3. HORIZONTE TEÓRICO
3.3 Objetivación de la Perpendicularidad
This condition is best described as an ‘out of the body’ experience where the threatened person sees himself outside of his body, yet still dealing with the situation. Psychological splitting has been reported during a number of stressful and dangerous situations, but is not a common occurrence.
4.Cognitive Dissonance
Basically the threatened person cannot remember large details of the situation or event, but he or she does remember the small minute details. This is apparent from eye witness
accounts of violent situations. The victim can recount exactly what happened in minute detail, but is unable to recount the gross events taking place at the peripheries of the event. Witnesses, on the other hand can remember few intricate details but do remember the general or large occurrences surrounding the event.
The Combined Effect
Try to imagine the results of all or some of these factors on the untrained individual and you can easily see how the ‘Freeze Factor’ we have referred to previously occurs. Usually there is no opportunity for either Fight or Flight simply Freeze! The victim is locked into sensory overload. He or she is living on the “Shock Load” at that precise moment and remember the common post incident victim or witness statement- “I just froze.” In both civilians, police officers and military personnel this is the individual who gets either himself or others seriously injured or killed. This Is
Operational or Assault Stress.
The mental effects are :-
• Impulsiveness and over-reaction. • Uncertainty and confusion - slow or poor decision making ability. Mental confusion - pressure and stress overload.
• The inability to make any decision - once again, the shock and stress effect
• chemical and stress overload.
• Rigid thinking - resort to dogma exacerbated by the fear of making a mistake.
• Failing to understand or missing important information - lack of mental concentration and part denial due to overload.
So moments of extreme danger and stressful conditions do effect both the mind and body. The effects of stress will effect the way in which you as a civilian or police officer handle violent situations. Other effects of stress will cause emotions that will also influence your individual decisions and actions. They include:-
Emotional Influences Anger
An emotion stimulated by words, physical actions, a scene, a distressing sight.
Rage
a. An increased degree of anger which may become uncontrollable with complete loss of reason. This can result in a violent and uncontrolled assault on the other person. A frequent cause of “unreasonable” force in a self defence situation.
b. Complete loss of control is known as the “Red Rage, Red Mist, Berserk and Running Amuck”. In criminal related
cases this rage may be narcotic or alcohol induced.
Fear or Fright
a. Fear of the consequences and the unknown - fear of injury or death, also the consequences, as we have said elsewhere, of your actions.
b. A powerful stress induced emotion that is one of the triggers of the adrenal gland, could result in fight, flight, freeze or rage actions.
Shock or Terror
Not strictly an emotion, but is an induced state of mind as a result of extreme circumstances and could be a result of extreme emotions. May be induced by extreme fear.
Post Incident Fatigue
A serious side effect of the huge chemical cocktail which has been released into the system, together with the effects of any mild shock and physical trauma which may have occurred. At this juncture you will make a poor witness in your own defence and think of this linked with cognitive dissonance, you can see how the post incident effect and this can conspire to seriously, damage your version of events. Do not be drawn into recounting events until you are fully in control of yourself and all elements are back in their chronological order.
T H E F E A R F A C T O R
T H E F E A R F A C T O R
Differentiate
Unfortunately, we’ve not yet touched on fear, although, in many ways, we have because the chemical responses we experienced through the lengthy or immediate release of adrenalin are all those we would describe as the physical consequences of fear. This is because the two are inseparable and, in many ways, indistinguishable. Without being trite, what we truly fear is fear itself. Its the stigma of fear which is the most awful aspect of what happens to us mentally in a conflict and also the fear of failure. The single most important aspect I ever learned about confrontations when ‘working the doors’, was to be able to differentiate between fear and the physical effects of adrenalin.
For most people, it can be the most important aspect of combat. Fear is not an absolute item - by that I mean it is something which comes in degrees. When does being concerned turn into being fearful? And when does a high state of anxiety turn to fear and when does fear turn to stark terror? For most combat situations it’s a thing which grows, particularly in those situations where a potential incident seems to escalate over a period, similar to the one we describe above or equally like the wait to go into battle.
It starts out as concern, turns to worry, anxiety, then into a ‘low fear’ state. What you must remember, is that the way you feel physically is usually NOT a consequence of fear but the adrenal release - so forget about that - its something you can’t do anything about if it onsets, but what you can and must control are the mental responses which fear or anxiety produce, exacerbated by the signals your brain is receiving from your body about how bad it feels and the chemical changes.