Fight or Flight in Modern Times: What cows have taught me about being human.

We know without a doubt our brains have mechanisms to protect us to survive- which are labeled fight or flight or freeze. How I originally learned about the concept is that it’s more equipped for events that were common in the past and our brains haven’t evolved. These events are like a near death experience such as an animal attacking you – something with a resolution at the end where you either get away or you don’t. But these same mechanisms are used when your boss says they want to have a meeting with you or are you are in an awkward social situation. It’s been shown that different social circumstances creates this survival response and the lack of resolution creates chronic stress in the body.

I think everyone should know this is how the body creates stress and that continual fight or flight response can have poor health outcomes. But I think there’s a little bit more to the story in how/why it works or gets activated in social settings in particular. The way that we think of it seems distant to me. I understand it as being very close to home in every day interactions. And it’s actually something that cows have taught me.

What I have learned from the cows is to not underestimate our social experience as it relates to our survival. Humans are herd animals, just like cows, and we rely on social cues and conforming to some extent for the greater good. We look to each other for signs of danger, and we are very very good at reading behavior, faces, etc to alert us of fear. If I could sum up the greatest teaching I have from observing the cows is that togetherness makes us safe. And safety is the requirement for any other positive thing to live in the brain: love, learning, connection, community. All the good stuff. The stuff we complain about that we don’t see in people or systems we don’t like.

Unlike cows, humans are growing increasingly distant from each other. It’s normal for us not to know our neighbors, and there’s been some really interesting research as far as our social circles dwindling over the last 50 years. Also the American concept of rugged individualism probably doesn’t help with this need for belonging.

To go back to the situation with the boss. They call a meeting, your heart is pounding and you want to leave the building. In the worst case scenario you know you’re not going to DIE, even though your fight or flight is activated. But from my perspective when we are fired, excluded, or rejected when we don’t have a secure social system (AKA a herd) that is supporting you, then that social safety that we need as herd animals IS threatened. And this social safety is connected to fear for our life.

This makes sense. As infants we need so much that we are unable to give ourselves and deep bonding makes the difference between survival or not. Love is the language of survival then, it tells us we are safe. As we get older, I don’t think this need for external validation goes away. We still very much need for others to like us, love us, approve of us, in order for us to have jobs, have partners, have a community that will help us raise our children.

To understand this I like to think of what a herd of humans meant to each other before modern times. It wasn’t just social needs they met such as entertainment or friendship, but we also met physical needs, like shelter, food, water. Heck, love probably meant just watching somebody’s 6 while they went to the bathroom. We led each other to survival, we relied on each other, deeply. The trust that we had to have with each other must have been insane. And real, based on our understanding of the world around us. Completely interconnected.

Compared to modern life there’s a huge disconnect now as far as how much we actually need each other in an immediate way. For example, you go to a store to buy everything you need and you purchase it with a paycheck that you singularly earned. When you purchase an apple you don’t realize that hundreds of people were behind it that you are relying on. The grocer who placed it in produce. The stock person who took the case off the truck. The truck driver who brought it there. The person who put it on the truck from the apple sorting place. The people who sorted it. The people on the farm that put it on the sorting truck. The people who actually grew it. And then to go even farther out, you also needed the people who manufactured the trucks and the equipment to make the food and move the food, the soil, the store, etc, etc, etc. Each of these people you rely on so that you can eat and survive. But we don’t see them as a part of our herd, and it’s not set up for us to realize. We are left ignorant to how much we truly rely on each other.

So, it’s perceived that these fight or flight mechanisms that we have in our brain are old school and they don’t’ serve us anymore. But based on the fact that modern life can be devoid of deep human bonds, I think these structures and our response- chronic stress- are very valid. We need each other more now than we ever have. And the ignorance of our deep need for reliance and bonding I think can lead to the very scary human emotion of shame. Ah, yes. The big one. But a universal one, and universal for a reason. Shame when unspoken motivates us by deep fear to do the things we perceive are needed to avoid rejection- rejection from the herd. Shame untangles when we access the part of ourselves that knows we are connected to others, by truly being ourselves and offering our gifts to the world.

As Mary Oliver writes in her poem Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

The one thing that I think helps me is trying to remember this connectedness and also trying to directly be more in touch with the systems. That is a huge reason why farm life appeals to me. Even with our eggs, it’s such a small system but still, I feel connected doing the work to take care of the chickens and then going out and knowing that these efforts fed other families. It is a very special privilege. And even going to the grocery store, taking time to remember that there are thousands of people behind every physical need I have that gets met, that I am connected to all the time.