Most carnivores chase moving targets, obeying the instinctive urge to “catch up, grab and bite.” Some animals, when confronted with predators, do not simply freeze, but pretend to be dead, which is an extreme form of the freezing response.
For example, reports of the shootings at Columbia University and Virginia Tech indicate that students used the freeze response to escape the killers. By remaining still and pretending to be dead, many students were able to stay alive even when they were only a few meters away from the criminals. They instinctively copied the behavior of their distant ancestors, and this technique turned out to be very effective. Being completely still can often make you almost invisible to others, as every Special Forces soldier knows.
IN modern society The freezing reaction manifests itself in Everyday life not so obvious. It can be seen in people caught in the act of a crime or caught in a lie. When people feel defenseless, they act in exactly the same way as our ancestors did a million years ago - they freeze... Scouts demonstrate exactly the same reaction in war. As soon as the person in front freezes, everyone else freezes - this signal is clear without words. In any case, our brain needs to decide what to do in a potentially dangerous situation.
Sometimes the limbic brain uses another form of defensive freeze response and causes us to shrink in order to appear small and inconspicuous. Such limbic freezing reactions are demonstrated by naughty children. In a sense, these helpless kids are also trying to hide on open place, using the only survival tool available to them in this position.
Flight response
When the freeze response does not help avoid danger or is not the best way out of the situation (for example, if danger is too close), then the limbic brain chooses the second behavior option - the flight response. It goes without saying that escape as a survival mechanism is only useful if it is physically feasible, and so our brains have been conditioning our bodies over thousands of years to use this sensible escape tactic. If you try to remember all the types social interaction, in which you have had to participate in your life, you will probably remember many cases when you tried to escape the unwanted attention of other people. Just as a child, sitting at the dinner table, turns away from bad food and points his feet towards the exit, an adult can turn his back on someone he doesn’t like or avoid discussing a topic he doesn’t like.
For the same purpose people use blocking behavior elements : They close their eyes, rub their eyes, or cover their face with their hands.
To increase the distance from the person sitting next to you, you can tilt your torso back, place an object (purse) on your knees, or turn your feet towards the nearest exit. All of these behaviors are controlled by the limbic brain and mean that someone wants to distance themselves from an unpleasant person, group of people, or any potential threat. Again, our ability to understand this behavior comes from the fact that for millions of years, humans have tried to stay as far away as possible from anything that we didn't like or that might cause us harm.
These actions may be accompanied by blocking elements of behavior. For example, a businessman may close or rub his eyes or shield his face with his hands. He may lean away from the table, move away from his opponent, or turn his feet in the direction of the nearest exit. These types of behaviors are not signs of deception, but rather indicate that the person is feeling uncomfortable. All of these forms of the age-old flight response are called nonverbal distancing signals and mean that the businessman is unhappy with what is happening at the negotiating table.
Fight reaction
The fight response is an aggressive tactic that the limbic brain uses as a last resort survival strategy. When a person who is faced with danger, freezing does not help him remain unnoticed and he cannot escape or move to a safe distance, then he can only fight for his life. According to Professor Jack Panksepp, an animal behaviorist at Bowling State University, over the course of our evolution as a species, we, like other mammals, have learned to turn fear into rage, which helps us successfully fight off an attack. However, in modern world physical manifestations of rage may be unacceptable or even illegal, and so the limbic brain has developed other, more sophisticated techniques based on the primitive fight response. One of the modern manifestations of aggression is argument. In essence, a heated dispute is the same fight, only without the use of physical force. Today's civil trials are nothing more than socially approved types of struggle or aggression, in which both sides aggressively dispute two opposing points of view. However, the fact that today people sort things out with the help physical means much less frequently than in other periods of our history does not mean that the limbic brain has excluded struggle from its defensive arsenal.
Although some people are more violent than others, our limbic response finds many ways to manifest itself beyond hitting, kicking, and biting. You can be extremely aggressive without resorting to physical contact at all. To do this, it is enough to use a threatening pose, look, stick out your chest, or invade the personal space of another person. A threat to our personal space provokes a limbic response at the individual level. When a person uses the fight response to physically attack, his behavior is clear to everyone.
But More subtle forms of behavior associated with the fight reaction are more often manifested . Just as we notice modified expressions of the limbic freeze-and-flight responses, modern decorum requires that we refrain from exercising our primitive tendency to fight in threatening situations. Because the fight reaction serves last hope to escape a threat and is only used after freeze and flight tactics have failed, you should avoid it if possible. In the state of emotional excitement that comes from a good fight, we almost lose the ability to reason sensibly . Daniel Go-Ullman explains this by saying that the limbic brain, which needs to use all available Brain resources, simply turns off our cognitive abilities. It is also necessary to carefully study the elements of nonverbal behavior because sometimes they can warn you of a person’s intention to use violence against you. physical strength thereby giving you time to avoid potential conflict. Non-verbal communication can say much more about a person than we can understand from the words of the person himself. If a contradiction arises between two sources of information (verbal and nonverbal): a person says one thing, but his face says something completely different, then, obviously, nonverbal information deserves more trust. Australian specialist A. Pease claims that 7% of information is transmitted through words, sound means - 38%, facial expressions, gestures, postures - 55%. In other words, what is said is not so important, but how it is done.
What happens to a person under stress? What is the mechanism of the anxiety response?
In 1935, American physiologist Walter Cannon first defined it as the fight or flight response. Or, in mathematical terms, reaction A or B.
Information about the alarm reaction passes through the senses to the brain, where there is an important “relay station” - the hypothalamus. Within a fraction of a second, information is transmitted through the nerve endings of the sympathetic nervous system to the adrenal glands. Having received the "SOS" signal, this organ immediately releases into the blood great amount“fighting hormones” - adrenaline and norepinephrine, which are carried by vessels throughout the body. A redistribution (pumping) of blood occurs: it moves to where it is more needed for response actions A or B - mainly to the muscles. Signals from the brain immediately go further - mental tension increases, attention intensifies, and preparation for action takes place. All this happens at lightning speed - tension, and hence stress, increases with monstrous speed. The hypothalamus mobilizes the neurohumoral apparatus: through nerve endings, impulses are transmitted to smooth muscles and endocrine glands, which begin to intensively produce hormones.
Not long ago it was proven that during physical stress the adrenal glands secrete predominantly norepinephrine, and during mental stress (anxiety, fear, rage) - primarily adrenaline. Adrenaline and norepinephrine increase heart rate and respiration and increase blood pressure. They also contribute to an increase in the amount of certain substances in the blood (in particular, triacetylglycerols), which in a chain reaction leads to the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases: atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke. It is the increase in the amount of acetylglycerols that is one of the possible causes of mental illness (under the influence of stress).
Relaxation
As already mentioned, the stress response causes the body to reflexively natural response - reaction A or B. Our current "natural" way of life with its "habitual" deficit of movements does not provide an incentive for an active response. For us, reaction B - flight - is becoming more and more familiar in such situations. And this combination of an inadequate lifestyle and biochemical and hormonal reactions to stress can lead to serious health problems.
What way out of this situation can and should we find? There is only one way out - first of all, change your lifestyle, move from passivity to activity. After all, sufficient activity does not allow harmful substances to accumulate in the body. What to do in those situations when you are not able to eliminate a stressful situation from your life? You should learn to actively influence it, thereby “absorbing” the stress blow. This means learning to manage stress contrary to the natural automatic reaction and respond to it autoregulatory, or, as doctors say, relaxation.
For a long time, it was believed that the anxiety reaction (A or B) was unpredictable and unsafe and there was no other way a person could react to stress. However, many years of experience testify: it is much more useful, using the body’s reserve capabilities, to master the method of conscious and active self-regulation. This will allow you to respond to stress more calmly.
The secrets of the anxiety response (A or B) were revealed by the American physiologist Walter Cannon. Canadian physiologist Hans Selye penetrated into the mystery of stress. It was physiologists who suggested the possibility of conscious autoregulatory intervention, a person’s penetration into himself, into his own “I,” and gave it a scientific basis. These were the great Russian physiologist Pavlov and the outstanding American researchers Wallace and Benson.
They showed that humans are also capable of regulating some natural physiological processes, i.e. has the ability to purposefully use its capabilities. Thus, its response to stressful stimuli can promote health - both mental and physical. This in itself is logical: after all, if you “have the power” to harm your own health, then why not use the same abilities for good. And then efforts will be directed not only towards dysregulation, but, on the contrary, will be used positively for autoregulation. Many of us are probably not even aware of this very important ability, and for most it remains untapped.
When a person suddenly learns that he does not necessarily have to become a victim of stress, that he can fully rely on himself and has the ability to defend himself, this naturally gives him confidence in his abilities and makes him want to do something. But for this you need to know the means and methods by which you can control your physiological reactions to stress impulses.
The automatic anxiety reaction consists of three successive phases (according to the theory of G. Selye): 1) impulse, 2) stress and 3) adaptation. In other words, if adaptation occurs, the stressful state soon subsides - the person somehow calms down. If adaptation is disrupted (or absent altogether), then some psychosomatic diseases or disorders may occur.
Therefore, if you do not want to direct your efforts to maintaining health, then you must consciously respond to a stressful impulse with relaxation. With the help of this type of active defense, a person is able to intervene in any of the three phases of stress. By doing so, you can prevent the impact of the stress impulse, delay it, or (if stressful situation has not yet occurred) reduce stress, thereby preventing psychosomatic disorders in the body.
By activating the activity of the nervous system, relaxation regulates mood and the degree of mental arousal, and allows you to weaken or relieve mental and muscle tension caused by stress.
“From the point of view of our modern scientific understanding, a person is an exceptional system, since he is distinguished by the level of autoregulation,” these words belong to I.P. Pavlov.
Triggering the fight or flight response in the body is tantamount to a declaration of war by the head of government. When war is declared, all the industrial resources of the nation are thrown into the production of weapons. Mobilization begins and young men are drafted into the army. The military takes control of the country's communications and transport systems. Borders are closing and security measures are being tightened everywhere. Everyone involved in the country's life support systems is moving to martial law.
Forebrain with its large frontal lobes capable of providing speech and abstract thinking, is a relatively recent evolutionary innovation. Humans have been thinking symbolically for about 200,000 years, which is just a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Reptiles, for example, manage to survive very well without such a complex tool. The body's survival-oriented intelligence is much older - about four billion years old. In order for a species to exist long enough to develop such a thinking machine as frontal lobes, he really needed good system response to anxiety.
However, when you are in danger, the body is not required to use the frontal lobes. It relies on ancient reptilian instincts to survive. The fight or flight reaction spurs all systems of the body, which is likened to a country gathered to fight. The muscles tense up to immediately begin to act, and the blood rushes to the horse's legs. In order for the muscles to receive enough blood, it flows away from the digestive, reproductive and cognitive systems. The skin turns white to prevent unnecessary blood loss. The pupils dilate. As your blood sugar levels rise, your blood pressure rises, and your heart rate increases, you have extra energy at your disposal.
However, such mobilization comes at a cost. The immune system suppressed, digestive and reproductive systems are decreasing. Blood flows from the frontal lobes to the muscles, which is why the sages advise against making any decisions while you are depressed.
When the crisis is over, everything returns to normal)" - if you are a dog or a cat. If you are a person, you begin to use your powerful frontal lobes to replay the drama in your subjective reality over and over again, triggering the fight or flight response in your body thousands of times after the objective need for
the war has already disappeared.
If you believe you are being besieged, your body has no way of communicating that these are just abstract thoughts of a neurotic mind. The old survival system kicked in. That is why spouses or partners who are constantly at war with each other, as well as patients suffering from depression and anxiety disorders, are characterized by decreased immune function. Their cortisone levels are elevated, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and regeneration, is suppressed in favor of the sympathetic nervous system, which is involved in the fight or flight response.
(fugue) periods of temporary memory loss when a person leaves his familiar surroundings and begins to wander aimlessly somewhere or starts in some other place new life. Often the flight reaction develops as a result of recent psychological conflict and depression (see Dissociative disorder), or may accompany some organic mental illness.
View value Flight Response in other dictionaries
Reaction— - opposition to social progress.
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Circular Reaction — - general mechanism, contributing to the emergence and development of spontaneous forms of mass behavior (D.V. Olshansky, p.425)
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Reaction- reactions, g. (Latin reactio) (book). 1. units only Politics, government political regime, bringing back and protecting the old order by fighting the revolutionary........
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Reaction- a rapid drop in prices after the previous one
growth.
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Reaction Suggestions— Increased productivity as a result of changes in incentives; discussed mainly in connection with market liberalization as a result of structural adjustment, first........
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Reaction, Drop in Exchange Rates— Fall in prices valuable papers, following a prolonged period of rising prices, possibly as a result of profit taking or unfavorable changes. See also correction.
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Sales Response Function — -
prognosis probable
sales volume over a certain period of time at different levels costs for one or more elements
complex
marketing.
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Reaction— A reversal of the prevailing market trend as a result of excessive selling in a declining market (when some buyers are attracted by low......
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Adamkiewicz-Hopkins-Kohl Reaction- (A. Adamkiewicz, 1850-1921, Austrian pathologist; G. Hopkins, 1861-1947, English biochemist; L. Cole, born in 1903, French pathologist) see Adamkiewicz reaction.
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Adaptive Response— see Adaptive reaction.
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Allergic reaction — common name clinical manifestations hypersensitivity body to the allergen.
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Delayed Allergic Reaction- (syn. kithergic reaction) A. r., developing within 24-48 hours after exposure specific allergen; in the occurrence of A. r. h. i.e. the main role belongs to......
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Allergic Reaction of Immediate Type- (syn. chimergic reaction) AR, developing after 15-20 minutes. after exposure to a specific allergen, e.g. at anaphylactic shock; in the occurrence of A. r. n. T.........
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Allergic Reaction Cross- A. r. to cross-reacting (common) antigens.
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Allergoid Reaction— (nrk) see Anaphylactoid reaction.
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Anaphylactoid Reaction- (anaphylaxis + Greek eidos type; synonym: allergoid reaction nr, anaphylatoxic reaction, phenomenon of parahypergia) - nonspecific allergic reaction, characterized by........
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Anaphylactic Reaction— see Anaphylactoid reaction.
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Antabuse-alcohol reaction— (syn. teturam-alcohol reaction) a complex of vegetative-somatic symptoms (skin hyperemia, followed by pallor, tachycardia, shortness of breath, a sharp decline arterial........
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Aristovsky-Fanconi Reaction- (historical; V. M. Aristovsky, 1882-1950, Soviet microbiologist and immunologist; G. Fanconi, born in 1892, Swiss pediatrician) allergic intradermal test with a suspension of killed streptococci for...... ..
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Agglutination Reaction— (RA) - a method of identifying and quantification Ag and At, based on their ability to form agglomerates visible to the naked eye. In the department of infectious diseases. diseases........
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Agglutination Reaction on Glass— - an express method for diagnosing RA, in which the immune system and corpuscular Ag are mixed on the surface of a clean slide or special glass (with rings) In connection........
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Agglutination-Lysis Reaction- see Leptospirosis.
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Reaction- (slang) - here: a rapid fall in prices after a previous rise.
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Antiglobulin Reaction- see Coombs reaction.
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Ascoli Reaction- a thermoimmunoprecipitation reaction used to detect anthrax Ag in the corpses of dead animals, necrotic tissue of carbuncles, raw hides and finished......
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Bacterolysis Reaction— reaction of interaction of whole bacteria. cells, antibodies to them and complement, as a result of which lysis of bacteria occurs. Immune systems in spirochetosis have lytic properties........
Dictionary of microbiology
