Hi, everyone. So this is the second audio I'm recording on fight-flight symptoms and the body. Now following on from the previous one, which started to look at the old brain and the new brain and its impact on the way we think and feel. I want to get you thinking a little bit more about the threat system itself. Now, deep within our emotional brain is one of the oldest parts of our brain we believe, and that is the amygdala.

The amygdala is our alarm system. And unfortunately, it's not terribly bright because it's ancient. But when we were running around, living in caves and wearing loincloths, etc, being a little facetious, of course, there was a greater sense of threat, there was an enormous amount of threats. So we needed a threat system, which responded to that to keep us alive for evolutionary purposes. And so this amygdala has a better safe than sorry, policy, really. And it can't really tell the difference between real or imagined danger, it's just going to sound the alarm, whether it's real or not, if it's not sure.

So an example of that might be you're lying in bed and the cat knocks over something, you hear a noise in the kitchen, and you start thinking there might be an intruder. If you entertain those thoughts for too long without getting up, you might end up feeling similarly to how you might feel if there were as an actual intruder in your house that you were faced with. Obviously, if there was that would be very helpful for you to be in fight-flight. But often, those scenarios don't happen, I hope for you. And so it can be incredibly unhelpful. I think I read somewhere not long ago that about 85% of our worries don't actually materialise, which is a pretty interesting statistic.

So essentially, this old brain, the threat system inside the old brain can be triggered by thoughts. And often those are just unhelpful thoughts, which are not necessarily based on reality, or particularly helpful. If you think that we have between 20 and 70,000 of those thoughts in a day, that can be problematic for some, if you're particularly wired with an anxious brain, like many with ADHD are for numerous reasons. So whether it's a real or imagined threat, the alarm sounds anyway, and it sends a signal to your body.

Now, again, like I say, if it's a real threat, that's really, really helpful. But often if anxiety is there, but the threat isn't there, it might have a lot to do with the way you're thinking. And we're going to focus a number of audios in this series and other series, which give you strategies to help you with unhelpful thinking patterns and cognitive distortions. So I think the main purpose of this audio is to get you thinking about the symptoms of fight-flight. Because one of the main challenges I come across in the therapy room over the last 10 years is that people don't tend to know much about anxiety and fight-flight, we aren't really taught this stuff. So it's not your fault if you don't know about it. But what I can say is that for most people with anxiety disorders, it's heavily underpinned by misinterpretation of symptoms. More about that in the next audio.

Also, I believe it's much easier to beat anxiety if you understand it. So whether it's real or imagined, I guess it doesn't really matter for this next bit, once the alarm sounds, it sends a signal to our body, and we go into that state, and the body responds by doing a number of very, very interesting things. One, which is our pupils dilate. And the evolutionary purpose of that is to let in more light. So we can see more exits or more predators. And we can assess danger more readily. Our heart can start racing, the evolutionary function of that is to pump blood around our body quicker, heating us up, and preparing us to fight or run.

What runs concurrently with that is that this heat produces sweat at times. There are a number of theories on that one is for that to regulate our temperature. And another I've read previously is to make us more slippery to predators. Pretty useless now. But perhaps if we were all running around in loincloths, that might be a different story. So, take note you naturists, that might still help you at times. Other symptoms might be getting tingly hands and feet, I tend to find that yeah, I would say on average it affects about 50% of the population. But that's just a guesstimate on my part.

Not everybody experiences that, but some people very strongly, the evolutionary function of that is for the blood to slow down, really. So in case we were bitten by a predator. Yeah, we wouldn't bleed out as quickly, it's to protect the extremities like hands and feet. A very, very common symptom of fight-flight is a churning stomach. So in CBT, according to me, there's three different grades of that. There's butterflies, there's washing machine, or some people, not many, but you know, from time to time I meet that person. There's some people that experience that like a hand in their guts, just ripping their guts out, it can be really intolerable for some people.

Now, that's incredibly interesting, because it's probably one of the most common symptoms of fight-flight. And all that is, is that that blood is diverting away from the digestive system, to discourage you from eating. Now, I suspect many of you will recognise that feeling of not feeling very hungry or feeling nauseous when in fight-flight. And there's a reason for that. Because if you were to eat a burger, for example, that would slow down your metabolism, and you wouldn't be able to run as far or as fast.

Pretty interesting, huh? And some people can actually, you know, hear the noise of that shutting down the churning sensation. Yeah, it's just the blood diverting away just saying, don't eat because you're in danger, or you might be in danger. Some people need to go the toilet more readily. That obviously the body just ridding itself of excess, to make you lighter. Saliva glands close up, the evolutionary purpose of that is to discourage you from swallowing, so you don't eat so you don't slow down your metabolism.

And lastly, our adrenal glands open up. And that's the purpose of sharpening us up and making us ready to protect ourselves. I'm going to talk more about that in the next audio though if that's okay, so let's just put a pin in that for a second. But essentially, guys, I just want to try and flip the way you think about these symptoms. So many people feel incapacitated by their anxiety, they feel these symptoms are debilitating. It affects their life on a daily basis. And it's not going to cure everything. It's not going to solve everything. But if we can start to change our relationship with our body, and fight-flight symptoms of anxiety, it can really, really help. We talk more in the next audio about how we tend to misinterpret the symptoms and how that can be unhelpful in our thinking styles.

But right now, I just want you to sort of think about noticing your body when in anxiety and when in fight-flight and start thinking about why your body does what it does. Your body is your best friend, and it's always got your back.