Last weekend, I was on a beautiful hike in the Spring Mountains, a perfect retreat from the Las Vegas summer heat—and a perfect brain break from the chaos of the WSOP. Hiking is one of my favorite parts of being in Vegas, and this tree-lined trail was about as good as it gets. Shady, no people, even some patches of snow still on the ground from winter. We had just made our way past a mountain crest and were back into the forest when I heard…a growl? I stopped. There it was again. To my right, unmistakable, low, and quite menacing.
Yes, the Spring Mountains are known for their remote beauty. But also: mountain lions. Lovely in photographs. Not so lovely when they are baring their teeth and telling you in no uncertain terms that you’ve encroached on their territory.
I believe the correct action at this point would have been to back away slowly, facing the mountain lion while making myself appear as big as possible and making as much noise as possible—read, not prey—while also getting out of its way—read, I’m not here to harm you. (And by I believe I mean, I looked this up when I got home to see what the hell I’m supposed to do in the not so unlikely chance this happens again.) Instead, I stopped dead in my tracks and said, “Uh oh.” I didn’t say, “Run!” Or “Mountain Lion!” Or “Danger!” Or any other number of helpful things that would have alerted everyone to what was going on. “Uh oh” is all my brain could muster. Survival of the fittest? I’d be doomed.
A bit of context. According to a 2015 population estimate model, there are some 3,400 mountain lions (also known as cougars, panthers, catamounts, or pumas) in Nevada, spread over the state’s mountain ranges. While I couldn’t locate an exact number for the Spring Mountains during my quick search, it was easy to find that numerous areas, including the popular Kyle Canyon, have had their share of sitings. Human-mountain lion interactions, though, are fairly rare—not least of all because the animals are most active between dusk and dawn, not your prime hiking hours. And when encounters do happen, they are usually benign. So, it’s understandable (ish?) that I did not immediately spring into action.
That said, a meeting with a predator who may well decide that you resemble a tasty snack is the literal origin of our brain’s primordial fight or flight response, the most basic, primitive, instinctual part of our body’s reaction system to stay alive and live to pass our genes to the next generation of primates. This is the encounter our brain has been programmed for from the earliest moments of our evolution as a species.
The term “fight or flight” was coined by Walter Cannon, a leading physiologist of the early twentieth century. In his 1915 book Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage, he described the primitive stress response that our bodies exhibit when faced with, yup, a predator. Man meets beast is the actual origin of the phrase.
Today, we have a much better understanding of what actually takes place when we encounter a threat, be it physical, like my mountain lion, or psychological, like an email from the boss saying please come to my office. (Cannon, incidentally, included psychological threats in his initial theory.) The moment we become aware of the danger, consciously or not, our amygdala (the brain’s emotional center) interprets whatever sights and sounds triggered the initial response and alerts the hypothalamus (a relay center that can then communicate with our autonomic, or automatic, nervous system) that the body needs to prepare for action: we get ready to face the foe or get the hell outta there. Or, in my case, say, ‘uh oh.’
The sympathetic nervous system then releases epinephrine, or adrenaline. Our heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, and breathing rate all go up. Glucose floods our body to give us energy for whatever we may need to do. And if the threat doesn’t pass, the HPA axis (or the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, responsible for regulating the stress response) kicks in to maintain our high alert energy state, releasing cortisol (our stress hormone).
So what do we do next? It depends. There are our two old friends, fight and flight. But there are also two other possibilities: freeze, or go completely still and hope the danger passes, or fawn, or try to please the threat so that it won’t hurt you (fine in psychological stress situations, slightly more dubious if you’re trying to ingratiate yourself to a mountain lion).
My initial uh oh seems to be closest to the freezing variety—though, to be fair, when animals freeze, they freeze. As in, they go completely still. Slow their breathing. Sometimes play dead. I…didn’t do that. If we’re being honest, I completely failed the survival test had the mountain lion wanted to do anything but warn us off.
But if we fudge things a bit and assume I did freeze, as it turns out, that may not be as horrible of an initial reaction as I thought it was. For a long time, freezing was seen as passive. As a decision to not do anything and hope for the best. Wait things out and cross your fingers, or hooves, that the threat passes and leaves you be. But more recent work suggests that it’s anything but. Freezing is actually a moment when we actively assess the danger and figure out the optimal response. The central nervous system, autonomics nervous system, and sensory-somatic nervous system all work together to give us a chance to pause and figure out what to do for a fraction of a second before we leap into action: motion is restricted, heart and breathing rate are lowered, and cognition is enhanced. We think more clearly, see more sharply, and take in the entirety of the situation before deciding how to act. The proverbial deer in headlights may not be simply stunned. It may be doing a complex calculus of its optimal course of action for survival.
If you think about it, that’s actually incredibly smart decision making. When we immediately leap into action without taking a beat to figure out what’s going on, we often end up doing the wrong thing—or mis-assessing a potentially threatening situation entirely. We default to thinking something is threatening instead of taking a beat to think more clearly. And, yes, sure, over thousands of years, quick action was key to survival. But the animals that have the immediate freeze response also survived. They froze—and then they fought if they needed to. Fled if they needed to. Or resumed grazing if it was a false alarm. This all takes fractions of a moment. And in the modern era, it may be more necessary than ever.
Because of the intimate connection between mind and body, our body throws out inappropriate stress responses all the time to non-threats that appear as psychological threats – or to perceived physical threats that really aren’t. A moment of pause, of critical reflection, may well save us from making consequential mistakes.
And if our body starts racing while our mind realizes that survival is not actually at stake? This is where techniques that enhance self-awareness and self-regulation are key. Breath work. Meditation. Centering routines that remind you that the stresses of modern life are not the existential threats of the primordial world.
I need those reminders often. After all, who in the poker world hasn’t felt the need to calm some nerves during a mad bluff. And who in the writing, journalism, and speaking worlds hasn’t felt the rush of dread before a big piece hits or you hit the stage in front of a big audience. And so I do it all. I meditate. I do yoga. I practice mindfulness.
Last weekend? That practice may have backfired a bit. Because who am I kidding: I’m not an animal whose freezing response was the perfect calibration to the situation. I was just someone caught between my now-normal calming response to psychological stress and an actual threat that needed a different kind of instant response. I had to remind my body that this was an actual predator. The evolutionary origin of my body’s stress response. Not a deadline or a big speech or a high stakes bluff at the poker table. And then, I fled. Belatedly, but oh so quickly.
I’ll still go hiking, of course. And I hope that those hikes will go more smoothly—and that my decision making will have been calibrated just a tad better if I ever meet another predator in my path (and here’s hoping I don’t). And if it hasn’t…uh oh.