Fight or Flight

It's winter. It's dark. It's night. You are on your own. Walking. You hear footsteps behind you. Someone is following you, inching closer and closer. They grab you from behind....

You turn around calmly and politely say 'Excuse me, I don't appreciate your touching me like that. Can you please keep your distance?'

Is that what happens? No! In fact, in that situation a calm response like that is almost impossible. You feel fear. You feel stress. You feel anxiety. Your heart is beating out of your chest. You are sweating in the bitter cold.

What do you do? You run if you can or you turn around and punch, kick and scream. You feel threatened.

The whole scenario might be perfectly innocent. Maybe this person just wants directions. Maybe this person thought you were in danger of someone/thing else. Maybe this person is your best friend. But that doesn't matter.

Your arousal levels are through the roof. Your instincts kick in to overdrive. You don't think logically. You response is one of fight or flight.

This response is an in-built method of self protection, it enables us to flee from threatening situations. Animals have this instinct and when humans enter a 'hyperarousal' state, this response is also just as instinctive.

These responses come from the amygdala (a-mig-dal-a) a small part of our brain.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

The amygdala plays a role in memory function and one of its roles is to identify if there is a potentially threatening situation. If the amygdala is triggered then it 'hijacks' the rational/thinking part of the brain and releases stress hormones including adrenalin. This is what produces the primitive and instinctive response. You act first and think and ask questions later.

This is all very interesting, but what has it got to do with autism?

Would it interest you to know that recent studies have shown that children with autism have an enlarged amygdala.

What does this mean for that child? It certainly has an impact on social function. It could likely mean increased anxiety and stress and the likelihood of perceiving threats where the rest of us don't see them.

Often when children with autism hit or hurt others, they are in this fight or flight response. They cannot process the world as easily as the rest of us and so they find even an easy social setting threatening. Sometimes a sequence of events can lead to a child feeling so threatened that this primitive response is triggered.

Of course, we never want to excuse behaviours that cause harm to others. But instead of accusing the child of being aggressive, we might wonder what must have been going for this child that they felt so threatened? These kids live with incredible levels of anxiety and stress everyday. If your child is ever at the receiving end of a hit from a child with autism, I plead with you - don't push for discipline or punishment for the child. It won't solve a thing. Work with the child to find out why they felt so threatened and how we can reduce this so they can respond with their 'thinking' brain the next time.