The fight-or-flight response is our body's automatic and ancient response to perceived threats or danger. This innate physiological response in animals and humans prepares us to either confront a threat (fight) or flee from it (flight). This mechanism, often referred to as entering fight-or-flight mode, likely played a critical role in our survival.

At the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards, I saw an astonishing photo of a tiger surprising workers in a field (Tiger Run by Nejib Ahmed). Everyone is in flight mode except one man, much braver than me, who perhaps through instinct has stood to fight, staring down the approaching tiger with a long stick. The photo is captivating in its drama and struck me as a perfect fight-or-flight example in action. Thankfully, no one—including the tiger—was hurt in this instance.

The adrenalin that can flood our bodies during such moments may sometimes give us strength to do what we didn't expect, surprising ourselves with what we are capable of—Nicola Morgan, when discussing the amazing teenage brain, gives an example of her leaping a 5ft fence and looking back with amazement. Sudden strength or speed like this is a well-known fight-or-flight symptom.

The fight-or-flight response is linked to theories about how different parts of the brain developed during our evolution. Modern research has corrected some aspects of this idea, but the basic concept remains.

The most primitive parts of the brain—those we may share with, say, dinosaurs—are responsible for automatic behaviours like protecting territory, aggression, fear and fending off danger. This is often referred to as the reptilian brain or lizard brain. These brain areas are key to our survival instincts and play a critical role in activating fight-or-flight mode.

Years of evolution since then have given us brain structures like the limbic system, which is responsible for our emotions and social behaviours. The amygdala, part of the limbic system, is especially important in triggering fear and the fight-or-flight response.

Later, the neocortex evolved, enabling humans to assess threats rationally, solve problems, and make decisions—giving us more control over how we respond to fear or anxiety.

The response, also illustrated by the snake rearing up in the sketch, is a fallback to our oldest instincts from the oldest parts of our brain when faced with a threat, so the theory goes.

Fight-or-flight psychology, coined by physiologist Walter Cannon in 1915, is only part of a broader spectrum of acute stress responses. A more accurate sequence we experience may be freeze, flight, fight, or fright.

Freeze: Our immediate reaction to danger might be to "stop, look, listen," remaining hyper-vigilant while we assess the threat, and perhaps hope by not moving, the dinosaur won't spot us.

Flight: We may flee the situation to safety.

Fight: If escape isn't possible, we might fight back, as shown by the brave individual in the tiger photo.

Fright: This might include panic and immobility, playing dead in case a predator decides we're not worth eating after all.

As you see, the updated list continues with excellent alliteration, which no doubt helped make the idea sticky in the first place (other proposals add fawn, faint, flock and more).

While the tiger scenario shows our ancient brain instincts at work, most modern-day situations don't involve life-or-death threats. However, we may still enter fight-or-flight mode during stressful, anxiety-inducing moments, such as public speaking, a challenging work interaction, or a difficult conversation.

In these cases, our age-old reactions may not serve us well. The same ancient brain that would help us survive a predator may now cause us to avoid daunting tasks. Whether it's a work presentation, a cold sales call, or confronting a personal issue, we may feel the urge to retreat from the action and get a snack from the kitchen instead.

When our ancient instincts—so finely tuned for survival—are no longer serving us in modern situations, it's helpful to pause and let our higher-order thinking take the lead. Techniques like box breathing or meditation help calm the body and mind, allowing us to move beyond fear and resistance. By doing so, we can overcome the automatic urge to "fight or flight," or even freeze or fright, and instead respond with clarity, control, and confidence.

Don't make important decisions on an empty stomach

See Big Ideas Little Pictures for Melissa Dahl's Awkwardness Vortex and the technique of reframing anxiety as excitement

Fight or Flight

To feel great joy we have to be ready to feel vulnerable. I found this counterintuitive. As Brené Brown shares, if we can't tolerate joy, if we're not open to being vulnerable, we can find ourselves dress-rehearsing tragedy — when things are at their best we might be telling ourselves that it won't last, we don't deserve it, something will go wrong. An antidote to this she says is to practise gratitude. Be thankful and appreciative of what we have.

For a lightweight intro to some of Brené Brown's work you could do worse than spend an hour watching The Call to Courage on Netflix.

Also see: Hope and Listening with passion

Joy and vulnerability

Climate anxiety is the background stress and dread caused by thinking about the state of the climate of the planet and where it's going.

While talking on a walk with our 9-year-old, he suddenly said, "Well, what does it matter anyway? We've messed up our planet and it's filling up with plastic." This is a mighty burden to bear for a 9-year old. With increased awareness and education across society, climate anxiety is real.

One good thing, however, is that one way to alleviate climate anxiety is to be taking action, and fortunately action is also what the planet needs, too.

One small action I take is a commitment to plant 5 trees each month with Eden: People+Planet for every person who supports me on Patreon at any financial level. A small contribution could also see you plant 60 trees a year. Together, I think we can make a difference.

Support me on Patreon and plant trees too.

Climate anxiety

There are both constructive and unproductive ways to argue. One classic unproductive style is what Philippa Perry, in The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, calls fact tennis. With fact tennis, the goal can seem more like scoring points over your opponent rather than actually finding a workable solution — facts are hit back and forth until one person wins when the other has no more reasons left to counter with. But of course the argument isn't resolved and the result is a hollow victory and a still frustrated loser.

For a more productive argument we can reframe from winning to understanding — we can seek to share how we feel about it, and to understand how the other person feels about the conflict and their point of view, and take that into consideration. When we have a greater understanding we can move forward together to find a workable solution. As Philippa explains "Finding out about differences and working through them is about understanding and compromise, not about winning."

Fact tennis

John Gottman and colleagues identified what he calls the four horsemen of the apocalypse for relationships. They are called this as, left unchecked, they can spell the death knell to a once healthy relationship. In fact, they found that by watching just 3 mins of a conflict conversation between a couple they could predict whether they would still be together years later with over 90% accuracy.

Criticism: framing problems as the partner's defect

Defensiveness: counterattacking, whining, being the innocent victim

Contempt: talking down from a position of superiority, insults, eye-rolling, name-calling — the most dangerous of all

Stonewalling: withdrawing from the conflict, refusing to engage

In my first draft of this sketch I left it at that, but it felt a bit negative to leave it hanging on everything we do that's wrong and harmful. Fortunately, there are antidotes to the four horsemen, the traits they saw the masters at relationships use instead. The Gottman Institute explains the four horsemen and their antidotes in more detail.

Watch John Gottman explain the four horsemen in his own words.

The 4 horsemen of relationship apocalypse

That satisfying, superior, and slightly sinful feeling you get when you see the police pull over the aggressive driver who just sped past you? That’s Schadenfreude.

Schadenfreude is the pleasure we take in someone else's misfortune. The word is a loanword from German, combining Schaden (damage, harm, or hurt) and Freude (joy or happiness).

Schadenfreude follows the same linguistic pattern as Vorfreude, which means anticipatory joy—the excitement we feel in anticipation of something positive.

At first glance, taking pleasure in someone else's hardship might seem unkind or even morally dubious. Is it a character flaw? Am I an evil person? Yet, on a little more reflection, we discover that Schadenfreude escapes few of us and is both commonplace and revealing about ourselves.

I hadn't thought much of Schadenfreude before reading some excerpts from Tiffany Watt Smith's book Schadenfreude. She makes a compelling case for examining the moments when we feel superior at another's expense as a small window into ourselves.

The moments we feel Schadenfreude—whether small or significant—often reflect our personal insecurities, values, or sense of justice. As Nietzsche described, Schadenfreude can be "the revenge of the impotent," emerging from feelings of powerlessness or envy.

A boost to self-esteem: When a colleague doesn't get a promotion, a little twinge of joy might reveal your jealousy of their situation or a deep-down resentment of unfairness.

Justice served: If the person who pushed in front of you in line drops their ice cream right after buying it, your satisfaction might be a sense of justice and equity for obeying the rules when they didn't.

A window into our values: Schadenfreude can highlight what matters to us, whether it's fairness, competition, or maintaining a sense of order.

Understanding these moments doesn't make the feeling disappear, but it can help us use Schadenfreude as an opportunity for self-reflection.

Schadenfreude in Films and Stories: The Villain's Comeuppance

At first, I thought that, like a Buddhist monk, I might rise above Schadenfreude and not let my weakness affect me. Yet, as we discussed it in our podcast on Schadenfreude, we realised that it's a common theme through so many Western stories and films.

An almost universal theme for films involving good guys and bad guys is the eventual comeuppance, or reckoning, for the evil protagonist. In other words, the bad guys tend to lose and suffer in a nasty way. You know, things like getting pushed out of an airlock, having to walk the plank themselves, or being bitten by their deadly pets. Consider James Bond saying "shocking" as the villain he's been battling falls onto electric lines.

Much the same as a mob may have felt when bringing a criminal to justice, typically, we don't pity the bad guy. Often, the writer intends the bad guy's nasty end and the good guy's triumph against adversity to be the most satisfying part of the film—Schadenfreude at work.

Schadenfreude is alive and well, in fact, practically encouraged in sports. In some ways, Schadenfreude is what many sports fans enjoy about sports.

Imagine if the winning fans always shook hands with the losing fans, saying, "Jolly well played, you were very unlucky," and the losers said, "You were just too good for us today; good luck to you." Much of the rivalry that so many enjoy in sports would be lost.

I know I've felt Schadenfreude when a player I dislike misses a penalty they didn't deserve—even when they're not playing against my team. It feels right, and it's hard not to feel satisfied. In fact, it feels good.

I also learned that football fans can feel greater joy when their biggest rivals lose than when their teams win.

Now, perhaps the world of sport would be a better place schadenfreude-free, but I can't see it happening any time soon.

While I can't wholly evade Schadenfreude, I aim to avoid its strong feelings. It makes no difference to me if a rude person later has a bad day. I should focus on what I can control and how I react to situations.

When someone is mean, it's better if they come to understand a little how their actions impact others than if they have a terrible time. Having a miserable time may cause them to reflect on their actions and be more considerate in future. Or, more likely, it will cause them to be bitter and have no change at all.

But when Schadenfreude strikes me, it's now an interesting opportunity for reflection. What does this feeling reveal about my values, and how can I use this insight to improve myself? Perhaps give it a try.

For a mini-intro to the intrigues of Schadenfreude, try Tiffany Watt Smith's TED Ideas article: Do you secretly feel good when others stumble? 5 ways to make peace with this very human emotion.

I revised this sketch for the book Big Ideas Little Pictures.

If you found Schadenfreude intriguing, you might enjoy these related concepts:

Vorfreude: The pleasure of anticipation—like the joy of looking forward to a holiday.

Fading Affect Bias: Why we tend to remember negative experiences less vividly than positive ones.

Emotional Hot Potato: How negative emotions can spread like a game of hot potato.

Fact Tennis: The competitive back-and-forth exchange of facts in conversations.

Self-serving Bias: Our tendency to attribute successes to our character and failures to external factors.

Schadenfreude

I hadn’t given much thought to hope, beyond it being a nice feeling to have, until I heard of CR Snyder’s cognitive model for hope which shed a new light on it for me. He proposed a model of hope where (paraphrasing) an individual may be hopeful if they have:

Goals they desire. If you don’t or can’t picture any future state you’d like then you won’t have a lot of hope.

Pathways. You need to see some ways that you may make step-by-step progress towards a goal.

Willpower or agency. You need to be motivated and believe that you have the ability to succeed at your goal.

With all of these you can imagine feeling hopeful. Without any one of them and you probably won’t so much.

The mountain is the Ogre, a wholly impossible looking peak scaled by Doug Scott and others for which I would have had zero hope to climb (no pathways, no willpower) and yet they remarkably did.

HT once again to Brené Brown in Dare to Lead.

Hope

When I look back at the LEGO sets of my youth compared to the LEGO sets of today, a few things are striking. Today’s is much cooler: the colours are better, the pieces are more interesting, and the sets are more clever (they also have a lot more weapons*). And the sets have their own characters: they’re not just nameless people in characterless towns—every set is full of people with names, expressions, backstories, personalities and goals. My observation, ahem, through our children, is that this makes it way more interesting to play with. It’s the characters and the story that make them so good now. A good part of that I think is also the shift in quality of expressions on the faces.

I am kind of in awe of LEGO faces. The number and variety and subtlety of expressions it’s possible to make with just a few small changes to a few small lines on a face I find truly astounding. This sketchplanation shows just a tiny bit of the variety from the LEGO Movies. Respect to the artists.

*5% of Lego boxes sold in 2001 contained Lego weapons. In 2014 that was 30% according to Bartneck C, Min Ser Q, Moltchanova E, Smithies J, Harrington E (2016) Have LEGO Products Become More Violent? PLoS ONE 11(5): e0155401.

LEGO faces

Fading affect bias is the name given to the fact that the intensity of emotion, or the affect, of our bad memories seems to fade faster than for our good memories.

This means that, say, our happy memories keep us happier for longer, and our bad memories don’t affect us as much in the future. It’s called the fading affect bias, as the fading is biased more strongly for negative memories.

This is handy as it naturally gives us a more positive disposition. So, for instance, after some time has passed, we may find we remember the good parts of a holiday — like an amazing beach — more clearly than the bad — like the mosquitoes at the beach. And thinking about the good parts keeps making us happy longer than thinking about the bad parts might make us sad. Brilliant!

This is a different use of affect than the common affect/effect confusion.

Fading affect bias

The boss yells at the employee, the employee yells at their spouse, the spouse yells at the child, the child yells at their younger sibling, the sibling yells at the dog, and the dog pees on the rug. This scene is an excellent example of Emotional Hot Potato, where the "hot potato" emotion makes its painful way through each family member.

Bad moods can be contagious, as can anger and anxiety. Our innate empathy can naturally transfer a bad mood from a coworker to ourselves.

Emotional hot potato can also be a form of projection where we attempt to rid ourselves of an unpleasant emotion by transferring it or attributing it to others. By handling the hot potato of the anger of a teenage child, for example, the parent may find themselves seething while the child feels better having passed on the potato. Ouch!

I learned the term from Lawrence Cohen in Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence,  Ballantine Books, 2012.

This sketch features in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

Don't compare your front of house with others' back of house

Emotional hot potato

This is an adapted version of the Kubler-Ross model for the stages of grief from her work with terminally ill patients. I should caveat that this is overly simplified in several respects and people don’t necessarily go through all these stages, nor necessarily in this order. Though, when you look at it, it’s hard not to have the feeling that it could provide some value in understanding that complex and difficult situation. I find it interesting as a more generally applicable model of how people deal with change. I think it’s possible to relate to some of these stages at some points in life which have experienced major change.

Stages of grief

This is Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. I like it because it tries to make sense out of the range of emotions we have by relating his 8 primary emotions to related ones where two primary emotions meet. For example, remorse is like feeling both disgust and sadness; awe is surprise and fear.

On opposite sides of the wheel are opposite emotions eg, Joy >< Sadness

Other versions of his framework go 3D and map the intensity of emotions as well, for example, rage > anger > annoyance, or ecstasy > joy > serenity.

Emotions sketches