the.com/fight or flight response
Your body's ancient decision: punch the problem or outrun it, no middle ground.
means The automatic surge of adrenaline and nerves that primes your body to either confront a threat or flee it, triggered before you've consciously decided anything.
from The phrase traces to early-20th-century physiologist Walter Cannon, who studied how animals and humans respond to danger and coined the term to describe the nervous system's rapid mobilization of the body — racing heart, dilated pupils, redirected blood flow — all in service of survival. 'Flight' here is the old verb for fleeing, not the airborne kind; it's kin to 'flee,' not to 'fly.'
- actual origin
- adrenaline floods you before your brain even decides
- missing option
- freeze and fawn exist too, just less catchy
- modern mismatch
- triggered by emails, built for tigers
- coined by
- physiologist Walter Cannon in 1915