110 – Herbal Support for the Fight Response

Welcome to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast with your host, Nicole Rose from the

solidarity apothecary.

This is your place for all things plants and

liberation.

Let's get started.

Hello.

Welcome back to the Frontline Herbalism

podcast.

As ******* life would have it.

It's been a really gnarly week.

My baby boy has been really, really sick with a really high fever and it's been frightening

as ****.

And we, yeah, even took him to hospital

because he'd vomited and his fever was like well over 39 degrees.

And yeah, it's just been.

And yeah, I'm on my own with him largely.

Like my ex did come to hospital with me.

But yeah, it's been tough, like nursing him every day on my own and he's, you know,

desperately been clinging to me, bless him, because he feels so unwell.

So I had this fantasy of promoting the herbalism PTSD and traumatic stress course and

coming on every day and doing an episode about the soothing survival series and the nervous

system states.

And then I was going to do a series about nerve tonics and.

And yeah, just didn't happen.

I find it's weird, like something gnarly

always happens in this, like, promotion period.

And it's almost like I'm just like, viscerally reminded again about, like, why this course is

so important because life is life and you're constantly dealing with challenges sometimes

and,

you know, like recording an episode about the fight response and then getting a message from

the nursery being like, he's got a 39 degree FE fever and he's vomiting.

Like you need to collect him right now and just feeling that instantaneous, like, surge

of adrenaline.

Yeah, it's very interesting, like how,

yeah, you get those reminders and obviously I live in a privileged state that I'm not in

that response like every single day.

Like loads of people are who are surviving

really hardcore situations.

And if you haven't listened to the introduction to the series, please go back and

listen to that because I talk about the,

you know, like, the necessity of these nervous system responses and that they aren't a

binary.

There isn't like a good and bad one.

It's just, yeah, like we've evolved for survival and they're like, extremely useful.

And this was quite a good example of me needing to be in a fight response where I was

activated and able to sustain my energy long into the night because of the adrenaline in

terms of taking care of my baby in hospital.

So,

yeah, anyway, it's been, it's been grim, but I'm gonna Yeah, just kind of dive into this

part of the episode and this like, yeah, this soothing survival state.

So the second one I've already talked about the flight response and now I'm going to talk

about the fight state.

And obviously these are very similar and you

know, they're like, not like, it's not like you can just have one state and then you flick

to another one.

Like they're obviously super connected.

But yeah, like the,

the survival strategy is ob.

Being able to fight physically and protect ourselves and defend ourselves.

So I made a little joke in the last episode about the guy in the screen mask running at

the person,

you know, and she runs away, right, of course she runs into the ******* basement.

But that makes good tv.

But the instinct is to run away from danger.

You know, you see a bear or a shark, that's

what you're going to do.

But when you're unable to flee, we commonly kick into the fight response.

So yeah, this is when our body is like mobilizing energy to defend and protect

ourselves, which can be extremely ******* life saving.

But as I mentioned in the introduction, these states are challenging when we're not actually

in that hardcore survival mode and when they kind of become stuck.

So like a fight,

like a stuck fight response can look like sort of regular feelings of anger and irritation

and tension and aggression, maybe even rage.

And the world can feel basically dangerous and threatening and it feels like the world is

demanding of a fight.

You know, you might notice like embodied habits such as feeling attacked by others,

even if that wasn't their intention.

And you know, you might perceive someone who is potentially actually not, not threatening

you, but you might feel that they're very threatening.

Because you are in this activated state,

there might be like a tendency to kind of generate conflict or escalate conflict.

And there's often this sensation of finding like the smallest thing, like incredibly

stressful.

And you know, people often express this state like, and this anger through objects like

slamming doors,

you know, banging things like punching,

punching doors or walls or whatever.

And yeah, unfortunately this state really

correlates with a lot of like patterns of abuse.

And when someone is in this state regularly, it can feel very frightening and unacceptable

to other people.

And I think it's worth naming that like.

And it's a whole other podcast episode around

differentiating what is just kind of trauma and emot dysregulation and someone,

you know, kind of not being in control,

so to speak, of those nervous system responses.

And then what is someone being kind of like skillfully and purposefully abusive and Then

what is just the impact of someone's nervous system state, like, when someone is in the

fight response, okay, it might be something that is actually autonomic.

It's not that they're in control of that necessarily,

but that doesn't mean it's not going to have an impact on the people around them.

And I mentioned in the last episode of the flight response that people socialized as

female or women are, like, commonly,

often it's, like, socially acceptable to go into a flight response where you burst into

tears, for example, when you feel threatened.

And I think for people socialized as men,

unfortunately, because of kind of toxic masculinity and patriarchy,

the kind of default,

socially acceptable nervous system state is anger.

Right.

Like, there's a lot of rage and anger.

And,

yeah, that becomes the kind of, like, normative baseline for someone experiencing

distress is to be angry at everyone and everything.

And if you've grown up with men in that state, you'll know it's horrible and is traumatic for

people.

So, yeah, it's a real challenge.

But I can also see how this nervous system

state is often very kind of, like, criminalized and very taboo.

And it's very unfortunate if someone has been, like, socialized in that way and then

experiences trauma and then, you know, they get into fights,

and that lens lands them in prison, and then they get into fights with prison officers, and

that lands them in solitary confinement.

And it's like they might not have had the

nervous system tools growing up to navigate overwhelming emotions or shift themselves out

of a fight state.

So, yeah,

I think it's very challenging.

And I think the fight state is like, yeah, one

of the kind of more difficult nervous system states.

And I think for me, on a personal level, it's definitely more of my default.

And, yeah, just my poor ex, when we took our baby to hospital,

I just was at him, like, I was just down his throat about everything.

Like, he couldn't do anything right.

And I was obviously in a real fight flight

response, like, the whole day thinking, my baby's really sick.

And it was really re.

Triggering of when we're in hospital with him

before for a week and my labor and all the things.

But, you know, I. I obviously apologize to Rob, being like, I'm sorry, like, I've just

been horrible today.

And, you know, like, it takes some skill and nuance to know that you've been like that and

to be accountable for it and to try and, like, access a more safe and social state.

But, yeah, I think it is.

I think it's Very, very challenging to move

through it, but there are definitely, like, tools in the toolbox that can help.

So, yeah, like, you know, some of the practices, again, it's like, I know it's not

possible for everyone to embrace, like, all forms of movement, but I think channel.

Channeling that energy into movement is really good.

For example, even just like, hitting a pillow or running or dancing or, you know, like,

pouring energy into a kind of, like, creative expression, whether that's like singing really

loudly or mcn or drumming,

like, you know, like, I grew up in the hardcore scene, and I think it was just like a

bunch of angry teenagers who are just like, full of fight, flight energy.

And a show was like, a safe space to just, like, express that through people dancing and

kicking off and moshing or whatever and stage diving and doing all the things.

But that was, like, such a healthy way that we could move, like, through those feelings, if

that makes sense.

And,

yeah, you know, and then obviously, kind of similar to the flight response, like,

you know, the goal is prevention, right, of not getting into this state.

And we can do that with steadying ourselves with whatever practices feel helpful.

You know, whether that's connecting with the land or animals or being supported by someone

feels steady.

Someone who feels steady to us.

It's worth saying, like, when someone is in a kind of like, hyperactivated flight of flight

or fight response, like,

you have a different kind of like,

Like a different sensation of how close people are to you.

And,

like, people think, oh, do you need a hug? But actually, most people in this nervous

system state really need space.

And I talk about this in the herbalism PTSD

traumatic stress course,

which is why, like, when there's, like, a volatile situation, for example, with the

police and they put their hands on you, that's when people often just, like, bang, kick off.

And that's because,

yeah, your kind of sensation of space and, like, physical autonomy is really important.

And they say even now with, like, a toddler, for example, who's distressed,

they might not actually want that cuddle because they just need to actually flail their

arms around and run around and cry.

And then when they're ready, you give them

that little cut, you know?

So, yeah, I think it's.

I think it's super interesting.

But, yeah, there's so much more to say about that.

But I do, you know, I wax lyrical about it plenty in course,

but the herb that I have associated with this state is lemon balm.

So a little bit like mother war.

Lemon balm is, like, very fast acting, so it

can Help us shift into a more like calm parasympathetic state.

And the volatile oils like act directly on the limbic system, which is like the part of the

brain that governs like emotion and behavior.

And you know, and that makes it really helpful for tension and irritation and stress.

And it's so interesting like, because when I got after, after I'd picked up the baby from

the nursery and was waiting for the call back from the doctor before we went to hospital,

like it would literally I grabbed the lemon balm from the cupboard because I could feel

the adrenaline in my blood.

And not that I didn't need to be in that state, but I was like too activated.

Does that make sense? I was too distressed.

I wasn't making good decisions.

I was doing everything too quickly.

I wasn't tuning into my baby's needs because I was so activated.

And so I took a giant ******* swig of lemon balm glycerite and calmed the **** down and

breathed and then started making better decisions, packing the hospital bag, doing the

things that kind of like need that, like prefrontal cortex,

like organization,

energy.

Does that make sense?

So yeah, so I'll talk a little bit more about lemon balm.

So yeah, so lemon balm is cooling,

which is, you know, makes it perfect for when we're like in this kind of inflamed activated

state.

It's also got like such a lush affinity with the gut.

And I think so many people just experience stress straight in their gut,

you know, and they have like bad flare ups of health challenges like through any emotional

stress.

And you know, like this kind of gut brain axis

is just so ******* powerful and we're only like 1% into the research of how connected

this all is.

But yeah, lemon balm can definitely help with that kind of like chronic activation and

chronic inflammation as much as it can in this kind of like acute like hyper stressful

situation.

And I feel like lemon balm is like one of these kind of like joy herbs, a bit like St.

John's Wort, where just like is uplifting.

And I think when someone is in a fight

response for too long,

you just get a bit battle fatigue.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just like the, like people just hate the world, hate everyone, think everyone is out to

get them, that there's nothing good, like there's no way out.

And you know, I see this a lot for people who've left prison because when you're in

prison you're like constantly in fight or flight generally.

Like sometimes you might relax when you're locked in.

But,

yeah, like, people can get really stuck in this state of just feeling constantly

threatened.

And I think lemon balm is just this, like,

nice reminder that, like, there is a possibility to kind of rest and to play,

and it's, like, quite enhancing to the mood.

And, yeah, I think it's very indicated for people in that state.

And, you know, it has all these other, like, amazing antiviral properties and stuff.

And the herb, herbalism, PTSD and traumatic stress course, like, goes into these plants

in, like, so much more detail, like, comprehensive plant profiles.

So I'm gonna leave it there and I'm gonna shamelessly plug again that.

The course is open for enrollment until Monday, 13 October.

If you're listening to this in the future, you can go to the waiting list.

It opens every March and September each year.

That's the system at the moment, at least.

So, yeah.

Please sign up if you're interested.

And yeah, thanks for listening.

Take care.

Thanks so much for listening to the Frontline Herbalism Podcast.

You can find the transcript, the links, all the resources from the

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