Fight or Flight

I was so angry I could not calm down. For more than two hours. The medical insurance bureaucracy wouldn’t let me easily fill a prescription. But what did I expect? After all I did sign up for an HMO…seemed like a good idea at the time back in 2004, but five years later, I realized that it cost more and provided less. In the hotel room, I was furious and let the folks on the phone know about it. I was desperate. I had an staph infection, I had been told. Staph sounds bad. I needed medication. And I wanted my medical benefits to kick in, even though I was 2000 miles from home. It took 45 minutes and speaking to about 5 bureaucrats to get temporary permission to fill a prescription at the local HMO pharmacy, and in the end, I only saved $30.00. THIRTY STINKING BUCKS! All that anger for nothing. No savings. Didn’t help anyone. Certainly didn’t help me. I had lots of trouble seeing straight as I drove in haste to the pharmacy in that strange overgrown suburb with tree-lined streets. My chest was tight, my vision was narrowed and my heart was racing. Couldn’t go to sleep as my body surged with adrenaline.

I was having a “fight or flight” response. I could not reason for a long while. As I learned reading Deep Survival (Gonzales, Deep Survival, 2003) recently, my amygdala was pumping out adrenaline because danger was emotionally recognized. Yet I could not reason because the neocortex (seat of reason and logic) moves at a slower pace than the emotions. Did I take a few minutes? No. Did I count to 25? No. Did I pray? Sadly, no. I raged at the bureaucracy, got myself wound up for nothing. I look back at that incident with regret and some wisdom. Let me tell you. I am not ashamed of emotions. I realize that God gave them to me. They are not right, they are not wrong, they just are. However, emotions flow from experiences and values and thoughts. In the cool light of day, and after nearly 18 months, I can say, I was angry because I was not in control. I was angry because I did not trust God sufficiently to meet all my needs. I recall now that "my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19)."

©2010 Ray Woolridge