Fight or Flight Syndrome

I’ve decided that I think I’m Carrie. I look at what’s going on around me and suddenly have a revelation about the underlying psychology behind the behavior when really it’s just an obvious pattern we all realize.

This week’s theory:

People have one of two responses to extreme stress. One is to ignore the event entirely, and the other is to immediately confront it – i.e., the fight or flight syndrome we all have when our adrenaline is rushing. And if you have a group of people experiencing the same stress, then the group will split off into those two sets of people. Finally, there ends up being a concentric circle pattern where those who “fight” end up dealing with the stress and attempting to handle it, and thus considered having the right to be there to make the decisions, and those who “fly” end up being left out and not considered to be strong enough to do the same.

Is this an extension of Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” argument? What I’ve noticed is that those who deny the issue and try to handle it on their own instead of cooperating with the “whole” end up being closed out of the circle. This occurs even in small families in dealing with a relative’s recovery. It kind of makes sense, but it also underestimates the people who run off – just because they do not have the compulsion to be at the center of the situation doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability to handle the stress. It’s just a different mindset.

Alright, I just had to get that off my chest and I should study now.

Burning Pumpkin of Death! 

The Domino Effect

I know that I’ve run this past several of my friends in the last month or so, and so if you don’t feel like reading about it after talking about it with me, then you can feel free to disregard this post. After all, I’m still convinced no one reads this but me and so I’m not entirely offended if you choose not to.

In any case, I think the theory bears merit. The domino effect occurs in any group of friends or relatives and comes in three variations: breakups, marriage, and babies. What I’ve noticed is that when one couple does one of those three things, the other people in their social circle start thinking about their own relationship in that context.

For example, my friend was the first one to get engaged and the first one to get married in several social groups. (Most people belong to more than one, so that shouldn’t sound odd.) She was certainly the first one in our group. In any case, her getting engaged caused me to wonder where my relationship was going at the time and start pushing for engagement, and I’m sure started pushing other girls in her groups to start pushing for the same. And then after she got married, at least 3 other couples announced their engagement/wedding date soon afterward, and now that social group is made up of mainly married couples.

However, in my social group, my other good friend broke up with her long-term boyfriend, and this started a chain of breakups throughout the group, including my own and my roommate’s – who didn’t even know her that well. Now, my roommate is back together with her boyfriend, but she was still involved in the chain in the first place, and her domino actually fell before mine did.

This effect isn’t something completely random – it’s the result of what peer pressure does when you’re in any social group. What one person does, no matter how isolated it may seem to her, affects anyone else within her social sphere. People as a whole are used to the status quo, so the thought of change makes everyone else evaluate whether they’re satisfied in their own situations. Even if the couple doesn’t break up, get married, or have a baby the domino effect has still made some sort of impact just because of the analysis.

If anyone else has a different perspective on this, I’d be glad to hear it. But I’m going to go back to studying now and stop trying to analyze everyone else’s behavior. ;)