#threat response

[faithfromanewperspective]

I feel like we really need to draw the connection between masking and dissociation. the way that masking is a result of the conscious or unconscious feeling of ‘I don’t feel safe to be myself around these people’ that leads to mimicking their behaviour to fit in. typically associated with lower supports needs in autism, I wonder if it also could be associated with a higher sensitivity to nervous system signals of unsafety and threat (as in the pda profile, though likely not exclusive to it).

dissociation is a trickier one to pin down because it’s almost always a product of trauma (and burnout which is a trauma in of itself). it’s ‘this situation is not safe let’s channel a more functional version of me to survive it and ignore the rest of me’ again and again and again for years on end, often starting during childhood, impacting things like memory and ability to access your own emotions, in more severe cases different versions of you not integrating into one whole person.

you can see how similar this is to masking. If you have to mask again and again for years because it doesn’t feel safe (which might not be due to abuse or the like, could be because of your nervous system finding a lot more things unsafe and not being accommodated) and just occasionally ‘switch’ to the version of you that’s been bottling everything up for years unintentionally and melt down and let it all out (which isn’t going to feel like you! it’s going to feel like someone else!) you can see the parallels I’m drawing here. and for many neurodivergent folk this is a regular occurrence. for decades, and even by the time someone figures out what’s going on—it’s gonna take a lot longer to rewrite those brain pathways.

[starlight-reptiles]

The pagoats is shedding under his chin and on his head. If you can see, the skin under his chin is always black, but his scales cover it. When puffing out, he displays this flexible skin so that the black is more visible.

[pebblegalaxy]

Real-Time Network and Device Control: The Ultimate Guide to Responding to Threats

Introduction:In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses and individuals are at constant risk of cyber threats. These threats can range from simple malware infections to sophisticated cyber-attacks, which can cause significant damage to your network, devices, and even your reputation. Therefore, it’s crucial to take proactive measures to mitigate these threats and ensure your network and…

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[tenth-sentence]

We know now that there is another possible response to threat, which our scans aren't yet capable of measuring.

"The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma" - Bessel van der Kolk

[fahyconsulting]

The Brain, Threat Responses, and Blogging.

Patricia K. Fahy, MD

  We are pulling ourselves onto a new stage with these first blogs.  Lynn and I are sitting with Cory at a round table, three laptops open, all of us with eyes locked on the icons and sample feeds on this freshly minted Tumblr site.  Cory is facile with this stuff, tweets and cookies and multiple tabs and html. She explains how it will work and what we need to do to put our ideas “out there” in a public way.

    I think about SCARF.  An acronym cooked up by neuroscientist David Rock to identify the five social motivators.   Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness.  We humans slide up and down a continuum that runs from “threat” to “reward” depending on whether these SCARF elements are threatened or safeguarded.  Any encounter with another human may cause subtle or seismic shifts to our SCARF balance.  When teaching leadership courses I’ve used this quote (source unknown) to emphasize how the use of sarcasm, particularly for leaders, is a terrible idea:

“The half-life of a public insult is 20 years.”

This idea of the persistence of an insult is corroborated by David Rock.  He says that threats to our status (the “S” of SCARF) cause the    same   part of the brain to “light up” in functional MRI (fMRI) scans as physical pain.  The difference is—when you reflect back on physical pain that part of your brain doesn’t light up again.  When you reflect back on a status threat the pain site lights up—your brain experiences the threat, and the pain, again.

Is this why I’ve been slow to blog?  My approach to writing has been either impromptu or painstaking. I care about the written word.  The casualness of a blog and yet its e-permanence puts it in a confusing category (threatening my Certainty) regarding how much effort is warranted.  Also--whether read by no one, read and not commented on    (ignored!), or read and snorted at—the potential for a Status threat is there. The negative end of the social motivation spectrum—the threat—is much more powerful than the reward end. We humans are sensitive to threat and motivated to avoid it to a much greater degree than we are motivated toward a reward.  We are social critters.  So whether I am asserting an opinion at a board meeting, wading into an unknown social situation, or blogging—to whatever degree needed I gird my sensitive neocortex.  

[thejunglenook]

Monkeys can identify human hunters

Excerpts from Article:

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, all four species [of woolly monkey] are hunted for food.

To understand how the monkeys responded to this threat, researchers from Imperial College, London, UK travelled to Ecuador to study the behaviour of Poeppig's woolly monkey.

"We worked with wild woolly monkeys [and] presented them with a person behaving as a hunter, gatherer or researcher at two sites with differing hunting pressure," explained PhD student Sarah Papworth, co-author of the paper.

Gatherers are local people that collect food and materials close to settlements and researchers are academics studying the forest and the animals living within it.

"After seeing a hunter, woolly monkeys are quieter, move less and are less visible than when seeing non-hunters.

Comparing the reactions of monkeys in an area associated with high levels of hunting and a part of the forest where monkeys were under lower hunting pressures, Ms Papworth made a further discovery.

Monkeys in the higher risk area were quiet when gatherers were nearby. But they made more vocalisations when researchers were present whereas monkeys in "safer" areas hid from researchers and not gatherers.

Ms Papworth suggested that, due to their distance from human settlements, this could be because the monkeys were unfamiliar with gatherers.

The findings suggest monkeys' anti-predator behaviour is more flexible than previously thought. Published:  Papworth S, Milner-Gulland EJ, Slocombe K (2013) Hunted Woolly Monkeys (Lagothrix poeppigii) Show Threat-Sensitive Responses to Human Presence. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62000. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062000 ********** Most anyone who has worked with primates could tell you that they observe us just as much as we observe them. At least that's what it feels like from my experience.