Why we freeze during an assault – the fear response

Please note that we are NOT the original writers of this blog post. All credit goes to the original writers. Find the original post as published at this link: http://invictaselfdefense.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-we-freeze-during-assault-fear.html

And. . .well, we all know how the story ends. 

Stress is an evolutionary survival mechanism, though it causes us to do some bizarre things, including freezing during violence. Odds are, it will most likely occur, which makes sense as most people’s last response is to fight.

  There are lots of reasons why folks freeze though, so let’s go through some of these: 

• Too many stimuli – your mind is taking in so much information at a fast rate that it is unable to process what it’s seeing effectively. Because many people have never been in anything even approaching a self-defense situation before, your brain has no reference experience, and because of that, it takes your brain time to locate its bearings. In the time it takes your mind to do that, some damage can be sustained by you. 
• Disconnect between 9-5 brain and combat-brain – unless you are in the military or in law enforcement, hardly any people train themselves to be able to shift from their 9-5 mind into combat-mode at the drop of a hat. It takes some time to shift into combat mode between your mindset. Unfortunately, the longer this takes, the longer your freeze will be, and the greater the likelihood that you could sustain injuries from the attacker. 
• Ethical struggle – this is especially common in martial artists/military/law enforcement people. You may have trained for years, though capacity and capacity are not mutually exclusive. Just because you have gone through the motion of the way to break someone’s knee over and over doesn’t mean that when it comes down to actually doing it that you are able to go through with it. This ethical struggle often causes trained individuals to pause before defending themselves. An assault is not the time to work out your ethics; spend time well beforehand thinking about what you could or couldn’t do in any given situation. Have a few go-to techniques which you feel comfortable relying on, and that you are aware that you could perform in the heat of the moment without the smallest hesitation. 
• Evolution – running away from a predator can often trigger the chase-reflex inside them. Part of the reason that you freeze is that this survival system helped our cave-dwelling grandparents survive some pretty frightening predators, and this attribute has been passed down to us. Your brain is on autopilot during a high-adrenaline condition, and the only thing it tells itself during a freeze is,”this has not gotten you killed yet, so keep doing it.” This sort of behavioural looping pattern is also seen during other phases of an attack, particularly if you continuously punch an attacker in the arm, by way of instance, though it is not doing anything to them. Again, your mind is simply saying,”this has not gotten you hurt yet, so just keep doing it.” Unfortunately, behavioural looping can also get you killed if you don’t break out of the loop and do something different.