Fight or flight

Good to be me

Yellow set resource sheet: year 4

Long, long ago life was more dangerous than it is for most people living today.

Just imagine you lived then.

All of a sudden you see …

a ferocious bear.

You need to act very quickly. You don’t have time to think.

Well I don’t know. I’m just going to take a

minute to think about this, should I run? I don’t

want to spoil my new bear skin loincloth - and

maybe it is a friendly bear anyway … AAAARRRGGG!

You need to be able to spot danger and run away or attack the bear very, very quickly.

If we live in a dangerous place we need to make sure that our brain tells us to move out of the way pretty quickly! Luckily the feeling part of the brain does this very well. What it does is look out for THREATS and tells the body very, very quickly what to do. The reason it can work so quickly is that it only has a few ideas about what to do.

… or …

Fight (get ready to fight)

Flight

(get ready to run away)

The feeling part of your brain gets your body ready for action – ready for ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. If you are not careful it stops your brain from

thinking about anything else.