There is the story of Hiroo Onoda, one of only 4 Japanese soldiers who survived the American invasion of Lubang Island in the Philippines in February 1945. Hiroo Onoda was an intelligence officer who was ordered not to surrender and not to take his life. So he took to the hills instead with his 3 comrades and they pursued a covert guerrilla war which lasted nearly 29 years. Despite leaflets and photos from their families dropped from the air, the soldiers didn’t believe the war was over. Finally one of them surrendered and two others were shot in skirmishes with the local police. But Onoda remained in the jungle convinced the war wasn’t over.
The story of Onoda made its way back to Japan. A Japanese adventurer decided to venture into the jungle unarmed in an effort to find Onoda. After 4 days of wandering he stumbled upon Onoda who initially tried to shoot him. The adventurer was finally able to explain that the war really was over. But Onoda insisted he wouldn’t give up until he was relieved of his duties by his superior officer. A mutual agreement was made and the Japanese adventurer returned to the jungle with Onoda’s former superior officer to fulfill the promise made 30 years ago that “we’ll come back for you no matter what happens.” The superior officer then formally ordered Onoda to surrender in the jungle. Onoda turned over a cache of weapons including a dagger his mother had given to him to kill himself with if he was captured.
The shorthand most of us use to describe how we react to threat is the fight-flight-freeze response. When a real or perceived threat is detected our automatic response is to either run away or confront the threat. If the threat is overwhelming then the body will shift into the freeze response and we become immobile. Porges’s Polyvagal map has popularised and clarified how the automatic nervous system (ANS) operates in cascade fashion depending on the degree of threat. When the threat is relatively mild, people will attempt to resolve the issue by shifting how they relate to the person involved. It could be as simple as asking for more information.
But if the threat is coming from someone in an emotionally charged state, the options to make an appropriate relational shift may be reduced dramatically. In these instances the brain makes the decision for you. It momentarily disconnects the reflective, thinking part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex, and control automatically shifts to the limbic system where the fight/flight responses are generated. That’s when you find yourself running away even though you can’t remember having thought about it.
When the threat is overwhelming or imminent and where there is no possibility to fight or run away, the limbic response is inhibited and the ANC shifts into the freeze response generated by the brainstem. This is where you find yourself unable to say anything, unable to formulate what you are thinking, unable to move your body. On the outside this looks like someone who is immobile and doing nothing whereas on the inside from a neurological point of view the ANS is state of hyper activation.
This cascaded response to threat by the ANS is something everyone is born with. We are hard-wired to react to threat in this way. People who have lived through difficult experiences often find themselves unwittingly stuck in these kind of responses – the residue from traumatic experiences. They might feel they need to run away from situations when they know there is no danger. Sensing this uncontrolled response makes them feel bad about themselves. And of course this makes everything worse than it already is.
For example an inherently stressful situation for most people is talking to a group. The cascaded stress response often kicks in and the person finds themselves fidgeting. They make excessive notes. Their palms become sweaty. They talk too quickly or they suddenly don’t know what to say anymore. They might even want to leave the room. Or maybe call in sick and not turn up for the meeting in the first place.
These are all facets of a how we function in survival mode and in and of themselves are not a problem. The problem begins when our ANS gets stuck in responding to non-threatening situations as if they were. You have put out the fire but the fire alarm is still ringing in your head. And it’s driving you crazy.
The part which experienced the traumatic experience and has the fire alarm ringing with the vision of enemy forces landing on the beach is not the same as who you are today. The reason the bell is ringing is because this part still believes it’s alone and in danger. The more you try to convince this part the danger is past, like Onoda, the more wary it can become. Sometimes getting the message through can take time. Sometimes other means may be necessary.
