Post-Survival Adrenaline Release: When ya CAN'T stop talking!

jh, I'm off to bed, but here's the start of a conversation mercop and I had in Prac Tac. He discusses situational visualization, and I posed the questions that guide my own training, which are based on my own experiences and desire to continually improve, and were also based off of mercop's post. I think you'll find mercop's answers enlightening. the psychological factors have to do with survival, whether street or any other, including wilderness. I've been working on adapting tactical mindset training to wilderness stuff in order to teach it, and it runs along these lines.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=535322
 
Here's also a post I did, where I describe a possible scenario, and it includes the feelings of being in a violent encounter, when those feelings interfere and become a negative factor, based on NOT training properly for a worst-case scenario. I did this to dispel the myth that "racking the slide of a pump-action shotgun will send an intruder running in fear." Again, this is tactical, but the feelings and adrenal effects are the same as for any survival/emergency situation:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5361938&postcount=33

We'll explore this more closely as it relates to wilderness survival, too.
 
jh205 said:
That's an interesting point.

For those of you with law enforcement backgrounds (or anyone who is often in confrontational situations in their job), how do you control these types of reactions to adrenaline dump? Also, do these types of reactions interfere with your ability to work effectively?
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I think writing reports helps me with this as an S/O. That and slow response time from PD. You have a few minutes to sit back and take a deep breath, grab a smoke, whatever and then recount the events. Gotta be careful though, you can begin to doubt yourself if you keep telling your story in your head over and over. "Did the guy fire once or twice?" "did I fire at his gun or at his discharge?" "how many roudns did I fire?" Stuff like that.
 
I think it is usually helpful to unload. Empathy is a peculiar human trait and we tend to expect others to empathize with our ordeals, but being told about something is not anything like seeing/experienceing it first hand.

The wife and I were driving down the interstate one morning when we heard/felt BOOOOOM!!! The cement truck we had JUST passed had a blowout on the front left tire, causing it to swerve accross two lanes of traffic, into the median and just started tumbling over and over. If we had been three seconds slower we would have been TOAST! We stopped and called 911 and were going to try and help but a crowd was forming quickly and we saw the driver looked alive and conscious. The whole rest of the day I kept telling the story to people who just kind of seemed bored by the whole thing. I was like, DON"T YOU UNDERSTAND, WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!!
 
See my signature. Author Robert Young Pelton's priceless response to the story in my OP. :D

Blazink, that's a classic reaction. Just like the guy I blabbered to. Not interested. :D
 
1. I'm a lawyer. I constantly find myself wishing I could (have) shut my clients up before they yammered something out in a form that they wouldn't use if they'd sit down and think it through. I mean, even when the truth HELPS you (and, actually, it usually does), it can make a difference how you phrase it.

I remember the advice given by my CCW instructor: after a self-defense incident, the best thing to say may be "I'm really shaken up, and I'm in no condition to think or speak clearly about this now." Which is likely true if you've just had someone try to kill you, and you've had to stop them.

2. When I read your initial post, my thoughts went immediately to a time we had 2 tornadoes pass a little ways north of our apartment. I'd taken shelter in a space under the floor (the building was on an incline, so making a level floor meant leaving 4 feet of space under one side; that space, surrounded by bricks and concrete, was the best shelter available.) I'd invited in another family I'd noticed, standing outside their neighboring building. When they came in, the two who'd just been on the road in their car and had seen the first tornado touch down in the street several yards in front of them COULD NOT STOP TALKING in a loud and excited manner. I was pretty annoyed--the rest of us were trying to listen to a news broadcast to figure out the extent of the damage and the prognosis of additional tornadoes--and we couldn't hear over their talking. At the same time, I had to admit that having a tornado appear in front of one's windshield has to be a pretty good excuse for getting worked-up!
 
Thanks for sharing that J.D. Mercop teaches a good response, too: Say you feel sick to your stomach (because you probably will) and ask for an ambulance. It removes you from the scene and gives you time to think away from others, especially the police.
 
WOW that's a good trick, I never thought of that!

I definitely agree that the more violent or dangerous encounters you have, the more relaxed you are during each new experience.

It takes incredible discipline after a survival experience (or any dramatic or violent event I think) to just shut up and keep doing whatever you should be doing.


I have repeated this phrase many times: "I'm sorry, I am not trying to be difficult but this entire process is confusing and I would like to speak to an attorney before I answer your questions."

I think I said that twenty times out loud on my own before it came up one day and man, that is the single best sentence I ever said in my life!

Second best: "Look, I'm not trying to alarm you but the guy you're talking to is a notorious serial killer and you'd better come with me for your own safety."

I said that to a girl in a bar talking to some guy about seven years ago and we're still going out so that was a pretty good sentence too!


Anyway back to the topic: in my own little minor non-survival experience tuesday where I broke my ankle, representatives from my company tried to get me to immediately (and I mean they were in the ambulance with papers to sign) commit to returning to work after the surgery, doing light duties, regardless of the doctor's advice. They tried to talk to me about the type of work that they would give me and told me I didn't have to follow the doctor's advice about when I could come back to work, that it would result in unreasonable delays, could be a problem at my job in the future, etc...

NO! I will not sign or discuss anything until I speak to the surgeon. I am sure he can provide a timeline for my recovery. That is all.

Fortunately for me one of the guys pulled them out of the ambulance and hopped in with me to ride to the hospital, so instead of having to bite my tongue the whole way I just made sarcastic comments about the situation.

I get REALLY sarcastic when I'm stressed, it turns out!
 
misanthropist said:
Second best: "Look, I'm not trying to alarm you but the guy you're talking to is a notorious serial killer and you'd better come with me for your own safety."

I said that to a girl in a bar talking to some guy about seven years ago and we're still going out so that was a pretty good sentence too!
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We must hang someday. Your style friggin' kills me! LOL! Love it!


NO! I will not sign or discuss anything until I speak to the surgeon. I am sure he can provide a timeline for my recovery. That is all.

Fortunately for me one of the guys pulled them out of the ambulance and hopped in with me to ride to the hospital, so instead of having to bite my tongue the whole way I just made sarcastic comments about the situation.

I get REALLY sarcastic when I'm stressed, it turns out!
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Me, too, especially when post-event idiots show up...:D
 
Return of the J.D. said:
1. I'm a lawyer. I constantly find myself wishing I could (have) shut my clients up before they yammered something out in a form that they wouldn't use if they'd sit down and think it through. I mean, even when the truth HELPS you (and, actually, it usually does), it can make a difference how you phrase it.
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You know, my old lawyer used to say to clients who phoned him after being arrested, "If you haven't said anything other than to identify yourself, and you don't say anything by the time I get there, I'll take your case for $5000. If I get there and you've said a single word, we'll start at ten thousand and go from there."

He said he'd only ever had about five people actually say nothing, and he charged them five thousand bucks and said it was the easiest money he ever made...he just walked in, sorted it out, and off they went.

So keep your mouth shut!
 
It seems many develop an open sewer mouth shortly after SHTF. When I was younger and in the service I found myself not talking about much of anything until it was a forced situation. It was usually much later and in a debriefing type atmosphere.

Just less than two years ago I was involved in a fatal car accident. It was a little surreal and I found myself sitting in the back of my SUV just watching what was happening. When the first few police tried to ask me for details I just told them I felt like I was going to hurl and dizzy. They left me alone for a while and it gave me time to think about what had happened. The one thing I said first was that I didn't feel well, and I wanted to go to the ER. They pull toxicology tests which helped me, and I let everyone else tell the stories. No crowd ever sees everything the same. When I did give details they had heard pieces from others around, and the info I provided fit. They knew my statements were in fact truthful.
 
I doubt anyone can top this. I had a grandmother-in-law (widow of my grandfather) who, at age 60-or-70-something, got romantically involved with a guy maybe in his 40s. Said guy was apparently a drug user and dealer. He moved into her retirement-community house. From the news accounts, he was apparently using her garage to cook methamphetamine.

He also beat her bloody on an occasion or two.

Obviously, the somewhat-distant connections between her and the rest of my family were not such that we could persuade her to move out. But it seems she finally did--with a little help from the DEA and the local drug-enforcement task force.

The cops apparently figured out who was cooking meth in the retirement community. Went in in a pre-dawn raid and arrested both ex-grandmother-in-law and meth-cooking boy toy. My first hint was when I checked my computer and saw the news headline proclaiming a drug bust in a retirement community. I thought, "Nah--it couldn't be them. . . . Could it?" I remember opening the article and seeing the names. "OH, S___!", I said.

I have to hand it to the cops: they handled it brilliantly. They seated ex-grandma-in-law and meth-cooking-boyfriend on the house's front lawn--where the gathering crowd of reporters and TV cameramen proceeded to ask them question after question. The cops didn't even have to waste their own tape. From the coverage I saw, the two arrestees screeched inconsistent and guilt-proving excuse after excuse--TO THE PRESS. I may be a little rusty on what counts as a police interrogation that requires Miranda warnings and (unless waived) presence of one's attorney--but I bet being asked for your story by the TV news on your front lawn isn't it.

Every second of tape, I'm reasonably confident, would be as admissible as Hell. I mean, what more could a police department ask for? We're not talking grainy security-camera footage, or something shot through a two-way mirror: we've got multiple camera angles, good lighting, state-of-the-art sound equipment--and all the cops had to do was walk back and forth in the background, carrying chemicals out of the garage.

Meth-chef-boyfriend said that he'd heard that there were recipes for meth on the internet, was appalled, and had decided to experiment to see if these terrible rumors were true. He seems to have thought that that somehow rendered his meth-making exploit something other than criminal.

I hear that her defense attorney found out what had happened only when he heard the interviews on his car radio.

I had the unique and uncomfortable experience of listening to the radio on the way home, flipping from channel to channel, and hearing incredulous press accounts of this outlaw in-law on every freaking station. I even got to see footage of the county sheriff standing on the front lawn where my little brother and I used to play as kids--he's standing there, pontificating that "Grandmothers should be making cookies--not meth!"

Happily, the courts seem to have sorted things out about right. Ex-grandmother-in-law seems not to have had her house forfeited; may have received some light punishment for some kind of personal drug use, but meth-chef-boyfriend got an appropriately-longer sentence. Which was still not much, but enough to give her room to move him out of her life. She has since straightened her life out pretty well, I gather. As for him, I haven't heard a peep for a few years.
 
Years ago after one of many exciting encounters as a bouncer, I went into my supervisor's office and told him I was a coward. He looked at me like I had three heads. I told him I couldn't stop my knees from shaking after taking someone down. He said "have you ever not gone into a situation". I said no. He then explained adreneline to me, I had never really known about it before even with dozens of SHTF situations.
Adreneline is a crazy thing that has saved my butt more times than I can remember.
 
protourist,

That's a great account. Good boss. A lot of folks never know that the reaction is normal. If someone doesn't have that post-event reaction, they're probably at the very least anti-social, and maybe even psychotic. :D
 
It should be training 101. Once you understand it you can deal better with the situation. Now I understand that a good after event walk, alone just to let myself calm down makes life better for all involved.
It also helps understand others reaction in SHTF situation. You can quickly spot the people who can help and the ones that will freeze.
Yeah he's a great boss and after that talk I realized why he would often disappear into his office to let the adreneline out.
 
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