Fight, Flight or Freeze in the Face of Violence

When I was a child, I felt safe. I didn’t have a curfew. I just came home at dark when all the other kids went home. And as a teen, if my car broke down, a good Samaritan invariably came to the rescue. Perhaps the world was never safe but I never would’ve believed I would see a day when shootings are a regular occurrence. I read in BBC.com that in 2015 there has been 62 shootings at schools, 12,223 people were killed in gun incidents and 24,722 people have been injured in gun incidents.

I am startled to see several Facebook posts offering tips on how to survive a mass shooting. Shootings have become interwoven into the backdrop of our lives, to the extent that we need to be prepared. It would never have occurred to me that I need to be prepared. Until now.

Safety expert, Bill Stanton, offers tips about how to protect yourself. Build a barricade by flipping over a table for cover, or use it block the door. If you are able, set the alarms off by putting a flame to a sprinkler system in order to bring attention to the situation. If you have nothing to block a door with, take a belt and wrap it around the hinge. The use of a fire extinguisher can create a fog and make the floor slippery. Toss it and run. There are numerous ways to increase the odds of survival.

Brett and Kate McKay wrote an interesting article, “What to Do in an Active Shooter Situation”. I felt calmed by his statement that learning to survive a shooting is much like learning how to survive an airplane crash. Such an event is statistically unlikely to happen to you. But he also says that most shootings end in under two minutes and occurs when we have no one else to rely on. So, we have to be prepared and know what to do before it happens.

But here’s the thing. When it comes to fight, flight, or freeze, I freeze. I’ve been in enough threatening incidents to know this about myself. Apparently, I’m not unusual. McKay wrote that most people freeze up in emergency situations. “For example, the ‘normalcy bias’ causes victims to act like everything is fine even though things are far from it. Our brain is predisposed to assume that things will carry on in a predictable way. When the pattern is broken, it takes a long time for the brain to process this aberration.”

The way to counteract this lack of response is to be prepared with a plan for action. Visualize your plan in detail. Having rehearsed a plan gives you a head start. McKay’s article gives advise to stay in a relaxed but alert condition, taking in information about your surroundings. Look for anomalies. Is there anything unusual going on? Always know where your exits are. And finally, run, hide and fight – in that order. If running isn’t an option, hide. If hiding has failed, move to plan C and fight. McKay further advises that you be aggressive and violent, control the weapon and then control the shooter. Use improvised weapons. Anything can be turned into a weapon. And finally, work as a team. Although most people will freeze, if you take charge, others will follow.

Although we are statistically unlikely to be victims, we may be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I recently took a self defense class to counteract my tendency to freeze. With repetition and practice, I hope to be better prepared for the risk of violence.