imaginary tigers
Imagine this, you’re walking through the jungle.
Life is good, you’re outside in the fresh air, snacking on the berries you just found.
When suddenly…
Tiger!
image of tiger stalking towards the camera. Image by alexmatamata / Getty Images
One part of your brain, called the sympathetic nervous system, deploys a very specific emergency response software program that helps the body quickly get ready to react to the danger.
This program releases adrenaline and cortisol through the body, which speeds up your breathing and heart rate, narrows your vision, and diverts blood from your digestion to your extremities, among other things. The body is now ready for anything.
Then your brain has to decide the best course of action to take.
This happens really fast, and is based partly on how you were built when you came into the world, and partly on all your past experiences. What worked in the past when you came across a tiger? What didn’t work? Like a super fast computer, your brain sorts through the past data and then picks a response strategy.
There are 4 strategies that people use to relate to this tiger.
You have likely heard these terms before: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn:
Fight: I am going to punch this tiger.
Flight: I am going to run away from this tiger.
Freeze: I am going to play dead so this tiger will lose interest in me and go away.
Fawn: I see this tiger, I don’t want this tiger to eat me, so I am going to feed this tiger something else, so maybe the tiger will go away.
In the beginning, there really was a tiger.
As a little person, the world is a big place, and you can’t survive on your own. You have to keep the adults around you engaged with you, or you die. They were your food, shelter, and survival. When something happened that was painful, confusing, or scary, (the equivalent of seeing a tiger in your environment), your nervous system automatically went into this emergency program, because that is how we are built, and this is always the first program that deploys.
Then you watched the adults around you for what to do next.
You watched how they responded to the tiger, and you watched how your adults reacted to you reacting to that tiger. Your brain figured out which tigers (and which of your reactions to tigers) brought you closer to your adults, and which ones brought you into aloneness. Your experiences encode the emergency pathways that you now use as an adult.
You also watched those adults to learn how to bring your nervous system out of that emergency program after the tiger goes away.
Humans do this cool thing called co-regulation, where unsettled nervous systems can learn those regulation skills from a more settled nervous system that is closeby. As we are growing, this learning happens automatically, just by being in close proximity to our adults. Our little bodies track the energy of those mature nervous systems, and we mimic them.
The tricky part is that as an adult in today’s world, some of us see tigers everywhere.
They are the tasks, relationships, or information we struggle with, that are painful, or we have some confusion around, and they are triggering the emergency response program, and we get stuck there. I call these IMAGINARY TIGERS. Like the news, that deadline you are striving to reach, the groceries and household chores that never end, the family members that…well, you know which family members… whenever you say “This thing stresses me out!” and it’s not something in your immediate sphere of influence, that is you, seeing an imaginary tiger, and your body is reacting as if it were a real tiger.
When we live in a world of imaginary tigers, it takes a toll on our bodies.
This program is meant to be for emergencies only. It is not meant for everyday life. If we are trying to live here all the time, this program starts to burn us out. Our digestion suffers, our adrenal glands fatigue, you might have decreased peripheral vision, just to name a few things that might start to break down. For those things that are important, but bigger (like everything on the news), those require a different management strategy that doesn’t come from your sympathetic nervous system.
The brain is very adaptable and if you didn’t learn these skills as you were growing up, then you CAN learn them as an adult.
There are all sorts of places to learn these skills, from lots of different kinds of teachers. Exercise classes, therapy offices, online courses, in person workshops, good friends, etc, are all places you can practice building these nervous system regulation skills.
Let’s practice together!
Notice the next time the signals from your body tell you there is a tiger around (and there isn’t an actual dangerous thing happening). Slow down for just a second if you can. Intentionally take a slow, deep breath. Keep your eyes open, either focusing on something in front of you, or try to see something in your peripheral vision.
Ask yourself, “Is this thing triggering this emergency response reaction in my body a real tiger, or is it a…”
image of kitten in a tiger costume by Getty Images
All the virtual imaginary tiger hugs-
jen mpt cst
PS TLDR: You can use your body’s signals to track where your imaginary tigers live, and you can learn how to regulate your nervous system even as an adult.
PPS Sorry if you are allergic to cats, hopefully virtual ones don't trigger any allergic reactions for you.
CTA?