Humans are wired with three responses to high stress or emotionally catastrophic contexts: Fight, Flight, and Freeze. In the old ages this would involve a tussle with a lion or other primal predator. In the modern world this can be emphasised by a toxic workplace or boss or relationship or whatever. The human adapts, the baseline will be set given enough time at any extreme. In this, it is less the objective peril of the context that incurs these stress responses, it is the emotional peril as perceived from the context that does. The same emotions of fear and failure can occur from a fight with a lion as to an argument or confrontation with a toxic boss in the workplace. So when faced with these emotional contexts, a stress response is likely to trigger and from here it is our duty to ensure it completes its cycle. In the use of fight or flight, the body is seeded with adrenaline and other chemical imbalances that would majorly harm the body if used consistently over extended periods of time and works to ensure the safety of the entire specimen for the sacrifice of a few minutes or hours of chemical damage. In the modern world, the solution to the lion-fight is less straight forward than the past. In one where it is the effort to slaughter the lion or escape it… Here and now presents contexts that can be consistent and far more complex to solve. This would entail working in a toxic workplace due to prevailing circumstances. It is then your duty to minimise the trigger this has on you, given enough stress response in fight or flight, the body will begin to degrade as to be expected from the chemical imbalances that entail.

When the threshold is reached, and it is obvious to the primordial system that the vessel is to die (or the emotional equivalent of), it will shut down the systems of feeling and function to minimise the pain that entails. This is seen in the freeze response. In which the heart a man falling to his death will stop before impact so as to minimise the pain to be felt on impact. The freeze response is the final straw. In the ancestral context, this is when the human will freeze in the wake of the lion and be eaten. Instant numbing and loss of function is the ultimate card to play as to remove the constant stress responses otherwise. It is your duty to ensure against this response through managing the responses you receive now to certain emotional contexts. This is through removing yourself from that toxic workplace and/or dissolving it of its toxicity. The silver bullet in this regard is to forego the attachment to the context entirely, less so to numb, and more so to apply your focus into what does serve you.

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