In a new article, published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, researchers offer a detailed framework of the "defense cascade," a five-step series showing different types of fear/defense responses.
Although both humans and animals react to fear in similar ways, animals are able to return to their normal mode of functioning once the danger has passed.
However, "Humans often are not, and they may find themselves locked into the same, recurring pattern of response tied in with the original danger or trauma," said researcher Dr. Kasia Kozlowska, a child and adolescent psychiatrist from the Children's Hospital at Westmead, Australia.
Understanding the steps of the defense cascade may lead to better treatments for patients dealing with these persistent aftereffects of trauma.
In the study, the researchers review the characteristics and neurobehavioral basis of the defense cascade, "a continuum of innate, hard-wired, automatically activated defensive behaviors" in response to threats. In humans as in animals, the cascade occurs in a series of the following five steps:
- arousal: muscles tense, breathing, and heart rate increase as the body prepares for action;
- fight or flight: active defense response for dealing with threat;
- freezing: a fight-or-flight response put on hold;
- tonic immobility: inability to move or call out; shut down in the face of fear. A variation is collapsed immobility, with loss of muscle tone and changes in consciousness. Tonic and collapsed immobility are "responses to inescapable threat or strategies of last resort;"
- quiescent immobility: after the threat or danger has passed, a state of quiescence that promotes rest and healing.
Recognizing and understanding these reactions enables clinicians to develop treatments "to manage the mind-body states that are the human expression of the defense cascade."
Clinicians can offer the patient targeted interventions designed to decrease arousal, target processing of traumatic memories, and manage mind-body states reflecting each step of the cascade.
Also, simply understanding the biological basis of the defense responses can help alleviate guilt or other negative emotional reactions experienced by some trauma victims.
The researchers believe that their framework can help mental health professionals, including those working with clients in the military or law enforcement or assisting victims of sexual abuse, to understand the responses that make up the defense cascade.
PSYCHOLOGY - 101
If you start with a cage containing five monkeys, and inside the cage hang a banana on a string from the top, and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray ALL the monkeys with cold water.
After a while another monkey makes an attempt with same result -- ALL the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now, put the cold water away.
Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new monkey. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, ALL of the other monkeys beat the Monkey Crap out of him.
After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new monkey.
The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment -- with enthusiasm -- because he is now part of the "team."
Then, replace a third original monkey with a new monkey, followed by the fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked.
Now, the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, not one of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana.
Why, you ask? Because in their minds, that is the way it has always been!
This, my friends, is how today's House and Senate, and the Canadian Parliament operate; and this is why, from time to time: ALL of the monkeys need to be REPLACED AT THE SAME TIME!
This is really needed in Canada in all forms of Government!!!!!!
DISCLAIMER: This is meant as no disrespect to monkeys.