Coffee Chats w/ Dr. D

Hey, Cadre, it's me, Dr. D. Welcome to my coffee chat for those of you who are watching the replay. And I will take a sip of my coffee. I have a little bit left, a little cinnamon latte here for those that are trying to join in. And I do want to give a shout out to February for a couple of things. One, it's black history month. But two, it's also heart month. And if you don't know, I do have a heart warrior. He has a condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome. So he basically has half a heart.

And so I just want to shout out all the heart warriors out there and the families that love them and care about them. For those who struggle with congenital heart defects, CHDs, you guys know the life is not easy. So I just want to put that out there, learn something about the heart and what it means to take care of your heart and staying healthy because it is so important. But today we're going to talk about the heart in a different way. So you guys know I talk about relationships and I want to visit the topic of fight, flight or freeze.

So you may have heard of fight or flight. That's pretty common. We talk about those things. But there is also a third response to being triggered, which is freeze. So fight, flight or freeze is a natural response that we have. We all have this when we have a perceived threat. So the threat could be real, it could be something that we just think is happening. But when we feel threatened, and this could be a physical threat, an emotional threat, this fight, flight or freeze kicks in. So I'm going to read through the symptoms of fight, flight or freeze and I want you to kind of take note.

And if any of these resonate with you, if you've noticed them when you felt a threat or any perceived threat, I just want to, you know, drop it in the chat for me. Give me a thumbs up or a coffee mug in there. Let me know that this is hitting you. All right? So symptoms of fight, flight or freeze, you might experience an increased heart rate, racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating. You might get dizzy. You might experience nausea, rapid breathing, shaking. So maybe your hands or your legs are shaking, you might get sweaty and you might experience tense muscles.

Now we think fight or freeze comes up when there's more of a physical threat. So, for example, if someone is staring at you from a distance or you think they are, maybe they're looking past you or maybe they're just kind of wandering off and they just happen to be looking in your direction, if that person Appears to be intimidating. So maybe they're really big. Maybe they've got their fist balled up and they're looking your direction. You might experience fight, flight or freeze. So what do you do?

Consider what your typical response is when you feel threatened, do you tend to want to fight someone? So are you going to walk up to this person and try to fight them or prepare yourself to fight? Or are you experiencing flight where you're trying to find any exit you can to get away from the situation, or do you freeze? Some people experience that freeze response where they just kind of sit still, they don't know what to do, or they're scared to do something so they just stand still. Now, fight, flight or freeze is happening in the moment.

What I'm talking about is with an actual physical threat, but it's a perceived threat. We think someone is staring at us from a distance, but maybe they're just dreaming. Maybe they're thinking about something that has nothing to do with us, but we feel threatened. Now I want to translate that into relationships. When do we experience fight, flight or freeze in relationships? Hi, Rachel. So sometimes, and you guys have listen to some of my other chats, I talk a lot about attachment styles. And when we experience anxious attachment, I like to go there a lot.

That might look a lot like taking fight. We might experience a tricky moment in our relationship where we feel threatened, where we're going to lose this person or that person is going to leave us. And in response to that perceived threat, we might try to fight it. So maybe we get a little more intense in our communication with that person. Maybe we yell at them, maybe we kind of swarm them with communication because we're afraid of losing that connection. But some of us who struggle with avoidant attachment might experience more of the flight symptoms.

So maybe you feel threatened in a relationship. This person might be getting too close to you, you emotionally and so you experience a sense of I need to exit, I need to get out of here. And you might as well experience all these other symptoms that I mentioned that are related to fight, flight or freeze. You might feel that increased heart rate. You might have all these racing thoughts. You probably are having a hard time concentrating. So this fight, flight or freeze symptoms, they are related to not just physical threats, but emotional threats.

They show up in relationships. They show up with our friendships. They show up in experiences with co workers and with our boss or whoever it is that might be someone in a place of authority over us. So I want you to consider how has this shown up for you? Maybe in the past few months or maybe even this week already. I know it's already Tuesday, but maybe it's happened to you. I don't know. Let me know what's going on in your life. So I want you to consider this for your relationships and I want you to consider what is your typical response to fight, flight or freeze?

Do you want to fight? Do you argue? Do you tense up? Do you want to threaten the person because you're afraid? Do you want to attack them because you feel like you're being attacked? Or do you flee? You try to exit the relationship. You sabotage a relationship. Maybe you get the person to break up with you first. Maybe you get the person to yell at you so you have a reason to fight back. Do you freeze in the situation? So maybe you don't know what to do and you just stay in toxic relationships one after another because you're just stuck.

Something think about. So that's all I got for y'all today. Let me know if this is hitting with you. I saw a couple of hearts in there. Thank you for sharing that. And I want to thank you for joining me. I want you to also think I talked about Heart month, but next week is Valentine's Day, y'all, so get ready. But thanks for joining my coffee chat and I hope you all have a wonderful day. Bye.