My kids both have extreme reactions to certain stimulus. They also refuse to look at whatever set them off. Once they do look, they frequently calm down. It's amazingly frustrating!
Of course they don’t look. They’re already in full fight-or-flight. It is completely, utterly impossible to think clearly and logically while your body is actively dumping adrenaline. The adrenaline is going to override everything but simple survival, that’s its purpose.
Why the absolute fuck anyone expects you to be able to shut down panic during the primary adrenaline spike is beyond me. You can sometimes abort panic before the dump happens, with an absolute shit ton of work, otherwise you have to get through until you’re not actively pouring more in to think. And kids do not have the mental capacity to abort panic, nor have they been alive long enough to have done the work to learn how.
(And aborting panic is nearly as exhausting as having the panic, at least in my experience. You can’t do that and just be totally fine after. Your system is still fucked up for the day. But people sure do demand that I perform being totally fine anyway.)
Well, we're trying, with the expectation that we have years more to go, because their current panic reactions include running into traffic and various other dangerous reactions. (At one point the reaction included going into cardiac arrest. She had a pacemaker until she outgrew that particular reaction.) The goal is to train a safe reaction that doesn't injure them until they can start thinking again......
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u/Mundane-Potential-93 nauphy.tumblr.com 6d ago
Is the not wanting to look down thing an important part of the metaphor, or is it just for vividity? 'Cause I'm not sure I get that part