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Removing the 4 F's in Stress .. | |||
Flee, Fight, Freeze & Fallover |
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| The story so far .... | A Cheetah stalked an Impala herd. The herd responded in fear. Instantly, the Cheetah sprung. An Impala tried to Flee, running at full speed. The Cheetah was in hot pursuit searching for a Fight. Suddenly, the Impala dropped to the ground. Frozen! Barely any heartbeat. The Cheetah believed it was dead, Fallen over, so he stopped and left.. After a moment, the Impala began to shake all over. It jumped to its feet and shook with intense power. Now released of tension, the Impala returned to the herd. The situation was now Fixed and the herd relaxed. |
| ... but that's not the end of the story. |
Now imagine that the Impala herd had learnt to protect themselves from such repeated external stresses on the herd and built an electric fence. The Cheetah was now out-flanked,outside and out-of-luck. The Impala herd were OK. |
| STRESS | This a state of overwhelming physical or mental tension, due often to severe external force of some kind acting on you. |
Standard ways of reacting to stress |
Flee - withdrawing from the threat, run away etc. Fight - return the aggression, oppose the action etc. Freeze - stop, hide, avoid attention, ignore the external force etc. Fallover - be totally submissive, absorb the pressure etc. Look back to the top and consider the Impala's response to the Cheetah's attack. |
| Is there something better than the "relaxation fix" to STRESS recovery? |
The 'head doctors' teach that Relaxation is the solution. It is proposed that this is "nature's way" of recovery from stress. (It's the Impala story again) Surely it would be better to prepare for the Chetah and build the ever ready, set and forget "electric fence". Some call this an example of "positive thinking". Teach yourself to believe that you are always in a safe place. |
| Positive thinking Mind over Matter |
In extreme situations, the external 'YOU' may be in harm's way, but the internal 'YOU' is in the safe place ... and OK. This may require you to "mentally separate" the physical and mental 'YOU'. Stress is the force that works on the "MATTER" but your "MIND" (some say soul) can be FREE of these forces, so you can forget the reactive 4F's, of Flee, Fight, Freeze and Fallover. We are saying that your MIND is above MATTER. |
| Other useful stuff .... |
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Here is another example of learning about positive thinking |
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