How Physiological Control Techniques Work to Reduce Stress, Anxiety, Fear, and Anger

An article based on the work in Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to Threat has been submitted to various police journals in Australia, UK, and US for publication.

This is the conclusion to that article:

Understanding how techniques like controlled breathing and muscle relaxation work—via feedback loops that link physiology, cognition, and emotion—can help officers apply them with greater confidence and flexibility in the field. This knowledge transforms the technique from a rote drill into a tactical skill, one that can be used deliberately to maintain composure and performance in high-stress situations.

This is the About the Author section:

John Coles is the author of Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat and The Science Behind All Fighting Techniques, both currently under submission for publication. He has written 17 nationally published articles based on the content of those books. John also authored Jan de Jong: The Man, His School and His Jiu Jitsu System, and contributed to Going Global: A Primer for Australian Managers and Enterprises Wishing to Do Business Internationally. His writing on leadership has appeared in The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and leading professional blogs.

These techniques should be taught in all activities associated with preparing a person to engage in a violent encounter, sporting events, examinations of any sort, etc. An understanding of how they work leverages the performance of the techniques significantly.

Contact me for further information.

Fear and Fight - Synopsis

 I'm about to finish Fear and Fight and submit it to agents for publication. This is my first attempt at a synopsis that will accompany the submission:

Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat is a ground-breaking, interdisciplinary exploration of how humans and other animals respond to danger. Bridging evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, trauma studies, and lived experience, this book challenges conventional views of fear and trauma—particularly those entrenched in diagnostic frameworks like the DSM.

Drawing on a rich mix of personal insight, empirical research, clinical theory, and cultural analysis, the book traces the development of our instinctive survival responses—such as freezing, fleeing, and fighting—and examines how these are shaped, amplified, or overridden by learning, context, and socialisation. From the role of the amygdala in fast fear reactions to the deliberate cultivation of courage and hope in warfare, Fear and Fight offers a clear, accessible, and emotionally resonant narrative of what happens to mind and body under threat.

The book explains why fear sometimes emerges after the danger has passed, and why some people feel nothing in the moment of trauma—drawing on military training, domestic violence, and civilian experiences to explore how both natural and learned responses influence psychological outcomes. It challenges gendered assumptions about submission, highlights the strategic use of emotion in military contexts, and critiques the evolution of PTSD diagnosis, including the removal of DSM-IV’s Criterion A2.

Structured across multiple parts—including foundational chapters on fear responses, emotion and cognition, diagnostic categories, and applied theories in war, self-defence, and survival—the book culminates in a compelling argument: that understanding threat responses requires both biological insight and cultural literacy. Whether dissecting cinematic depictions of trauma, military stress training protocols, or real-world encounters with violence, Fear and Fight equips readers with a new lens through which to understand themselves and others.

Ultimately, this book is not only about what we fear—but how we survive.

What do you think?

Introduction: Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat

As I wrote in my previous post, I have completed I have completed the first complete draft of the book that I've been researching and writing for the past ten years: Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat.

I shared the Preface to Fear and Fight in the previous post. In this post, I share the introduction:

Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The same survival mechanisms that kept our forefathers alive can help keep us alive as well! However, those survival mechanisms that can help us can also work against us if we don’t understand and anticipate their presence.

—U.S. Army Field Manual 3-5.70: Survival

 Bruce Siddle is an internationally recognised authority on use-of-force training and the effects of ‘survival stress’ on combat performance. In Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge, Siddle (1995) refers to the well-known ‘fight-or-flight response’ as the ‘survival stress response’ (SSR), describing it as an automatic physiological reaction that prepares the body to either fight or flee when exposed to a threat. This reaction enhances strength, speed, endurance, and pain tolerance—traits that evolved to increase an individual’s chances of survival in life-threatening situations.

 Siddle (2005) explains that the SSR is primarily activated under two conditions: when an individual perceives an imminent deadly force threat and when there is minimal time to respond to that threat. He suggests that a person walking towards us with a knife from a distance of 500 yards (457 metres) is unlikely to activate our SSR, whereas being surprised by the same threat at a distance of 10 feet (3 metres) will almost certainly trigger it.

 I have faced a knife-wielding assailant while unarmed on two separate occasions, both of which involved the element of surprise and occurred at distances of less than 10 feet (3 metres). Yet, on both occasions, I did not experience a SSR reaction. The SSR was selected for in nature because it provided a survival advantage when one’s life was threatened. Where was my SSR when my life was threatened by a knife-wielding assailant in two situations that involved both a distance of less than 10 feet (3 metres) and the element of surprise?

 Siddle (2005) suggests that while the SSR was advantageous in our evolutionary past, it can interfere with modern survival skills such as close-quarter combat, firearms use, or evasive driving. He (Siddle 1995) refers to this as a ‘combat paradox’: the same response that once ensured our survival can now undermine it in specific combat scenarios. This raises an intriguing question: were my survival prospects if fact enhanced because I didn’t experience a SSR in these critical moments? Either way, the question remains—why didn’t I experience a SSR which is evolutionarily designed to promote an individual’s survival when my survival was directly threatened on two separate occasions? This book is the product of my search for answers to those questions.

 ‘Fight Activities’

The original intended audience for this book included individuals involved or interested in martial arts, self-defence, combat sports, security (such as security officers, bodyguards, and crowd controllers), law enforcement, and the military. But how can these diverse pursuits be referred to collectively?

 What they all share is a core focus: they train individuals to fight—for different purposes, certainly, but the ability to fight remains central. For this reason, this book refers to them collectively as ‘Fight Activities.’

 ‘Fight Activities’

The initial intended audience of this book was those engaged or interested in martial arts, self-defence, combat sports, security (security officer, security bodyguard, crowd controller), law enforcement, and the military. How can those activities be referred to collectively? To answer that question, we first need to ask what those activities have in common. Those activities teach trainees to fight, to fight for a variety of reasons but to fight nonetheless. For that reason, those activities will be referred to collectively in this book as ‘Fight Activities.’

 Fear and Fight

Our principal natural response to a threat is the emotion of fear—and the action tendency of fear is flight. Fight is not an action tendency of fear, despite what many suggest when referring to fight-or-flight and stress response concepts to explain our natural reaction to threats. Fight Activities teach people how to fight—for a variety of reasons, but to fight nonetheless. They provide ways and means to overcome fear in order to fight. These methods, combined with the learned fight behaviours they instil, form our learned response to a threat.

 This book explores both our natural response—driven by fear—and our learned response, focusing on the ways Fight Activities help us manage fear in order to fight. That’s why this book is titled: Fear and Fight.

 A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat

The subtitle of this book reflects a desire to deepen our understanding of our natural and learned responses to threats. The process that produced this understanding is explained by the work of Gary Klein in Seeing What Others Don’t (2013), where he discusses how insights can lead to more comprehensive and useful perspectives.

 Klein defines insight as an accurate and profound understanding, suggesting that it brings forth a new understanding that did not previously exist. This new understanding is better because it is more accurate, comprehensive, and useful than prior knowledge. Throughout this book, I aim to share insights that contribute to a new and better understanding of our natural and learned responses to threats.

 One of Klein’s paths to insight is curiosity, captured in the simple yet powerful question: ‘What’s going on here?’ This question serves as a catalyst for exploration, driving individuals to seek answers. For me, this journey began with my own ‘What’s going on here?’ moment—sparked by my lack of a fight-or-flight response during two life-threatening situations. That initial question led to answers, which in turn sparked more questions and deeper insights, ultimately shaping my understanding of how we respond to threats.

 Klein emphasises that insights transform our understanding and, in many ways, change who we are. They can alter our understanding by shifting the central beliefs in the story we use to make sense of events. This ‘new understanding can give us new ideas about the kinds of actions we can take; it can redirect our attention, changing what we see; it can alter the emotions we feel; and it can affect what we desire’ (Klein 2013, p. 148). This book aspires to facilitate such transformations for readers, encouraging a shift in how they understand, think, feel, and act in relation to our responses to threats.

 A Personal Perspective: Generalised Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks

What makes this exploration particularly unique is my diagnosis of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) with panic attacks, which offers me a distinctive insight into both our natural and learned responses to perceived threats. Living with GAD means that my brain often interprets harmless situations as threatening, triggering responses as though the danger were real. This allows me to experience firsthand the instinctive responses to perceived threats, with anxiety and fear being the principal reaction. At the same time, the treatment for GAD involves learning to manage these responses, closely mirroring the way military, law enforcement, and self-defence practitioners are trained to regulate fear in high-stress situations. This parallel between therapeutic interventions and combat training demonstrates how learned behaviours can modify our instinctive reactions. Through this personal lens, I have studied our responses from the inside out, gaining an intimate understanding of how we handle both real and imagined threats. My experience informs every chapter of this book, offering a unique perspective on the interplay between natural and learned responses to a threat.

 Structure of the Book

Many people refer to the fight-or-flight concept to explain our natural response to a threat. In Chapter Two, we will explore how this widely accepted concept is based on a limited and flawed understanding of human survival responses. However, an accurate understanding of fight-or-flight still forms the basis for a more comprehensive view of both our natural and learned responses to threats.

 Chapter Three shifts focus to stress, another widely cited concept for explaining our natural response to danger. Since stress theory is rooted in the fight-or-flight concept, it shares the same limitations and flaws. Furthermore, because stress theory emerged from medical and biological research emphasising its negative effects on health, it has skewed researchers’ understanding of how stress plays a role in our survival responses.

 As I sought an answer to why I did not experience a stress response when confronted by a knife-wielding assailant on two separate occasions, I discovered that stress can be understood as a process involving physiological, emotional, and behavioural components. While this did not explain my reaction, it pointed me toward a deeper exploration of the emotional aspect, which proved instrumental in developing a new and better understanding of threat responses.

 Chapter Four examines emotion. Emotion, for theorists, is more than just a feeling. It’s a multi-component response to significant threats and opportunities, evolved to give an individual a survival advantage. In this chapter, an emotion process model is presented that offers a more accurate, comprehensive, and useful way to understand threat responses. This model will be applied throughout the rest of the book to investigate our natural and learned responses to a threat.

 Fear and its close cousin, anxiety, are the focus of Chapter Five, followed by a critical analysis in Chapter Six: if fighting is instinctively tied to fear, why do Fight Activities teach methods for overcoming fear in order to fight?

 The chapters in Part II dissect the individual components of the emotion/survival process, initially focusing on fear, and explore how interventions by Fight Activities help individuals overcome fear to fight. Many of these interventions rely on reason to suppress the emotional response of fear. Chapter 14 delves into the separation of ‘passion and reason’ and its implications for self-defence and combat training.

 Part IV applies the theory developed in earlier chapters to real-world contexts, including military strategy and self-defence. These chapters serve as case studies, showcasing how understanding fear and learned behaviours can inform and improve practical applications in survival and combat settings.

 Finally, Part V transitions to the post-phase of violent encounters, focusing on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is explored in depth, applying the insights from this book to better understand the condition and its treatment, along with related disorders such as GAD. My own experience with GAD has provided a firsthand perspective on these mechanisms. In fact, it demonstrates that PTSD and GAD share many similarities, both as evolved survival mechanisms and in terms of their treatment.

 A Broader Audience

While this book began as an exploration for those involved in Fight Activities—martial artists, self-defence practitioners, law enforcement, and military personnel—it has grown to encompass a wider audience. The principles discussed have far-reaching applications, touching on how we all navigate fear, anxiety, and survival in both extreme and everyday situations. Whether confronting life’s unexpected challenges or simply standing up to talk in a meeting, this book offers valuable insights into mastering fear and emerging stronger. Ultimately, Fear and Fight is for anyone who faces anxiety and/or fear—whether in combat or in daily life—and seeks to gain a deeper understanding of both the natural and learned responses that guide us through these experiences.

Expanding Horizons: The Boundless Possibilities of Understanding Threat Responses

When I began exploring our natural and learned responses to threats, I had no idea just how far-reaching this journey would be. What started as an investigation into fight-or-flight and stress training for survival has grown into something much larger—a foundation that connects to multiple fields of study and areas of practical application.

As I near the completion of my book, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat, I’m starting to see the extraordinary possibilities that extend from this work. It’s not just about understanding fear or teaching self-defence; it’s about addressing core questions that affect how we live, learn, train, heal, and adapt in the face of adversity.

The Key Premise: Natural and Learned Responses to Threats

At its core, my book explores the ways in which humans respond to threats, both instinctively and through learned behaviours. It delves into the evolutionary roots of survival mechanisms and how these responses can be shaped, trained, and even transformed.

The insights I’ve developed are rooted in diverse disciplines, including psychology, physiology, military and law enforcement training, neuroscience, and self-defence. Whether it’s understanding the appraisal process during a threat or using stress training to regulate emotions, these ideas are designed to bridge the gap between theory and real-world application.

The Ripple Effect: Applications Beyond the Book

As I’ve worked through the chapters, I’ve realised that this understanding of threat responses is just the beginning. The possibilities for applying these insights are endless:

1. Anxiety Disorders and Mental Health

The connections between threat appraisal, emotional regulation, and stress training offer a new lens for understanding and treating anxiety disorders. This includes conditions like generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), panic attacks, and PTSD.

2. Women’s Self-Defence

By addressing the myths surrounding women’s ability to fight and defend themselves, this work provides a framework for self-defence training that goes beyond the physical. It emphasises the mental and emotional aspects of fighting, countering harmful stereotypes and empowering individuals.

3. Tactical Decision-Making

Insights from military and law enforcement stress training highlight the importance of preparing for high-stakes situations. This could revolutionise not only martial arts but also other fields requiring split-second decisions under pressure.

4. Martial Arts Pedagogy

Many traditional martial arts systems focus primarily on physical techniques. By integrating mental and emotional training, we could create a more holistic approach to teaching and learning combat skills.

5. Neuroscience and the Survival Process

Exploring the neurological basis of fear, courage, and resilience opens doors to understanding the brain’s role in threat responses. This could inform both training techniques and therapeutic interventions.

6. Fear and Resilience in Children

How do children learn to face fear and build resilience? This question connects to education, parenting, and youth development, offering valuable insights into nurturing emotional strength from a young age.

7. PTSD Treatment and Evolutionary Insights

The evolutionary perspective on PTSD suggests that our responses to trauma are not simply maladaptive but rooted in survival mechanisms. This understanding could lead to innovative treatment approaches that align with our biological and psychological realities.

8. Societal Responses to Perceived Threats

On a larger scale, understanding how individuals and groups respond to threats—both real and perceived—has implications for public policy, social psychology, and community resilience.

Beyond the Present: Future Projects and Collaborations

These possibilities inspire me to think beyond my current book. Could I write a follow-up focusing solely on anxiety disorders? Or create a manual for martial arts instructors to integrate stress training into their teaching? What about exploring fear and resilience in children or addressing societal fear responses in an increasingly complex world?

The work I’ve done so far has shown me that the understanding of threat responses isn’t just a niche topic; it’s a universal one. It touches on how we face challenges, how we grow, and how we connect with others.

An Invitation to Join the Conversation

As I reflect on these possibilities, I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Do you see applications of this work in your own field or life? Are there areas I haven’t considered?

This is just the beginning of a much larger conversation. Let’s explore it together.

Why do warriors feel fear only after the threat has passed?

Recently, there have been a number of posts on Facebook from martial arts authorities that have focused on explaining emotion in relation to threats or asking questions about emotions in relation to threats in order to invite comments. The book that I am currently working on, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat, is intended to deal with these issues in an authoritative way so I have decided to share some titbits from that book. This post concerns the issue of warriors only experiencing fear after a threat has passed.

Some of the following, including references, are taken from Fear and Fight and therefore the entire reference is not provided in this post.

Fear was selected for in nature because it conferred a survival advantage on an individual when their survival is threatened. Why then do warriors sometimes/often only experience fear after the threat has passed?

I regularly catch up with a friend who is a retired high-ranking police officer during which we often discuss material from my book. I once asked if he had experienced fear in a life-threatening situation in the line of duty. He didn't answer that question directly but instead asked a question of his own in relation to specific instances where his life was threatened in the line of duty but he didn't experience fear (overwhelming fear) until after the threat had passed. 'Why,' he asked, 'did I only experience fear which was selected for in nature because it conferred a survival advantage on an individual, after the threat had passed?' (or words to that effect).

Is this a common experience for warriors?

In a book that is promoted as representing a definitive collection of the most current theory, research, and practice in the area of combat and operational stress management (Combat Stress Injury: Theory, Research and Management, edited by C.E. Figley and W.P. Nash), William Nash, a former U.S. Navy psychologist who served in Iraq, provides the following description of warfighters’ combat action experience:

Before a planned combat action, most warfighters experience a period of uneasiness and agitation because of the unknowns they face and because, before the action begins, there is little they can do to actively master their stress. With the commencement of combat, however, the pre-action dread dissipates quickly, especially for veterans of combat. Most warriors then quickly get into a groove – a period of exceptionally low perceived stress, during which their thinking is clear, perceptions are sharp, and emotions are calm. The ‘in the groove’ period may last the duration of a combat action, if it isn’t too long or too overwhelmingly stressful. Once the action ends, however, perceived stress shoots back up as warfighters emerge from their emotional and physical numbness and review in their minds and perceive in their bodies all the dangers and horrors they may have experienced. The veteran warfighter quickly masters this rebound stress, however, and perceived stress returns to baseline. (2007a, 47)

Nash explains that many definitions for the word 'stress' has been offered but none has encompassed all the usages of the term even in the scientific community. I refer to this as 'the ambiguous concept of stress,' and as Hans Selye, the 'father' of the stress concept, famously said, 'Everybody knows what stress is, but nobody really knows.' In the case of the warfighters' combat action experience described above, stress is anxiety-fear.

The warfighters’ combat action experience can best be understood by dividing the experience into three temporal phases: before, during, and after a combat action experience. In emotion terms, the pre-event phase can be described in terms of anxiety (future anticipated threat) and the during-event phase in terms of fear (real or perceived imminent threat). In chapter four in Fear and Fight, we see that emotion is evolutionarily designed to promote homeostasis: ‘For example, running from a source of threat reduces the threat and tends to reestablish the condition that existed before the threat occurred’ (Plutchik 2001a, 120). The reestablishment of the condition that existed before the threat occurred describes the post phase of a threat event. This is our principal natural response to a threat, however, anxiety-fear-return to homeostasis phases do not describe the warfighters’ combat action experience as described by Nash above (although he did implicitly refer to the pre-event emotion of anxiety with his reference to uneasiness, agitation, and dread pre-action).

In terms of emotion phases, the principal natural response to a threat is anxiety-fear-no fear; the warfighters’ emotional response to a threat described above is anxiety-no fear (during phase)-fear (post phase)-no fear (return to homeostasis). What’s going on here? 

In the chapter on PTSD in Fear and Fight, I refer to Friedman et al and Friedman:

[Friedman et al] make specific reference to military personnel: ‘Trained military personnel may not experience fear, helplessness, or horror during or immediately following a trauma because of their training. They may only experience emotions after being removed from the war zone, which could be many months later’ (2011a, 756). Friedman expands the identified personnel who may not experience an emotional response at the time of a traumatic event to include, ‘military, police, and firefighter personnel who often report that they felt nothing, but that their professional training “kicked in”’ (2013, 551).

Warfighters experiencing no fear during the event/combat action phase is explained by Friedman et al and Friedman in terms of their training (see above), however, why do warfighters experience fear after the threat has past given that fear was selected for in nature because it conferred a survival advantage on an individual when their survival is threatened? 

The answer to that question lies within the learning aspect of PTSD discussed in Fear and Fight. In summary, a major feature of PTSD is the re-experiencing phenomena. When proposing his evolutionary theory of PTSD, Cantor suggests that the ‘re-experiencing phenomena of PTSD represent higher order memory and learning experiences. … Simply put, if ancestral individuals have had seriously threatening experiences, their long-term survival might be promoted if their lessons were not forgotten (re-experiencing symptoms)’ (2005, 123-124). Before Cantor there was Silove who suggests the same thing when exploring whether PTSD is an ‘overlearned survival response’:

automatic repetition of trauma memories once the survivor has withdrawn from the situation of danger ensures that memory traces signifying life threat are maintained in a highly active state and that they are rapidly retrieved when cues signifying the salient danger are encountered. Although the repetition of traumatic memories by the rehearsal mechanism triggers subjective distress in the survivor during the acute phase after trauma exposure, from an evolutionary perspective, the priority of survival learning overshadows the organism’s need for emotional stability. (1998, 186-187)

According to this view, the re-experiencing symptoms of PTSD are nature’s way of instilling and/or reinforcing the lesson that the traumatic event was dangerous and should be avoided in the future. 

In answer to my retired police officer friend's question, while his training produced a no-fear response during the life-threat event, nature still wanted him to learn the lesson that what he did was dangerous and it should that it should be avoided in the future (Don’t do it again!). Nature teaches this lesson in this case through fear being experienced after the threat has passed. It is still a survival response as it’s evolutionarily designed to avoid such life-threats in the future.

PS: My friend was happy to learn that this was a warfighter's combat action experience when I shared Nash's extract with him. While the previous sentence was designed to add levity, it does also show that knowledge about our natural and learned responses to a threat does alleviate stress, distress, confusion, etc, and which is why 'stress exposure training' that is used to better prepare military personnel for operational deployment, and most treatments for PTSD commence with a psychoeducation phase.

Combat-Related PTSD

I've been working on the chapter on PTSD in my Fear and Fight: A New and Better Understanding of Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. Fascinating subject. In this post I will share some information about combat-related PTSD.

The first thing that needs to be understood about PTSD is that PTSD is a generic term and includes different types of PTSD. Different types of PTSD means different symptoms and different treatment.

Evolution and Posttraumatic Stress: Disorders of Vigilance and Defence by Chris Cantor is the first book to examine PTSD from an evolutionary perspective. Cantor argues that a confounding issue in the study of trauma is the blurring of boundaries between fear and loss-related phenomena. He suggests that the study of responses to extreme fear involves PTSD and that of loss involves depression: ‘PTSD might be more useful if it was restricted to the emotion fear; loss is adequately catered for by depression’

Cantor is comparing apples with oranges here. Fear is an emotion, loss is not. Appraisal theory has a stress appraisal being classified as either harm/loss, threat, or challenge. It is better to speak of threat-related and loss-related PTSD.

Cantor states that fear is the key emotion in (threat-related) PTSD. However, empirical evidence suggests that there is a unique relationship among PTSD, anger, and aggression, particularly in veterans. Why? Because warfighters are trained to cope with threats with anger and aggression. While a benign stimulus in PTSD is erroneously appraised as threat, the trained response of a warfighter/veteran to a threat is anger and aggression. That trained response is reinforced in combat when it is successfully employed to survive life-threats. (See Chemtob et al (1997) 'Anger regulation deficits in combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder' Journal of Traumatic Stress.)

Compare that to rape-related PTSD. In those cases, fear is the key emotion and the response is our natural or instinctive response to a threat rather than a learned/trained one.

There are many issues that arise from this conception of PTSD. For instance, Possis et al (2014) investigated driving difficulties among military veterans and the potential pathways that underlie risky driving behaviour. The risky driving behaviour pertains to driving behaviour in the relatively benign civilian environment upon return from deployment. Possis et al start off by explaining that military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan often develop mental health difficulties (e.g., PTSD), which may manifest as problematic driving behaviour: ‘Veterans may be more likely to engage in risky driving and to subsequently be involved in motor vehicle accidents and fatalities’ (2014, 633). Possis et al propose three mechanisms underlying driving difficulties in the population group under investigation: influence of fear, influence of anger and aggression, and influence of thrill seeking and sensation seeking.

When considering the influence of fear on driving difficulties among military veterans, Possis et al explain that,

Certain military experiences may make veterans more prone to fear-related driving difficulties. Military training itself may have an influence; the importance of ‘tactical awareness’ or being aware and able to react to danger immediately at all times is emphasised. Constantly being on guard and aware of potential threats might make an individual more apprehensive and anxious. In discussing his anxiety in dense traffic, the patient of one author (E.P.) commented that ‘my [military] training taught me it’s not safe to be boxed in. … individuals with significant driving anxiety are likely to make catastrophic predictions about driving situations (e.g., ‘trash on the side of the road could be an IED’) and are likely to attend to threat-related cues to the exclusion of other information. Additionally, these individuals are likely to engage in avoidance behaviour, such as steering clear of traffic or underpasses.’ (2014, 634-635)

The question here is, are the driving difficulties fear-related in combat-related PTSD or is it simply their training. The appraisal is in error, but does it produce a fear response? And what of a veterans training? They are trained to deal with fear and anxiety, e.g., stress exposure training (chapter 18 in Fear and Fight). Interestingly, a lot of therapy for PTSD is the same training provided to warfighters to better prepare them for operational deployment. Warfighters should already have a lot of the tools necessary to treat threat-related PTSD given they are the same tools they are taught to overcome fear and anxiety in order to fight.

The PTSD Story: Part 1

I am currently working on a chapter on PTSD in my book tentatively titled, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat.

This chapter came about in the saw way this book came about. I was writing the conclusion and wanted a paragraph or two to explain how the new and better understanding about our natural and learned responses to a threat can help better understand PTSD and the treatment thereof. Research to provide that paragraph or two produced a great deal of information, so much so that a paragraph or two became a chapter in and of itself in my book.

The PTSD story is a fascinating story. It is a story that goes far beyond PTSD. It sheds light on the mental health discipline today and how it developed. It sheds light on the 'unholy alliance' between the mental health discipline and the military that poses dire consequences for military members and society as a whole. It sheds light on the 'unholy alliance' between the mental health discipline and many organisations. It sheds light on what is 'order' and how it becomes or is a 'disorder.' It is a fascinating story.

I will write a series of posts that discuss the PTSD story over the coming period of time, however, to start, what is PTSD?

There are a host of definitions of PTSD, however, the most accurate is:

PTSD is an initialism for ‘posttraumatic stress disorder’ which is a term that first appeared as an anxiety disorder in the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM).

Allow me to introduce you to the main characters in the PTSD story:

The APA is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organisation in the world. The association publishes various journals and pamphlets, including the DSM. The DSM codifies psychiatric conditions and is used worldwide as a guide for diagnosing mental disorders. It is often referred to as ‘The Bible’ of psychiatry. The first edition of the DSM was published in 1952, and several new editions and revisions have since been released. PTSD was included in the third edition of the DSM published in 1980. The most recent edition of the DSM is the fifth edition, published in 2013, in which PTSD is classified as a trauma- and stressor-related disorder, a classification that is a major revision of how PTSD is conceptualised as we will see below. 

In the next post, we will commence the PTSD story not with the DSM but the US Army's Medical 203 which provided credibility and acceptance of the fledgling psychiatric and psychological discipline and laid the foundation for mental health practice as we know it.

Warfighting - Required Reading for all Self-Defence Activities

Warfighting is the U.S. Marines basic philosophical manual that provides the authoritative basis of how they fight and how they prepare to fight. The first chapter in Warfighting concerns the nature of war and the human dimension. The material in that chapter is applicable to all violent encounters and all who prepare themselves or others to engage in a violent encounter by fighting. It should be mandatory reading for all of those people.

Since war is a violent enterprise, danger is ever present. Since war is a human phenomenon, fear, the human reaction to danger, has a significant impact on the conduct of war.

The same is true of all violent encounters. 'Fight Activities,' such as the military, law enforcement, martial arts, self-defence, and combat sports, teach fight. As I explain in Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat, fear impinges upon a person's readiness and ability to engage in and succeed in a fight. This is why the Warfighting manual instructs, 

Leaders must study fear, understand it, and be prepared to cope with it.

It's not just Marine leaders that must study fear, understand it, and be prepared to cope with it. It is anyone who is involved in preparing themselves or others to engage in a violent encounter. If you do not study fear, understand it, and be prepared to cope with it, you are not teaching effective fight behaviour. You are not teaching effective self-defence.

Fear and the COVID-19 War

 

War had been declared on COVID-19 and war time restrictions imposed.

What do professional warfighters have to say about fighting a war? The US Marines Warfighting manual has this to say about the human dimension in war:

Since war is a violent enterprise, danger is ever present. Since war is a human phenomenon, fear, the human reaction to danger, has a significant impact on the conduct of war. Everybody feels fear. Fear contributes to the corrosion of will. Leaders must foster the courage to overcome fear, both individually and within the unit. Courage is not the absence of fear; rather, it is the strength to overcome fear. Leaders must study fear, understand it, and be prepared to cope with it.

The COVID-19 war is not a violent enterprise, however, danger is ever present. Fear, the human reaction to danger, is having a significant impact on the conduct of this war. We are all potential warfighters, however, there are those how are all ready on the front-line. We must all study fear, understand it, and be prepared to cope with it.

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. All very 'positive' and motivating, however, it is just as much rubbish now as it was then. Of course there is something to fear - COVID-19 which has killed 75,000 and counting (although the Chinese seem to possess a different counting system).

Colonel John M. House in Why War? Why an Army? explains that fear is a natural response resulting from the instinct for self-preservation. 'Only a fool would face combat unconcerned for his safety.' We are seeing many fools in the COVID-19 war.


Don't fear fear as Roosevelt suggested. Fear is a gift according to Gavin de Becker in The Gift of Fear. Fear is a gift that is not to be feared.
 
Fear is an emotion that was selected for in nature because it conferred a survival advantage on an individual. Without fear we and the human race would probably not exist. When people advise us to trust our instincts, they are in fact advising us to trust fear for instinct is fear whispering in our ear.

Fear does not say lie down and die. Fear says there is danger, let's do something about it. Even if that something is freezing in place. Fear is always trying to protect us. As Fear says in the Oscar award winning movie Inside Out, 'All right! We did not die today, I call that an unqualified success.'

Fear and hope are opposite sides of the same coin. There is no fear without hope and no hope without fear. Fear and hope are are both anticipatory emotions in that they are emotional responses to something that might happen in the future. Uncertainty is a defining part of the emotions. Fear and hope are both attempting to make a bad situation better.

Fear is not our enemy. Fear is our ally. Always has been since the dawn of human existence. Get to know fear and make it your friend.

Where fear can become problematic is, as Arne Ohman puts it, when there is a conflict between evolutionary and cultural agendas. The evolutionary agenda is survival,. The cultural agenda is either something else other than survival or survival in a particular way (by fighting).

The Warfighting manual refers to courage to overcome fear. Courage is that nurse who is risking her life tending that COVID-19 patient and says to Fear, 'Thanks, but I've got this from here.' That nurse is courageous because without fear there is no courage. Fear enabled courage. Fear enabled courage by the decoupling of stimulus and response in emotion. This decoupling provides latency time where alternative actions may be considered in addition to the actions provided by nature.

This is not theory for me. I live with fear's close cousin, anxiety and on occasion I have been visited by fear's big brother, panic. I don't necessarily like this family, however, since I have no choice I've learned to live with them. They are not as scary as they first appear and they do have a bad reputation, however, they mean well.

When you study fear you get to know fear and you get to know how to cope with fear. The Warfighting manual is spot on in that respect and it is sound advice for all of us in this COVID-19 war.

Chemical Soldiers and Mushin no Shin

I was talking to a friend who served in Afghanistan about my work concerning fear, how it impinges upon a person's readiness and ability to engage in and succeed in a fight, and the military's efforts in overcoming or counter fear in order to fight and fight effectively.

Colonel John M. House wrote in his Why War? Why an Army? that soldiers need to overcome the fear of death and injury in order to act and survive on the battlefield. How do our troops do that in Afghanistan? How do their adversary, the Taliban, do the same?

When I discussed my work and those questions with the abovementioned friend, he said that the Taliban fought under the influence of drugs.

This set of a 'What's going on here?' reaction in me which research psychologist Gary Klein explains in Seeing What Others Don't: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights is the curiosity pathway to gaining insight.

There were many questions posed by this reaction, however, at around the same time I was prescribed sertraline for my generalised anxiety disorder. Sertraline is one of the most highly prescribed medications to reduce anxiety, fear, and panic.

Fear (anxiety and panic) impinge upon a person's readiness and ability to engage in and succeed in a fight. Sertraline is reqularly prescribed to reduce anxiety, fear, and panic. Why aren't the Army providing sertraline or similar medication to their troops to enhance their fighting performance? If the Army are not prescribing sertraline for their troops who can live and die based on their level of anxiety, fear, and panic, why are we being prescribed this medication?

Briefly looking at this issue, I came across the work of Dr. Richard Gabriel (Colonel, U.S. Army Ret.): https://www.perfectkiller.com/gabriel-afterword.shtml

Gabriel explains that the next frontier in warfare is not technological but biochemical:

But what modern armies have in mind far surpasses anything tried in the past. Biology and chemistry have combined in the modern age to produce the science of biochemistry. Armed with this new knowledge, the military research establishments of the United States, Russia, and Israel have set for themselves the task of abolishing fear in the soldier to make him a more efficient killing machine. The next revolution in military power will occur not in weapons technology, but in biochemistry that will make it possible for soldiers to better endure the conditions of modern war. If the search is successful, and it almost inevitably will be, the fear of killing and death will be banished and with it will go man's humanity and his soul. The chemical soldier will become a terrifying reality.

It's a thought provoking read. The holy grail of military research is biochemicals that eliminate fear, anxiety, and panic, producing 'chemical soldiers' as Gabriel describes them. Without anxiety and fear war will become wars of attrition. We need anxiety and fear to retain our humanity.

What does Gabriel's work then say about the samurai's mushin no shin, mind of no mind, where warriors are trained to fight without fear or anger? The war of attrition based on mushin no shin, no fear, is dramatically portrayed in the final battle scene of The Last Samurai. Are the Japanese atrocities during WWII attributable to the successful training of mushin no shin?

Gabriel makes another interesting point in the context of my book in that the 'brave pill' will render military concepts such as bravery and courage obsolete when bravery and courage are conceived of as acting in spite of fear.

Needless to say, this has added another chapter to my book, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat.

An easy way to overvome fear in order to fight :)

I am currently working on the conclusion to Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. An interesting question has arisen.

Colonel John M. House explains that soldiers must overcome their fear of death and injury in order to act and survive on the battlefield (Why War? Why an Army?). The way I describe it in my book (this week) is that fear impinges upon a person's readiness and ability to engage in and succeed in a fight. The same is true of all violent encounters.

I explain in the book that ironically, I had my first panic attack and was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder while researching and writing that book on the mechanism responsible for those disorders. While distressing and debilitating, this condition has enabled me to study our inherited survival mechanism from the inside out, which in turn enabled me to study our learned responses to a threat because they are often designed to thwart nature's survival efforts.

I have recently been prescribed sertraline. Sertraline is used to treat depression, panic attacks, OCD, PTSD, and anxiety disorders. It may decrease fear, anxiety, unwanted thoughts, and the number of panic attacks. In 2016, it was the most prescribed psychiatric medication in the United States with over 37 million prescriptions.

Soldiers must overcome their fear (and anxiety) of death and injury in order to act and survive on the battlefield. Fear and anxiety impinges upon a person's readiness and ability to engage in and succeed in a fight. If sertraline reduces or eliminates anxiety, fear, and panic, and is safe, why aren't soldiers and others such as front-line police officers given sertraline in order to counter fear and anxiety? Its legal, it just needs a prescription which I am sure is not an issue for the government. It'd be far easier and a lot cheaper than training such as stress exposure training that is designed to less negative reactions (anxiety and fear) under high stress conditions (combat) that impinge upon performance (fighting).

Women enroll in women's self-defence classes in order to reduce their anxiety and fear of being attacked. A big part of their training is overcoming fear in order to fight. Why not provide sertraline to manage that issue? No need to be threatened in training in order to learn to deal with fear.

Martial arts are supposed to teach ways to overcome or counter fear in order to fight. Sertraline would appear to take care of that problem.

A book on the short history of emotion suggests that these magic pills gets rid of Stoic and Buddhist teachings and discipline in terms of managing emotions, and of course you have to question the usefulness of psychotherapy given this magic pill deals with these issues. :)

It is an intriguing question. :) ... more so for me because if soldiers are not provided with sertraline given their line of work, why am I being prescribed sertraline to deal with my anxiety and panic disorders?

The best advice EVER for managing fear, panic, and anxiety

I'm working on the conclusion to Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. Our principal natural response to a threat is fear. Fear and anxiety are similar but different emotions, as I explain in my book. Panic is an extreme version of both fear and anxiety.

While researching a way of concluding the abovementioned book, I came across Schwartz and Vecchio's 'The basics of survival' in Schwartz, McManus, and Swenton's Tactical Emergency Medicine.

They explain that the first and most important element of survival is getting control of your thought processes. When perceived threats escalate,

How does one control these feelings of fear and panic? The British SAS recommends sitting down and making a cup of tea. This is a great response. Sitting down will stop one's haste ... Making tea forces one to break the chain of thought, which will continue to escalate toward panic. Once this chain of thought is broken and one's mind can be redirected, the person can later return to the original situation with a controlled and rational thought process.

Simple, effective. No jargon. No new world metaphysical concepts. Thousands of dollars in psychotherapy boiled down to a cup of tea by the British SAS. It is simply brilliant.

The Paradox of Anxiety for Law Enforcement and the Military

It is paradoxical that, law enforcement and military personnel run toward danger rather than away from it, act in spite of fear that naturally arises when exposed to danger, train to overcome fear in order to act, and yet they can be defeated by fear's close cousin (Lazarus and Lazarus, Passion and Reason), anxiety (disorder), which is elicited by no real threat.

I'll see you in Valhalla Annalise Braakensiek

Model, designer and actor Annalise Braakensiek has been found dead in her Sydney home.

Police went to her apartment in Potts Point just after 3pm yesterday after receiving concerned calls for her welfare.

The death is not suspicious.

Ms Braakensiek was made an R U OK? ambassador in 2017 and the organisation said she was "loved and respected".

Annalise Braakensie was a warrior. She fought the good fight against depression. She not only fought the good fight herself, she stood tall and encouraged others to fight the good fight. She was a a leader. But unfortunately she lost her fight. The enemy proved too strong.

Valete, socii mei! Farewell my comrade.

I do not suffer the black dog (depression). I suffer the Chicken Little (anxiety).

You cannot know the daily battle that is waged by us black dogs or Chicken Littles unless you suffer these conditions. 

We fight a relentless foe. If you are fortunate enough to not suffer these conditions; to not have to wage a daily battle against these determined foe, support those who do. Have their back. Stand side by side with them. Stand up for them. ... that means sacrifice and understanding. And not just for one battle, for these conditions may last for years which means they are a war. A war where the combatant is at risk of injury or death. Be their ally in this war. It'll cost you, but it'll be, as Stephen Fry said, the noblest thing that you'll ever do in your life.

Valete, socii mei Annalise Braakensiek. I'll see you in Valhalla.

Know Your Enemy - Anxiety

I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder when, ironically, researching and writing a book about the mechanism responsible for that disorder. The disorder is distressing and at times debilitating, but it did provide me with an opportunity to assess theory and gain insights into anxiety disorders.

Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion proposes eight primary emotions which when combined produces other emotions. When fear and anticipation are combined they produce anxiety.

fear + anticipation = anxiety

That is how anxiety is often described when explaining anxiety disorders. Fear is an emotional response to an immediate present perceived threat whereas anxiety is an emotional response to an anticipated perceived threat.

As the stimulus comes closer in time and/or space, anxiety merges into fear. That is to say the anticipation element in the emotion equation lessens leaving only fear.

When your only left with fear and facing the immediate present stimulus which turns out not to be a threat at all, fear dissipates and equilibrium is restored.

I have lived this analysis and having lived it, and knowing how it works, enables me to better manage my impulses and 'act in spite of anxiety.'

Sometimes when I was invited to my adopted nieces home for dinner, everything in my being was trying to stop me from going. It took enormous will-power and often anger to get me to drive to their home, however, when I arrived at their door - nothing. No anxiety, no fear, no emotion. Equilibrium was restored because anticipation had dissipated and the stimulus proved not to be a threat after all.


Klein says insight is produced through identifying inconsistencies.

Sometimes when my anxiety levels are elevated, rather than feeling the urge to avoid the anticipated threat, I instead cannot wait to engage with it. This is akin to soldiers who are anxious to go to war, anxious to fight, anxious to 'let slip the dogs of war.' How do you explain this type of anxiety? The medical textbooks don't even mention this 'symptom' of anxiety.

The above equation provides a possible explanation.

Fear is a negative emotion with a withdrawal action tendency. Anticipation is a positive emotion with an approach action tendency. The normal anxiety is when fear is greater than anticipation.

fear > anticipation = withdrawal anxiety

When anticipation is greater than fear you have approach anxiety. Still anxiety but with a different action tendency and not as much distress.

fear < anticipation = approach anxiety

Both are symptoms of anxiety disorders, at least in my experience.

Fear + Anticipation = Anxiety

 

As I said in my previous post, I am working on the draft of the last chapter in my book tentatively titled, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. The final chapter explores anxiety disorder based on the information presented in the previous chapters and my own personal experience of the disorder.

You may recall that chapter two of my The Science Behind All Fighting Techniques is about the 'core of all learning.' The core of all learning is the identification of similarities and differences. One of the forms of identifying similarities and differences that research has identified as being highly effective is comparing. Anxiety is often compared with fear when attempting to explain anxiety disorder.

Many explain that anxiety and fear are both emotional responses to a threat but in the case of fear the threat is imminent and in the case of anxiety it is anticipated.


Plutchik developed the psychoevolutionary theory of emotion which is made up of three models. The derivatives model identifies eight primary emotions which when combined form other emotions. Fear is a primary emotion. Fear when combined with anticipation, another primary emotion, results in anxiety. This, TenHouten explains, has the benefit of identifying the 'temporal dimension' to anxiety.

fear + anticipation = anxiety

Fear and anxiety are similar in that they are emotional responses to a threat that involve fear, howeer, that are different in that fear is a primary emotion and anxiety is a tertiary emotion which combines fear and anticipation. A tertiary emotion is seldom felt, thus, another comparison can be made. 'Normal' anxiety is adaptive and seldom felt, whereas 'abnormal' anxiety (anxiety disorder) is maladaptive and regularly felt. There are many implications to this distinction that will not be pursued in this post, however, this distinction needs to be clearly understood if one wants to understand anxiety disorder.



TenHouten talks about fear merging into anxiety when the focus of one's concerns extends into the future. In this case the anticipation element in the anxiety equation increases. Similarly, anxiety merges into fear when the focus of our concerns contracts into the present and the anticipation element in the anxiety equation decreases.

The action tendency of fear is flight. The action tendency of anxiety is avoidance (although some mistakenly associate both flight and avoidance with anxiety). When there is anticipation we can avoid a threat. When the threat is imminent (anticipation = 0) and we can no longer avoid the threat, we are left with flight.

Many mistakenly associate both fight and flight with fear when using the fight-or-flight concept to explain our natural responses to a threat. Walter Cannon, the father of the fight-or-flight concept, associated fear with flight but anger with fight. Fear turns to anger when flight is obstructed and fight is necessary to survive.

When avoidance is obstructed, fear turns to anger and the anxiety equation becomes anger + anticipation = aggression.

As the threat becomes imminent, the anticipation element in the aggression equation reduces until we are left with anger and fight.

When we experience loss, we feel another primary emotion, sadness. With the loss of hope due to our anxiety condition, fear turns to sadness and when combined with anticipation results in pessimism: sadness + anticipation = pessimism.

This all fits in with the regulation of emotion in pursuit of our goals explained by Nesse and Ellsworth. They explain how behaviour involves goal pursuit and our emotions change depending on our progress towards achieving that goal. Fear turns to anger in order to turn flight into fight in order to survive.

Anxiety disorder is not just anxiety. To truly understand anxiety disorder one must understand that it involves a susceptibility for numerous maladaptive, negative emotions and not just anxiety.

This is but a small part of the chapter that explores anxiety disorder.

The Strategic Use of Emotion to Counter Anxiety in Life

I'm working on book #2 which is tentatively titled, Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. The mechanism responsible for our natural responses to a threat is also responsible for anxiety and panic disorders. 'As dire chance and fateful cock-up would have it' (Love Actually), I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder and panic disorder when researching and writing this book about the mechanism that is responsible for those disorders. I want to share a small part of it with you.

There is a paper that is the subject of a chapter in that book. The paper is about the strategic use of emotion to counter fear in war. The authors list five strategic uses of emotion to counter fear in war: appeal to reason (technically not a strategic use of emotion), the creation of anger, hate, spite, and hope. I've used the strategic use of emotion to counter anxiety in my life. That emotion is love.

Before we became a family, my now stepdaughter would ask me to watch her play football (Australian Rules). I'd say yes but wouldn't attend. Avoidance behaviour due GAD. When we became a family, she tearfully told me that she'd look for me when I said I'd attend her games but didn't. I vowed then, out of love, not to miss another of her games and I'd attend all of her training sessions.

Game day. Anxiety levels through the roof. Nausea, retching, vomiting, diarrhea, trembling, an overwhelming urge to avoid/flee. But I didn't. My partner, her mother, drives to the match because I cannot. I am tense and gripping on for sheer life while driving, seeing every car that comes close as a threat and acting accordingly. My partner gets nervous driving with me because she feels I'm overly critical about her driving. It's only recently that she's come to see my reaction for what they are and does not take my 'fear' personally.

I sat away from the other parents because of my GAD. I was nauseous and I have dry retched and vomited at the games, although by sitting apart no one else had to witness that.

Training sessions. I'd sit in the car and watch her train because I couldn't go down and join in with the other fathers. It was hard enough to get there let alone to socialise.

Over time, my damaged amygdala came to see these things as not threats and I was able to engage with the other parents and the teams admin. This is called 'exposure therapy' in psychological terms or 'stress exposure training' in stress terms. It was tough. Very tough. But I used the strategic use of love to counter fear/anxiety to support my stepdaughter and to enjoy watching her train and play.  Love provided me with the willpower to overcome the anxiety that was preventing me from watching her play and in the process hurting both of us.
 
It's not all perfect how. I still get extremely nervous in the car and I still feel my muscles tensing and have to consciously relax them, but I get the enjoyment of watching the young girl I love play football and she gets to have someone she loves watch her play football and enjoy it.