Nell Scovell Quotes

The purpose of fear, clearly, is to help you get away - which it does. If your heart rate increases, there is more blood pumping so you can use that blood to fuel your muscles to run away. Oxygen is sent to the lungs so you can run fast. Pupils dilating help you see in the dark. All of that prepares your body to fight or escape.

Anxiety is a kind of fuel that activates the fight-or-flight part of the brain in me. It makes sure that a velociraptor isn't around the corner and that you do as much as you possibly can to survive. Because Hollywood has a lot in common with 'Jurassic Park' and its primeval-dinosaur universe.

Adrenaline is so strong that none of us understand it.

As a human, if you're in a scary situation, you pretty much forget about everything else! You just try and survive.

No one is depressed when they're being chased by a bear.

Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature's, not honour's law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away.

When we are exposed to a real or perceived threatening situation, powerful things happen in the brain to memorialize aspects of the event, including all manner of associated circumstances like where, when and how it occurred.

Nerves are good. They keep you alive.

If there is any form of contagion that is adaptive, it is the immediate response to the fear of others. If others are fearful, there may be good reason for you to be fearful too.

The amygdala in the emotional center sees and hears everything that occurs to us instantaneously and is the trigger point for the fight or flight response.

A doctor once told me that with crying you aren't sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don't cry: you scream, you try to run. When it's over and you're OK, that's when you cry.

On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.

Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.

The mind and the body are inextricably entwined, and rarely are their inseparability clearer than when we're under some kind of mental pressure. The moment we start trying to learn a new skill, make a decision or otherwise think on our feet, our nervous system reacts - with accelerated pulse rate, increased respiration, even sweating.

Now the amygdala is our early warning detector, our danger detector. It sorts and scours through all of the information looking for anything in the environment that might harm us. So given a dozen news stories, we will preferentially look at the negative news.

I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.

I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave?

The amygdala is indeed crucial for monitoring our environment and deciding what's worth getting worked up over. Once the amygdala determines this, however, it merely trips another circuit to actually produce the panic.

The first inclination which an animal has is to protect itself

There are two kinds of people in crisis situations - those who fight and those who freeze. I'm a freezer, and that's just going by the couple of surprise birthday parties I've had thrown for me.

Fear, in evolution, has a special prominence: perhaps more than any other emotion it is crucial for survival.

Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.

After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.

The Deer don't dineWhen a Wolf's about,And the PorcupineSticks his quill-points out.

It is a very natural human trait to destroy that which frightens us.