Neil Armstrong had to fly the Eagle lunar lander away from the designated landing area due to terrain and set down on the surface of the moon with just 25 seconds of descent fuel left before an automatic abort would have been initiated. Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed his plane in the Hudson River saving 155 passengers after losing thrust in both engines after a bird strike at an altitude of 2818 feet. A feat that was never practiced, never simulated and never done before he did it under extreme stress. A fire chief in Seattle makes the call to evacuate a burning building minutes before it collapses saving every firefighter inside. When asked how he knew to evacuate he simply stated, “I had a feeling, it just felt different. The fire wasn’t behaving like normal.”
Are these 3 people super humans? How did they stay so calm in the face of such calamity? Do they possess superpowers and gifts that the rest of us just dream about having?
Well the short answer is no, granted they are all heroes, all super smart, super talented driven individuals, but they are no different from the rest of us. They have the same DNA, the same blood, and the same brains we all do, but they all also have one other incredible thing in common. When the chips are down, when the sh** is truly hitting the fan and there is no time for deep thinking or higher order executive functions, they still performed flawlessly. Why? What are they doing that the rest of us can apply to our own lives, and our own careers?
High levels of performance and having the ability to think clearly under pressure isn’t an innate skill we as humans have. But it’s a skill we can train, we can work on daily and one we can see tangible results from doing. Unfortunately, there’s not a linear path to that point. To be cool in the face of adversity takes dedication, it takes hard work, and it takes time and experience. It takes a healthy heaping of humility, and it takes a person willing to push the limits of their own beliefs in themselves. However, it is not impossible. It is not out of reach for any of us. It’s actually quite doable. If you could talk to Armstrong or Sullenberger, they’d likely tell you the same thing. That they aren’t super humans. They are just ordinary people that have committed to improving their performance under pressure.
How is this relevant to us? Most likely we aren’t astronauts, we aren't flying airliners with multiple lives in our care or firefighters in a burning building but we all have one thing in common. Calamity is only a heartbeat away. We are all just seconds away from a potential disaster, whether that is man made or a natural event. It absolutely makes sense to be prepared and it also makes sense to understand how our brains are hardwired to either help or hurt us in these critical events.
In future blogs we’ll discuss at length our autonomic nervous system, its functions and how it affects us in stressful environments. How our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems influence our abilities to use, or not use, our brain’s higher order executive functions. Most have heard of the fight, flight or freeze response, but not everyone understands its role in how we deal in crisis situations. For now, understand that the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is geared for physical action, not high level cognition.
One of its main functions is to sense danger and initiate an immediate response to that danger. It’s physical, it’s primitive, but over time it’s what has kept us alive as a species.
When our brains (specifically the Amygdala) sense a threat, the SNS automatically kicks in and activates the fight, flight or freeze system. Epinephrine or what we often refer to as adrenaline is released as is its close cousin norepinephrine. Both are hormones in a class of compounds called catecholamines. Both epinephrine and norepinephrine prepare the body for action. They help speed up the heart, strengthen its contractions, increase our breathing capacity, increase blood flow and oxygen to our muscles and release glucose to speed up our metabolism. However, these are all physical manifestations. The release of epi and norepinephrine don’t improve our cognitive skills.
Cortisol, a third hormone, is also released. One of cortisol’s primary jobs is to boost long term alertness, but the hidden problem with the release of cortisol is that it effectively takes the parts of our brains responsible for planning, concentration, insight, decision making and judgment off line. We don’t think as well, and our ability to prioritize and use sound judgment is very limited. Cortisol erodes our ability to plan, to perceive. In essence, we hear less, see less and miss more cues from the environment we find ourselves in.
We are ready to flee or fight but we are less capable of rational thoughts. Our bodies are ready for action but the parts of our brains that make us truly human, the parts capable of sound rational decisions are not working properly. Tested over our existence as humans more times than not, this strategy has worked out well. In the modern world we are many, many generations moved on from the rudimentary instinct to run or fight. The modern world and all of its complexity and constant stimulation may still require us to flee or fight but much more likely require us to use finer motor skills. The skills needed to call 911 and give appropriate, thoughtful responses, to be able to maneuver a car quickly, apply a dressing to an open wound or navigate away from potential trouble. These skills will require mental and physical skills that likely will be in short supply when our SNS is activated and cortisol is present. The very thing that makes us humans, the ability to reason, to strategize, to plan and perceive is effectively taken off line with the release of cortisol.. But, there is a silver lining to this. There is a way to train for this. To understand what is happening, and how we can overcome it.
Think of your brain as an engineering device. If you take something from one part, you have to give to another. What was going to the parts of our brains responsible for reasoning is now shunted to the middle portions of our brains. Our middle brain stores all the things we’ve learned and made intrinsic. For example, driving your car, after you’ve learned the techniques and gained experience it becomes second nature. In the beginning you had to think through the process, each step clunky and cumbersome, but after a few months of experience you gained confidence, your reactions improved, and you didn't have to think through every step. Now if a ball rolls out in front of your car while driving your brain registers danger, anticipates a child to follow and without even a second thought your foot shifts from the gas pedal to the brake. Some call it muscle memory, but our muscles don’t store memory, our brains do. The more we gain experience, knowledge and confidence, the more intrinsic we make things, and the better off we will be when under tremendous pressure. By training, by experience, we have the chance to build solid implicit memories that are stored in our middle brains. We have the ability to do that with all types of things. The more effort, the more work, the more thought and practice you put into a topic, the more it’ll become intrinsic and the better off you’ll be in an emergency.
We all would like to think that in an emergent situation that we’ll perform flawlessly. That we’ll be able to think clearly, come up with a great plan and execute it. Reality though is something very different. Our bodies, and our brains, are hardwired to fight or escape or in worst case scenarios, freeze. In an immediate crisis situation we don’t think our way out of trouble. We move, that’s the entire point of it, we don’t have to think. The parts of our brains responsible for deep thought are too slow, too analytical and too expensive to run in what the body considers a threatening situation. The answer to this lies in preparation, in training, in experience, in knowing how to train our brains. The heroes noted above aren’t different from us. These guys knew their limitations and were all humble enough to know that the only way to survive, to thrive in dangerous situations is to train. To train the right way.
The old adage, “You don’t rise to the level of your expectations; you sink to the level of your training” still holds true today. Knowing how our brains operate when under threat only confirms how true this remains.
Raven Strategic Group whether we have served with law enforcement, as firefighters, the military or in the emergency medical services, we all realized real early on in our careers that if we put the effort in prior to the critical event then the outcomes are much better. Most of us reading this blog probably have faced life threatening, violent, unpredictable and fluent situations in our lives, probably multiple times. Likely you didn’t succeed based on guessing, hope or luck. You survived on knowledge, confidence and preparations.
Training and experience are the answers to functioning well in high stress environments. Raven Strategic Group can help teach the skills needed to cope while under stress. I think we all know what 2024 may be like. To help prepare please feel free to reach out to us for this valuable and timely training.
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