Hide or Seek Stress Responses

Behavioural Manifestations in Modern Times

Introduction

This is somewhat speculative on my part, is me “thinking out loud”, and is up for feedback and discussion, but is based on my own inner experiences, and detailed observations of, and discussions with, lots of other people experiencing various states of dysregulation

We hear a lot about the stress, or fear, responses: fight, flight or freeze. We may have even heard of fawn, appeasement or feign responses,

The Fawning and Appeasement Survival Responses

Having lived in a care home, with folks moving through different stages of dysregulation, I’ve observed more subtle forms of responses to stress or fear, which don’t quite fit the descriptions of the more familiar ones. I refer to two of these as “hide or seek”, which fall somewhere between fight/flight and freeze, possibly including aspects of both.

Hide

Hide is the successful culmination of a flight response. The best analogy I can come up with is imagery from documentaries about meerkats. When the scouts of the meerkat tribe out in the open detect and signal a threat, they all run away and go down their burrows to hide, and await for the danger to pass. Presumably, they feel safe in the burrows. Rabbits are another example. This hide – relax - re-emerge behaviour can be repeated many times a day in the animal kingdom.

We also know from horror or war films and thrillers what “hide” responses look like in humans. While the freeze response that occurs when caught out in the open - here is an opossum in so called tonic immobility, death feigning or “thanotosis”

- tends to be a highly dissociative experience, with significant cognitive and sensory impairment, a person hiding behind a wall, say, is still alert, very conscious of what is happening, actively listening, and ready and primed to run again if they are detected. They may voluntarily hold their breath if the danger is near, whereas in freeze, the respiratory suppression is automatic. The person hiding can relax once the danger passes, and then re-emerge into the open, like the meerkats.

Stuck in Hiding

In our modern society, there are many dangers we may want to hide from, including social dangers, such as embarrassing, awkward, or confrontational situations, feeling shame, bullies at school or work, the threat of losing our job, etc. In many cases, these modern types of dangers may be ever present in specific locations, such that the perceived threat never passes, and hence folks can get stuck in the hide response. Either they can never relax, or they can only relax while still in their “burrow”, but never feel safe in re-emerging into the world.

This stuckness might manifest as agoraphobia, not wanting to leave the safety of the house, or hiding in the toilets. In the care home, I have witnessed residents getting very agitated if they are taken out of their room for room cleaning purposes, beg to be allowed to return, and can’t relax until they are back in there. Hide responses may manifest as many other avoidant behaviours too, such as avoiding conflicts. I think procrastination may also be a hallmark of being stuck in hiding mode, e.g. putting off of opening letters.

Hikikomori

In Japan, they have a special term, for a specific phenomenon, Hikikomori,

“a form of severe social withdrawal… frequently described in Japan… characterized by adolescents and young adults who become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years”.

Collective Hiding

I believe we all witnessed and experienced a mass “hide” stress or fear response during the pandemic. Indeed, the lockdowns and shutdowns were, in my view, humanity going into hiding from a respiratory virus, to await the danger to pass.  Masking too was in part, a form of hiding from other people, then perceived as a life-threatening danger, as well as hiding our faces from being able to be read by others.

I feel, and know people who admit, that these measures suited quite a lot of people who were already stuck in a hide stress response, as it brought them some extended relief, which helps explain why some folks were vehement proponents of them, and wanting them to continue indefinitely.

For those of us who felt that hiding away was an entirely inappropriate, and hence dangerous (to job security/income, mental health, nourishing relationships, personal freedoms), response to the particular stressor, this enforcement of hiding as a stress behaviour was, in itself, very stressful and frightening.

Seek

Conversely, the “seek [help]” stress response occurs when someone can’t escape a dangerous situation on their own, yet the danger isn't so imminent that a full freeze response is required. A baby crying could be a prime example of this seek response.

In the movies, the “seek help” stress response is played out when say someone is stuck in quicksand, or has fallen over and broken their leg and is vulnerable to predators, is in a building on fire. Basically, the main manifestation of the seek response is to scream or call out in order to attract attention help from other members of the tribe. So the “seek” response co-opts social engagement functions, namely vocalization, for defence. While the hide response is associated with “flight”, seek is more associated with “fight”.

I have witnessed “seek” responses manifesting, mainly in the people here in various states of advanced dementia, as constantly shouting out or banging until someone comes. They may be quite immobile in body, but not completely shutdown, and are still able to access parts of the social engagement system to loudly attract attention in ways which, it seems to me, require a lot of energy. The person is then soothed while someone else is present, but begins making noises again as soon they leave.

For the folks in the home, being stuck in a seek mode loop and the resulting habitualized constant need to shout out to try to get some relief through the presence of other people, is a manifestation of the maladaptive culture we now live in. In our ancestral days, we would very seldom be alone or far from other members of the tribe. Nowadays we abandon vulnerable and old people and put them in isolated rooms out of sight. Our nervous system just wasn't designed to cope with this.

Various attention seeking behaviours in children could be another example of the seek response. Far from manifestations of being “naughty”, these behaviours may actually be cries for help due to a child feeling unsafe or fearing abandonment if they are not being seen or heard by adults.

Information Seeking in Response to Stress

Another way in which seek responses may arise, especially in ongoing stressful situations where the stress is due to there being a lot of uncertainty or unknowns, is in a need to constantly seek more information or data. In essence, this is still calling for help from other people, but via their wisdom, knowledge, or research they have generated.

As seeking and finding behaviours feed into our dopaminergic motivation and reward systems, the danger with information seeking as a stress response, is that it can be addictive. This can therefore backfire if going down rabbit holes becomes compulsive or obsessive, since this keeps the stressor constantly front of mind, and foster the sense of imminent danger, such that the seeker may never be able to relax. This can especially happen if the information confirms there is a potential future hazard, but there is nothing the person can do about it (the knowledge isn’t actionable).

Safety in Numbers

In stressful situations which arise due to a division or differences of opinion between factions, folk may also get relief through seeking safety in numbers, by finding like minded others.

Trauma and Body Memories

Too many stressful episodes in the past may also get us stuck in hide or seek behaviours, where the past stressful events penetrate into our experiences of what is happening in the present. So we may hide from our past through distractions, or seek relief or escape in addictive behaviours.

When something major and traumatic happens which challenges our worldview, we can see both responses manifest at different levels in different people. One response is to hide from the truth, and adopt an “I don’t want to know” attitude, and the other is to constantly seek confirming or dis-confirming information, and an urgent “I need to know” stance.

These two opposing strategies have not only been starkly manifest in the past couple of years, but they have also come in to conflict. Those who defaulted to hide and wait for the danger to pass, felt endangered by those seekers of relief through questioning and problem solving, as this felt like being forced to confront, and being exposed to, the very danger being hid from. Meanwhile, those who defaulted to seek answers and solutions felt endangered by those who escaped through hiding, as the seekers then couldn’t find enough of a feeling in safety in numbers.

In particular, I have seen very negative reactions when seekers attempt to bring more and more data and information to try to get the hiders in their family and friends groups, to face the problems. Unfortunately, this just sent them further into hiding, and they became ever more avoidant of the seekers, eventually ending up as ostracization, silencing and censoring. This, in turn, just ratcheted up the sense of danger for the seekers, who tended to double down on the bombarding with data, and in an increasingly raised, frustrated tone of voice. So each “side” ended up defeating each others strategy for relief, and everyone remained stressed.