Adrenaline (Part 2)

In this post, I want to talk about the “negative” side effects of Adrenaline and also dispel one of the myths that is commonly associated with extreme fear; that of time slowing down. Anyone who has been in a car crash or narrowly avoided an accident, or been the victim of an assault, will recall that “Time Slowed Down” for them – this is referred to as Time Dilation.

If such an effect should exist, it stands to reason that it is not actually time slowing down but the brains ability to understand and make sense of the situation speeding up i.e. its cognitive processing increases. Researcher, David Eagleman, attempted to study this apparent phenomenon, by getting test subjects to estimate the time it took them to complete an upside down 150 ft free fall, into a net – this was a thrill ride on a fairground/amusement park, near the university campus where he worked . The idea being to invoke enough fear in the subjects to create Time Dilation. He also got his subjects to estimate the time it took for other people to complete a free-fall. Subjects estimated that it took them 36% longer to fall than the people they watching. This meant Time Dilation was happening.

He then reasoned that if Time Dilation was occurring, the brain’s processes should be firing faster. He then attached a special watch to each subject that displayed numbers at a rate that was just too fast for them to make out when in a non-stressed state. He concluded that if his subjects could make out these numbers as they fell, then the brain was indeed speeding things up. As it turned out, they couldn’t; our perception of events doesn’t speed up when we are adrenalized, rather when we recall the event afterwards we remember it as if it occurred in slow motion.

Some of the definite side-effects of adrenaline affect both our sight and our hearing. Under stress we all experience “Tunnel Vision” and in certain situations may start to see things in “Black & White” as well as even lose our hearing.

Our Fear System, is designed to work for 90% of situations (this is just an estimate used to illustrate the point), but is not specific enough for particular situations. In most situations the primary threat, the one we are facing, is the one that should occupy all of our attention and so when placed under stress and fear we develop tunnel vision i.e. our peripheral vision disappears so we are not distracted by movements to our side etc. The problem is that 10% of violence involves third parties or other threats within the environment, and in these situations tunnel vision actually impedes our survival chances. As trained individuals, we should look to be aware of our environment and surroundings and not simply focus on the person(s) standing before us. One of the quickest ways to deal with tunnel vision is to “Scan”. Scanning allows our eye line to not only take in other threats that may be present but will also widen our gaze, as our eyes fix on objects and people in our environment who are located at difference depths of vision.

In extreme situations we may be subject to hearing loss. Our fear system consists of both inherent fears and learnt ones. We have a natural freeze response to loud noises. The current understanding of this is that historically our natural predator’s i.e. wild animals would often first alert us to their presence by noise as they would hunt by stealth and take advantage of the terrain for camouflage, so identifying them by sight would not always be possible. There are many different ways that different animal species – including humans - use to confuse predators when surprised e.g. some play dead, some such as bird flocks, like flamingos take off together in a confusing array of movement with the aim of giving their predator too many choices of a potential victim, causing them to take extra time in selecting a target. Humans freeze – we do this because historically our animal predators hunted by sight and select prey by movement. If you have ever seen a bull-fight, you will witness the Matador, standing stock still, whilst he flutters his cape so that the bull identifies this as the target instead of him.

Freezing when we first our alerted to danger makes good sense, however once we have visually identified the threat, our body may decide we don’t need our sense of hearing any more e.g. we are in fight or flight mode and all that our fear system requires of us is action – the time to use reason has gone. Unfortunately we may end-up over-reacting to a threat, and fail to understand that we could talk our way out of the situation, or de-escalate our aggressor(s). In an over adrenalized state our hearing may go, even though the situation doesn’t necessarily necessitate a physical response.

The way to avoid becoming over-adrenalized is to recognize threats early on and have a proper understanding of the situation you are in so you don’t over-react to it. In next week’s Blog we will look at how to control the release of adrenaline so that we don’t become over-adrenalized and suffer from some of these negative effects.