Fight Or Flight Quotes

By listening to the “unspoken voice” of my body and allowing it to do what it needed to do; by not stopping the shaking, by “tracking” my inner sensations, while also allowing the completion of the defensive and orienting responses; and by feeling the “survival emotions” of rage and terrorwithout becoming overwhelmed, I came through mercifully unscathed, both physically and emotionally. I was not only thankful; I was humbled and grateful to find that I could use my method for my own salvation.While some people are able to recover from such trauma on their own, many individuals do not. Tens of thousands of soldiers are experiencing the extreme stress and horror of war. Then too, there are the devastating occurrences of rape, sexual abuse and assault. Many of us, however, have been overwhelmed by much more “ordinary” events suchas surgeries or invasive medical procedures. Orthopedic patients in arecent study, for example, showed a 52% occurrence of being diagnosed with full-on PTSD following surgery.Other traumas include falls, serious illnesses, abandonment, receivingshocking or tragic news, witnessing violence and getting into anauto accident; all can lead to PTSD. These and many other fairly commonexperiences are all potentially traumatizing. The inability to reboundfrom such events, or to be helped adequately to recover by professionals,can subject us to PTSD—along with a myriad of physical and emotionalsymptoms.

Peter A. Levine

Fear was the hand of the devil holding a scalding hot branding iron and touching your brain and your stomach and yelling at you to run with leaden feet.

Dan Groat

we're thieves, we're rats. We know when to fight and when to run.

Victoria Aveyard

We hit every jazz and blues club on and off Bourbon Street, dancing and drinking until we girls were drunk enough to go with the boys to the strip clubs which outnumbered all other businesses in the French Quarter. Here is where my solution unfolded.

Darwun St. James

Fear of a bully, fear of a volcano; the power within you does not distinguish. It does not recognize degree.

Negative emotional states are a breeding ground for mistakes.

Sam Owen

He tried to decide if he was really ashamed of being afraid, and decided that he was not. Fear was there for a purpose. It was wired into any creature that had not completely turned its back on its evolutionary inheritance and so remade itself in whatever image it coveted. The more sophisticated you became, the less you relied on fear and pain to keep you alive; you could afford to ignore them because you had other means of coping with the consequences if things went badly.

Are you gay, Cherie? Me, No… I’m not anything… I-I mean I prefer not to indulge, I stammered.“Really... how do you mean?”Well love has been an elusive story, like a fairytale adults tell children but I have never known any of it to be true. In reality it reminds me of religion. I am not sure God is real either, if God is real why do so many innocents suffer?Innocents suffer because it is their destiny to suffer.What? What does that mean?” I’m annoyed.God has nothing to do with it. We are born into this world to experience all that is not God-like, so we can then be inspired to reach for higher spiritual goals.I have never thought of it that way before. If that is so then I must be preparing for sainthood. Am I to think that all of my suffering as a child has been to prepare me for greatness?

Darwun St. James

When you become aggressive in arguments, you force the other person to become defensive which means they’ll either get ready to fight you or ready to flee from you.

Sam Owen

Correctly identifying a negative emotion takes the brain out of fight-or-flight mode and into problem-solving mode, out of tension, anger and confusion and into ease, calm and clarity.

Sam Owen

The way I see it, our natural human instinct is to fight or flee that which we perceive to be dangerous. Although this mechanism evolved to protect us, it serves as the single greatest limiting process to our growth. To put this process in perspective and not let it rule my life, Iexpect the unexpected;make the unfamiliar familiar;make the unknown known;make the uncomfortable comfortable;believe the unbelievable.

Charles F. Glassman