A systems view of biological health

Section 2: Theory

28 : The 40-second rule

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The asymmetry of safety vs danger has a time frame that is about 40 seconds. This makes sure that adrenaline production only starts to ramp down once you are absolutely sure of safety.

… is probably one of the simplest and also most useful pieces of information about re-calibration.

If you are fearful, your heart will start to beat faster, blood pressure rises, more adrenaline and cortisol is produced, and the body gears itself up ready to fight-flight if necessary. Say you realise the loud nose was a paper bag, or what you actually saw was a stuffed lion and not the real thing – then your heart will continue to pound even though your "head" (i.e. cognitive mind) has recognised that the world is safe-enough. This clearly highlights the asymmetry of safety and danger. Pretty well everyone will have experienced how the body ramps up very quickly indeed at the slightest hint of possible trouble; and then takes longer than the mind to calm down again. So it’s clear that the cognitive mind is not really in control of body physiology but nevertheless physiology responds to the cognitive mind.

Exploration of this further reveals that it is possible to imagine all kinds of possible dangers, and these will very slightly raise alert and activation levels. But it’s only certain things are truly activating enough to go past mild tension/anxiety and create a full-blown adrenal fear response. The fear response itself also quite clearly falls into three distinct zones:

1. One where we feel like maybe we can be in control enough, in which case the adrenaline creates an intense experience of living each moment in total clarity. A personal memory of that would be when I used to be a rock climber. One particular pitch I climbed was right on the edge of my physical capacity, and when I reached the top I shook uncontrollably for several minutes as the adrenaline burnt itself off. Or maybe the time I realised I had accidentally strayed into a Tamil hideout while I was on holiday in Sri Lanka and then had to re-trace my steps back through a very dense piece of jungle.

2. When fear goes past a certain point the mental clarity is replaced by mindlessness. I recall one such event – when I was walking in a rather old and gnarly oak forest in South Wales, paused long enough to lose sight of the other people I was with, and was suddenly gripped with an all-consuming terror and panic (Pan being the ancient God of the forest).

3. And at a certain degree of panic and feeling out of control the body gives up and collapses. Another personal memory is being about 5 years old, chased by a much older boy carrying a big stick, and finding my legs refused to hold me up.

The cognitive imagination is so weird that it can imagine danger when it doesn’t exist and can also do a little wishful thinking and imagine safety when actually it’s still dangerous. The body understands this issue with the mind not necessarily being in tune with reality. So your emergency adrenaline (fight-flight) physiology is not hard-coupled with the cognitive mind and even ignores it for a certain length of time – about 40 seconds[1]. If there is a continuous message of "safety" coming from cognitive attention for that full 40 seconds, only then does the internal bodyguard starts to check to see if it is safe. This makes absolute sense because safety and danger are asymmetric. If you adrenaline production calmed down immediately you thought you were safe, then danger could still be lurking. So there is a simple time delay inbuilt into the autonomic nervous system just in case you are tempted to be too careless too quickly.