The emergency response

  The emergency response consists of a sequence of cognitive, motivational, emotional, physiological and behavioural events, associated with a stress reaction and is outlined below.

Changes in thinking

  The individual’s capacity for rational, realistic and objective thinking becomes seriously disrupted. It is replaced by a more primitive mode of thinking, in which the individual makes more rigid, extreme, simplistic and one-sided judgements about things. These distortions in thinking can become so potent that they totally dominate the individual’s consequent feelings and behaviours. There is also a tendency to ‘frame’ others who are perceived as a threat in terms of a few simple and extreme negative characteristics (polarized thinking). This, together with a greater tendency towards egocentricity (self-centred thinking), can result in increased interpersonal conflicts, as others around the stressed individual respond negatively to their selfish and hostile patterns of thinking.

Changes in motivation

  ‘Behavioural inclinations’ are activated during the emergency response. These are not actual behaviours but the precursors to behaviour and are best described as motivations. For example, as a result of an event triggering a schema, an individual may experience anger and the desire to attack someone. However, they may at the same time acknowledge that it is in their interests to suppress the behavioural inclination to hit someone because of the possible consequences (especially if that someone is their boss at work!). Similarly, a situation that arouses anxiety such as, for example, giving a presentation at work may lead to the behavioural inclination to run away and escape. However, the individual may decide to suppress this inclination because they realize that it would not do much for their career or promotion prospects if they did. Thus, behavioural motivations can be acted upon or suppressed and are the precursors of actual behaviours.

Changes in emotion

  When the emergency response is triggered, the physiological arousal mechanism of the fight–flight response is initiated. A detailed description of this response has already been presented in this chapter (pp. 4–6), so will not be discussed again here in any detail: to summarize, the autonomic nervous system is activated and stress hormones are produced, leading to an emotional response in the individual. This emotional response can be one of anger, anxiety or depression.

Changes in behaviour

  A behavioural strategy is ultimately chosen to deal with the perceived threat. The main behavioural strategies are the fight, flight and freeze responses, which correspond to the emotions of anger, anxiety and depression respectively. If the emotional response to the appraisal is extreme, the behavioural strategy chosen is likely to be equally extreme. For example, a very angry person may concede to the behavioural inclination to hit someone, a highly anxious person may concede to the behavioural inclination to escape from a situation, or a very depressed person may concede to the behavioural inclination to stay in bed.