That night, I was able to fall asleep but it took a while. The following night, I had two drinks and fell asleep fairly quickly, but at 2am my eyes sprang open and my heart was pounding. I lay in bed for hours, thinking every creak and thump I heard was someone trying to break into our home. My husband stayed behind. Even in our weekend home miles away, I feared the killers were lurking outside, and at night the heart-pounding fear returned. I felt like a coward, the kind Ernest Hemingway wrote about with contempt, while my husband, the real target, slept soundly and went to work, unfazed.
Yet it turns out that the difference between us is not moral but fiercely biological, the result of the well-known fight and flight response, which revs the hormone epinephrine, increasing blood flow in the body and focus in the brain, all the better for an accurate hair-trigger response.
After all, the desire to be fearless goes out the window when cognitive thinking is impaired. In the days of the hunter gatherer, the response made sense.
There is method to the madness, David Baldwin, an Oregon-based trauma psychologist, has found. In the tumult of the fight response, blood moves more to the jaw and arms, while in the flight response, it moves more into the legs. In fact, his recent paper, published last year in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews , lists five reactions in all — freeze-alert; flight; fight; freeze-fright; and collapse — and we experience them in just that order, depending on the level of threat.
The system is flexible, and automatic: severe stress causes the thinking part of the brain, the cortex, to go offline, Baldwin says, while the primitive brain takes control. After an explosion from a terrorist attack, for instance, if fleeing is an option, we might do that first.
If we think we can win, we might fight. When neither fight nor flight seems like an option, we might stay frozen or even collapse, just as someone might do in a bear attack. W hile I fixated on the fear that I was being stalked in the country, my husband stayed in town. He went to work, went for jogs, and slept easily at night. I suggested he come to the country house, but he declined.
The second night in the country house, I drank martinis hoping it would help me sleep. But I woke up at about 3am, chilled by that thought that the killers had put a GPS tracking device under my car and followed me up to the weekend house, assuming my husband was there. I heard the wind howling, the leaves blowing, and thought the killers were trying to get in. I thought about a gang retaliation, where shooters had targeted the window of the wrong home, murdering the wrong guy.
Could these killers mistake me for my husband and murder me in my sleep? I finally fell asleep at about am and had a nightmare. About half an hour later, my son woke up and wanted his pacifier. The more they try to do, the more they have to think about. They have more meetings, more calls to make, more emails to read and send, and more commitments to obsess over. Once they actually let go of some of the fear, they can free up the time to do the things that truly inspire and invigorate them.
Cowards use drama to distract others from the fact that they need to step up, apologise and take responsibility. Sympathy points are the coward currency and they want to make you pay. Blaming someone else puts them in the position of a victim who is not in control.
This is an energy-draining, counterproductive way of dealing with difficult circumstances. Cowards only see information that agrees with their beliefs. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them.
This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. They understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself. When someone blame-shifts, there is an understandable temptation to explain yourself, defend your name, and prove your point.
However, the problem is that this is exactly what a coward wants you to do. By sucking you into these arguments, they are consuming your energy and watching you progressively self-destruct, so they can use your reactions to prove their own points. If you are dealing with a coward, you can walk away. In fact, calming stating you are no longer interested in playing this game, taking your bat and ball and leaving is the most powerful thing you can do.
If you are struggling with courage in decision-making, there is a quick go-to that might help you. Instead of making a decision and putting your time and energy into what you need to do, you tend to put all of your energy into worrying. You feel trapped, powerless and hopeless to improve your situation, when in reality, not making a decision — is also a decision.
Love based decisions are about going after what we want. They are based on knowing and accepting that failing is not the end of the world. Is this what I truly want or am I just trying to keep certain people happy? Choosing love over fear takes practice. It takes awareness, courage, strength, and persistence. It takes all of the things you already have, and it will make this entire world a better place!
I have not in the world the name of a coward , and yet I am the greatest coward here. A grand victory all right, if that coward of a sheriff hadn't got the Governor to send the militia to Homestead. He was thought brave, for no man in the Ozarks dared to stand up against him in a fight, but at heart he was a coward.
I had forgotten for the moment that the cop was a coward ; but Burke didn't waste a bit of time in bringing back my memory. New Word List Word List. Save This Word! What does bravery symbolize? What are the attributes of a courageous person? What is a good encouraging Bible verse? What God tells Joshua? What promises did God give to Joshua?
How many times did God encourage Joshua? What is the message of Joshua? What does the book of Joshua teach us? Why is Joshua important in the Bible? What is the message of judges? Next Article How Mickey Mouse was created?
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