Stress Response
by Amy Scheiner
It happened outside her parents’ house, next to their broken-down 1980s Ford Taurus, what was once red now rusted into dirt brown. The front door was open; the smell of cigarettes and dust and heroin (if it had a smell) wafted into the driveway. I knew heroin didn’t have a smell, but I still imagined it did.
The sixteen-year-old I’d been working with in my nonprofit job had cut her hair Peter-Pan-short, bluish circles dabbed her cheekbones, and she paced, her fists to her temples.
“I’m not fucking going,” she said. I tried to remain calm, as I had been taught in these situations. Situations described as “escalated” and “high-risk” and “dangerous.” But I had never been in a situation quite like this before.
“This is what needs to be done.” My hands rose mid-chest, my palms flexed with a gentle reassurance. “I care about you,” I said, and meant it. After nearly a year of working as her youth partner—a position intended to help at-risk teens improve their situations—I’d finally gotten her accepted into a treatment center. I had called every day for a month to check for an available bed, only to be met with “no vacancy.”
She was one of my most challenging cases. I was accustomed to working with struggling teens— drug abuse, abusive family, failure at school, trouble with the police, depression, suicidality— the list goes on. But this girl had been through it all.
“I’m not fucking going.” She was out of breath, from her anger, her fear, the meth coursing through her veins.
“We talked about this.” I was trying to be professional, but I hadn’t learned boundaries yet. I didn’t know you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
The afternoon sun weakened, the light illuminating one side of the Ford, the speckled dirt and rust begging to be peeled. The teen shifted her weight, a dancer ready to leap, a cat ready to jump. Her right hand formed into a fist, and she cocked her elbow back behind her ear. I held my breath. The dank air stood still, as if in a scene from The Matrix, the camera revolving 360 degrees to capture this moment, the moment when a girl’s anger turned to violence.
*
Common knowledge: the term “fight or flight” is a way to explain the body’s physiological response during a stressful event. Our senses take in the threat—our eyes see the bear in the distance, noses smell the fire, ears hear the growl—and it sends a signal to our amygdala, flashing the alarm of danger! The message is passed to the hypothalamus, communicating a stress response to the rest of the body. The reaction shortens the breath, narrows the pupils, sends adrenaline through the veins. In one second, a decision must be made.
Uncommon knowledge: The amygdala is derived from the Greek word meaning “almond.” Almonds have a symbiotic relationship with bees: the bees pollinate the almond flower and the flower provides food for the bees. They need each other to survive.
*
The line to the bar wrapped around the block. It was Pride in Portland, Oregon, and I had been waiting for nearly an hour with a group of people I didn’t know particularly well. In June, it rained, and we huddled in a circle for warmth. The buzzing energy from the Pride March sizzled in the air. Men in rainbow shorts and sunglasses laughed at private jokes, women wrapped their arms around each other and smiled freely.
Tired and cold, I wanted to leave. I felt my senses dull, my mind descend elsewhere as my group chatted excitedly. I became a witness to the festivities around me.
Living three thousand miles from my home, I sought a community, a family. I wanted to belong. So I went to Pride with a friend who turned out not to be a friend, and I wandered around Portland with her, searching for some sort of connection.
I had recently started working with youth living in impossible situations, but I hadn’t yet stood in front of the Ford Taurus and smelled the absent scent of heroin. I hadn’t yet seen the girl’s fist striking through the air.
A woman stumbled past us on the sidewalk, one heeled shoe snug on her foot, the other in her hand. She yelled obscenities, humorous tangents, and nonsensical anecdotes—that’s when I told her these are my goddamn shoes!—and we laughed at her drunken state. Just another person who overdid it.
We watched as she fumbled with her purse and jangled her keys. Her Jeep parked on the street beeped in recognition; the door flung open. Our laughing stopped.
Is she really doing this? said someone in my group, an undertone of fear.
The woman stumbled into her car; the engine rumbled.
Someone needs to stop her. No one moved.
I felt my mouth go dry, my blood pulsate, my brain go still. Flashes of what could happen quickly entered and vanished from my mind: a stray tire, wailing sirens, a child’s hand.
As the woman drove into the street, my body sprinted in front of her, and then froze—my palms wide in front of my chest, the too-close headlights blinding me.
*
“Amygdala” holds my name: “Amy.” My mother knew she was going to give me this name long before I came into the world. I felt it, she said. I felt it in my gut. The amygdala links to the gut through the vagus nerve, a long nerve running through the entire body. “Vagus,” coming from wandering. I wandered through Portland until I froze.
My mother had an instinct. “Instinct,” coming from impulse. The impulse to run.
Humans have the impulse to bond, assimilate, and protect. Protect our family, strangers in need, and ourselves. Evolution would call the latter self-preservation. Survival. It is our oldest and deepest instinct: to stay alive. But what happens when the instinct to protect others clashes with our own survival?
*
I found remnants of a calculator strewn on the couch: Wiry springs, mashed batteries, teeth-marked plastic. My mischievous puppy, Stella, was always getting into things—shoes, cat litter, technology. I had grown up with dogs my whole life, but she was the first one I had chosen. The first one I held in my arms and smelled her sweet newborn smell. The first one I called mine.
I had taken Stella to a puppy training class at a local pet store, but she didn’t learn much. She was terrified of the leash, so I kept her in the backyard, protected by the gated fence. She’d get the zoomies and dash around the house, stretch long on my bed and snore. Less than a year old, Stella was very much a baby.
Fortunately, the vet had a last-minute appointment. Stella sat in the passenger’s seat, a blanket wrapped around her. She nuzzled her wet nose against the window. It was in the middle of the day, so I messaged my boss that I had to leave to take her to the vet, a decision she was not happy with, and one that made me anxious.
Hastily, I parked in front of the vet’s office, opened the car door, and swung one leg out. Then the other. I was careful to close the driver’s door before making my way around the passenger’s side to grab Stella’s leash. She resisted. I swung my purse over my shoulder, and lifted her in my arms, her bulky 40-pound body unmanageable.
A patron in the vet’s office held the door for me; she saw I was struggling. I dropped Stella to the floor, grabbed her leash. Her head slipped out of her collar, leaving me untethered. She ran.
*
Our sympathetic nervous systems—our unconscious selves—are meant to choose the correct response to match the appropriate threat. We instinctively evaluate situations we have control over and those we don’t. We know to fight back when another person comes for an attack, run when we smell fire, leap to save the ones we love.
A screech, a yelp, a whimper.
Do we ever have control?
“Freeze” was incorporated in the stress responses long after “fight” and “flight.” A version of paralysis, “freeze” results in distinct physiological reactions in contrast to other stress responses: hyper-alertness, increased heart rate, tension in the body and muscles, built-up energy, minimal talking, shallow and rapid breath, according to the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine.
I couldn’t move, my feet glued to the cement. I saw her run. I heard the car screech. I heard her cry. I still hear her cry.
A theory: due to the advancement of technology and society, our survival instincts have become misaligned. The chronic stress of the 21st century has caused a misfire in the brain. A traffic jam, breakup, or meeting with a boss can trigger the same sympathetic reactions that a fire or mountain lion spotting can. It is commonly believed that chronic stress has misled our responses to act inappropriately to the threat—a maladaptive reaction.
Perhaps that’s why you see someone scream at the barista who ruined their coffee order, or a co-worker become immobilized when receiving constructive feedback from a superior.
Perhaps that’s why I didn’t flee when the teen’s fist came flying at my face. Why I jumped in front of a drunk driver. Why I didn’t run to save Stella.
*
The amygdala stores memories, specifically, emotional memories. That is, memories that induce emotional responses, the ones attached to an emotional experience, the ones we can’t seem to forget, no matter how hard we try. More specifically, the amygdala is responsible for memories associated with fear. Fear ensures survival. It’s why we dodge flying fists, evade barreling cars.
We learn fear through repetition beginning from a very young age—the stove is hot, the needle hurts, death is forever. We are conditioned by this reinforcement of fear.
The amygdala becomes hyperactive, fueled by relentless memories of a fleeting moment which changes everything. Fist. Car. Leash. The brain can’t differentiate between the occurrence and the memory—between what happened and what was remembered—and soon, any trigger of the memory stimulates the amygdala, and I break away from the memory and become trapped in the occurrence, in that moment, the leash falling to the ground.
*
At the last second, the teen swung her fist into the 1980s Ford Taurus, the drunk driver slammed on the brakes. But I did not save her.
Occasionally, I remember the teen, her raw knuckles, the desperate look in her eyes, or the drunk woman, the vacancy of self, the blinding of the lights. But I remember Stella every day, and sometimes, I can feel my heart speed, my muscles tense, my mind leave my body, and I’m trapped in that moment, in my body, watching her run.
Another theory: I seek out research and facts to justify my actions, to explain away my guilt. I write and rewrite as an act of repentance.
*
Our bodies need a recovery period after a stress response is triggered in order to return to equilibrium, though I am unsure if equilibrium will ever be possible again. Can the brain forget what it’s conditioned to do? Can I erase the guilt?
Somehow, our bodies know how to recover, even if our brains do not. The sympathetic nervous system deactivates and the parasympathetic nervous system restores the body—two opposing systems working toward survival. The heart rate slows, the breath steadies. Not steady like Stella’s into silence, but steady like time, as it blazes forward, leaving us behind.
About the Author
Amy Scheiner's writing has been featured in Slate, HuffPost, The Southampton Review, and Longreads, among others. She is the co-editor of Moonlighting by Lit Pub and her memoir, Who I Once Was, is forthcoming by Beacon Press in 2027. www.amyscheiner.com.
