PRIMAL THREAT : F9 is Your Minds Primal Threat Defence system that goes into full combat mode in the space of a few tenths of a second. This automated nervous system defence set up is made to keep you alive and protect you from the endless threats to your life on this marvellous and wonderful planet.
In learning what closes off the Power of Contemplative Intelligence we can look to the veritable dark side of the minds moons. Primal threat is the minds automatic response to perceived danger. It doesn’t have to be real to trigger, the thought of danger can be enough. It can go from merely sounding our own internal alarm bells right through to causing depression and even paralysis if triggered over time. The consequences can lead to divorce, addictions, loss of income, opportunities and relationships. We will also learn how these responses become ego-insurgents that can make you become hyper vigilant, controlling and even a narcissistic tyrant.
Your Minds Primal Threat Defence system F9 is CQ code for the nine instant responses to perceived danger from the Amygdala in your brain. It essentially short circuits the rest of the body when there’s trouble brewing and uses your nervous system to cascade signals through your body much like a mega- lightning storm. They are fight, flight, freeze, flop, fawn, fiddle, faint, friend and forget.
Fight, flight and freeze are the main ones we will be concerned with in the book. F4: Fighting, Fleeing, Feeding and Fornicating are not the primal drives that separate us from animals. Thankfully humans hold the imago dei or image of God attribute that makes us a spiritual mankind in search of meaning. It is this area of the mind that we ask Contemplative Intelligence to access.
It is important from the outset to be gentle with yourself as far as these responses go. You can’t always choose the response that is triggered at ten times the speed of sound. Also, if you had one response in one situation, it might not be triggered in another situation. People have been hard on themselves for fleeing instead of fighting in a traumatic situation. But what you need to know is that the responses are triggered from memory, almost instantly without getting your written consent first. They can raise the hair on the back of your neck, make you tremble, tighten your throat muscles to prepare for a scream or even make you faint and feel queasy to stop you in your tracks.
Your 9 PRIMAL THREAT RESPONSES : F9
F1 – Fight. A dominant response to a perceived threat. You will go down kicking and punching if you have to, to stay alive and safe.
F2 – Flight. Brain signals will get you to high tail it out of the area where the immediate danger is.
F3 – Freeze. A submissive response to a perceived threat. Your body can go stiff or limp, and you may even lose your voice as you freeze up to survive.
F4 – Flop. You do what you’re told to do on a floppy kind of autopilot.
F5 – Fawn. We people please with our full compliance to minimise the confrontation.
F6 – Fiddle. This reaction gets us negotiating and appeasing in no time.
F7 – Faint. Pass out and lose consciousness.
F8 – Friend. We can yell or call for a friend, or even befriend who or what is attacking us.
F9 – Forget. Deny the situation by avoiding, denying it exists. Or try to believe it is not really happening. This is one of the most hardcore of your Minds Primal Threat Defence system responses. It is the one that hinders people from starting a real life change in their lives.
THE STRESS RESPONSE RESEARCH
Harvard Health did tons of research on the fight or flight stress response, Amygdala Hijack response and discovered that its long term effects can be chronic physical and psychological illness. High blood pressure, artery-clogging deposits and brain changes cause depression, anxiety and more. They even found that it creates obesity by causing people to sleep and exercise less and eat more. None of this is very intelligent is it? Yet it is all progressively increasing in the world today.
The new research from Stanford with close on half a million participants has changed the world as we know it. It suggests that mindful exercises have been proven to increase peak performance and happiness beyond any shadow of a doubt. Not more knowledge. Not short-cuts or secrets. Just mindfulness. Brown’s university documented practice-specific effects that showed open-awareness and concentration had observably improved psychophysiological and neuro-cognitive effects on research participants. A wide area of observation showed mindfulness has a marked effect on many areas of human development. From broad subjects like spectrum disorders and general mental health right though to insomnia, stress, anxiety disorders, the vote was finally in. We as a species could self regulate our very own minds and bodies.
We discovered through researching Your Minds Primal Threat Defence system responses that we could record and observe this self regulation that could do the inconceivable. It could give us more life, better quality life and even a life we chose to live. Life was no longer to be observed as just random, accidental, chaotic or myopic. We were seen as the creators, the shape- shifters and the sculptors of how we thought, felt, acted and impacted the world. This new intelligence was above anything else we imagined before. We now could be intelligent about our very own intelligence. We could ‘executive direct’ the directors so to speak.
This excerpt is from the The Power of Contemplative Intelligence Book which is available in both ebook and audio book format here. Getting to understand your mind and how it works from its simplest most primitive parts right through to the highest functioning parts takes you from IQ, to EQ to CQ which is from body to heart to mind. When you understand Your Minds Primal Threat Defence system and how you operate you can begin to use meta-cognition or your contemplative intelligence (CQ) to make bit changes in your life, and then the world. That after all is the meaning of life.
