Under pressure

Emergency procedures need to be routine, so when stress shows up, the automatic reaction is appropriate. How do we do that?

• Understand how stress generates in your brain.
• Recognize your body’s signs of overload.
• Adopt techniques into your preflight plan to keep it together under extreme pressure.

What signs indicate you are under the influence of extreme stress? In extreme stress, the sympathetic nervous system—responsible for the freeze, flight, or fight response—begins distributing resources throughout the body to prepare for the presumed physical wrangling. Adrenaline inundates the bloodstream, and the heart pounds in a rush to send blood to our muscles. Sweating happens. Chemicals flood the brain to prepare to deaden the pain. Your mouth goes dry, and you become nauseated. At this point, fear shuts down your ability to think logically, and you feel as if you’re losing control. Here are some techniques to employ:

Conditioning. To effectively habituate to an intense fear is to experience the stimulus frequently and steadily. In aviation, we habituate to specific emergencies. During primary training, our flight instructor purposely stalls the airplane methodically. Hence, the student experiences the sensation of a stall, its associated stress/fear response, and, most important, how to recover safely. With routine exposure to what we fear—without harm to ourselves—the positive outcome will override the amygdala’s fear associations.

Rote drills. Assume higher executive functions will take a hike under extreme pressure or fear; therefore, we must train our automatic response system to know what to do. Green Beret officer Rob Smithee once said, “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.”

Be prepared. To resist real-world stress, we must be mentally and physically fit. Our ability to manage fear improves when we are well-rested, eat properly, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Acceptance. Accepting that you may panic in an emergency is half the challenge; drawing from that recognition to plan around your shortcomings is critical. Psychologists call mental shortcuts heuristics; pilots call them checklists.

Simple motor patterns are stored in the amygdala; therefore, no input from the thinking part of the brain is necessary. Because the amygdala will always react to novelty as a threat, and because it will always be our “first responder” in an emergency, it is critical that our emergency skills are as automatic as walking and chewing gum.

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