Susan Britton explains how stress triggers freeze, then flock. When something upsets you, you pause to assess danger across your life, then seek trusted people who calm your nervous system. Choosing the right people to turn to matters: they help restore clear thinking instead of fight-or-flight escalation.
We're all familiar with fight and flight. We know that that causes us to kind of lose some of our smart part of our thinking and our relational skills when we're in that space, and yet it's a very natural biological reaction. What is also a very natural biological reaction is something we don't hear quite as much about, and that is the freeze and the flock. Often people think, "Oh, I got a red zone moment. Something came across my desk that I wasn't expecting, or someone said something and it really upset me," and we think, "Well, we just go straight to fight-flight." Interestingly, where we first actually go is to freeze. We pause, we think about what just happened there, and we evaluate very quickly, "Am I safe? Is my reputation safe?" Are my finances safe? Is my schedule safe? Is my identity safe? All of these things we just pause for a moment, and that's that freeze response, and that's actually kind of a good thing because it makes us really focus in on what is happening and what do I need to do about it to be able to feel safe. So the next place that we often go before just red zone fight-flight is is to the flock state. So flock means— what it means basically that we move towards people. So when we have some sort of a surprise happening in our world, we move towards other people after we've stopped to evaluate in that freeze state. We flock towards the people that we either feel safest with or that might be closest to us. So think about it. If you got some surprising news or you were disappointed or you were hurt about something, You'll pause for a moment, think about what's happening, and then usually you'll think about, who do I need to talk to? Who do I feel safe with? Or who do I want to go BMW to, bitch, moan, and whine to about what just happened? And that's a natural thing because when we move towards other people, now we have the ability to socially sort of regulate our physiology. People can help calm us down, and in some cases The people that we choose to flock with might also get us a little more riled up. So the point in all of this message is to think about that the freeze-flock response before we get into a full-blown fight-flight is an important process in that whole physiological cycle when we get into the red zone. So give some consideration to if you're going to be flocking, think about who do I want to flock with? Who are the people that will be most able to help restore my body to regulate into a state where I feel I feel alert, and I can bring myself back into that state where I'm going to have full cognitive prefrontal cortex functioning back in line so that I can handle the situation in the way that is going to be the most strategic, the most relational, and the smartest. So I hope you are surrounded by lots of wonderful people that can help you be your best when you are in that flock state.
Susan’s ICF Educator Award | The Heart Behind the Impact Katy Montgomery, PCC
