Functional Neurological Disorder and the Fight Response

#facingfnd #functionalneurologicaldisorder #alissaanswers

Prefrontal Cortex: responsible for logic and reasoning

Audience Member Question: by Anonymous in Facing FND - It's real! (functional neurological disorder support group)

"Hi there, I am wondering if you post this for me as I don’t want people to judge me or be triggered by this. I have FND since 2023. Have my good days and bad but today was different…. It was violent. Like pulling hair, hitting myself, screaming and biting and hitting myself with my phone in the face repeatedly… m question is am I going crazy or does this happpen to other people too ???????"

Alissa's Answer - Functional Neurological Disorder and the Fight Response

This sounds like the "fight" response. And I have experienced something similar. I would say that it's normal. But explaining why could be a bit of a longer answer.

Understand the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous System.

To understand Functional Neurological Disorder and the Fight Response, we first have to understand that the nervous system in the human body is programmed to have two separate states. The first state is the parasympathetic nervous system. This is your calm rest and digest state that you want to be in most of the time.

The second state is there by God's design for our survival. It is called the sympathetic nervous system. It is responsible for our instinctual survival instincts. I came across a helpful explanation online, but I can’t seem to find it. If I remember right the amygdala is heavily involved with FND. When the mind senses a threat, the amygdala automatically pumps out whatever chemicals, such as adrenaline, that the body needs to deal with the threat. The result is the “FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, or FAWN” response. Different people seem to be wired in different ways as far as their go-to response. For example, as an abuse survivor and combat veteran, my husband is a “fighter”. That’s how his brain has best been taught to keep him safe. So when he is triggered, very often the instinctual fight response comes out first. I’m different, and I would dare say most of us with FND are different. For me, the freeze response often instinctually comes out first.

FND hijacks and amplifies the Amygdala’s response.

You have to understand one more thing before I finish this explanation. Picture a normal person walking through the woods. There is a noise in the bushes, and a bunny pops out in the path. They might be a little surprised, but very quickly their mind judges it as no big deal, and they continue on in their parasympathetic, calm, rest and digest nervous system state. However if a bear or a mountain lion jumps out in front of them, their mind responds appropriately to the threat by triggering the amygdala to jump start the “FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, FAWN” response. And that lets them instinctually survive the situation without having to think too hard about it.

Also note that when a brain is triggered like this, the prefrontal cortex (responsible for reasoning) basically stops working, and the body is governed more by the “lizard brain” instincts. Talking to a triggered person you’ll find they aren’t always very rational, and that’s because they literally can’t be. They essentially lost access to that part of the brain. And remember it takes 20 minutes to calm down enough for someone to switch back to the parasympathetic calm state.

In FND the brain could have the same response to a bunny appearing on the path as it would to a bear. FND hijacks and amplifies the Amygdala’s response to threat.

It's instinctual.

Another thing you have to understand is that triggering the Amygdala is INSTINCTUAL. The mind perceives a threat and boom the amygdala is triggered. It’s not like it's a conscious process that you have control over just by thinking extra hard or something. And yes it’s torture when you have to live through it. Since it is instinctual, the way to start preventing it is by eliminating the triggers themselves for a time until your brain heals. (Refer to my other post about brain pathways and how to rewire the brain.) Probably about 95% of our daily actions are governed by the subconscious brain which is the home of our habits. Ever wonder why it takes x amount of days to form a new habit? It’s because you have to rewire your brain. The subconscious mind is going to choose the easiest pathway, the one that is the biggest and most often used. It takes the conscious mind to choose a different smaller pathway. Remember the more you use a pathway the bigger it gets and the more likely it is for the subconscious mind to choose it habitually. The less you use a pathway the more it gets overgrown and the less likely the subconscious mind will choose it habitually. Remember that in FND the brain has created a pathway from the emotional center to the movement center that should NOT be there. And to heal from FND you literally have to rewire your own brain. You do this by avoiding triggers that would cause your brain to use the bad pathway. And instead do things that use the good pathways that you want your subconscious to choose habitually in the future. Enlarge the good pathways with use. Reduce the bad pathway by not using it. 

How are you wired?

How are you wired with the “FIGHT, FLIGHT, FREEZE, FAWN” response? What comes out in you first? As opposed to my husband who automatically goes to “fight” for survival, I often automatically go to “freeze”. This accounts, in my opinion, for many of my FND symptoms such as falling down, stuttering, foggy brain, etc.

Here’s the big aha moment. Tell me in the comments if you guys agree with this hypothesis or not.

In my personal experience I have noticed that if my body has gone into “freeze” response (meaning I can no longer flee) and my mind still senses a threat I’ve only got two responses left… fawn or fight. If something in my environment is uncontrollable and making me angry I could go directly into my last perceived threat response… and that’s fight mode. It’s automatic. It’s visceral. And after it’s over it’s so unsettling to think about.

Here’s a personal example. I have extreme noise sensitivity as one FND symptom. My husband has a loud voice in general. And he has terrible PTSD. If he’s triggered he might raise his voice as his automatic “fight” response. (PTSD is kind of similar to FND in that the amygdala gets triggered inappropriately through no fault of their own, and the PTSD response in combat veterans is often fight.) Anyway, we were in a vehicle in an enclosed space, and his PTSD clashed with my FND. He kept shouting at the top of his lungs and wouldn’t stop. We were in an enclosed space, and I had extreme noise sensitivity. I couldn’t block out the noise or escape from it. And I couldn’t deal with it. “Fawning” or kindly reminding him about my noise sensitivity wouldn’t work. So my body goes directly into fight mode. I happened to have a cup of warm coffee. And, desperate to make the noise stop, I dumped it on him. (He’s fine. But that wasn’t correct behavior on both of our parts. And yet it was instinctual due to FND and PTSD both being triggered at the same time.) Over the years I’ve probably thrown and broken one or two coffee cups on the floor on other occasions when he was being loud and I couldn’t move. But by far the most common fight symptom was screaming at the top of my lungs. The amygdala just dumped so much stuff into my blood that the response was so incredibly strong. Screaming gave me a little relief.

Lack of blood flow to the brain can make your head feel foggy.

Now let me address the hitting yourself in the head symptom. I think you might be instinctually trying to increase blood flow to the brain. I think I probably banged my head with my palm on occasion, but it’s not a symptom that stands out as super often in my memory.

Try these positions that help boost blood flow to the brain.

What does stand out is the position in which I found relief. I have two. And both stimulate blood flow to the brain.

Position number 1: is just lying flat on the floor.

Position number 2: is kneeling on my knees with my elbows on the floor in front of me and my head resting on my forearms. This position is very helpful. It directs blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.

I have a theory that part of FND involves reduced blood flow to the brain. But that is a discussion for another day.