jinasphinx | Adrenal response

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I'm on this mailing list for women swordfighters in the SCA. And on it someone recently asserted that when the fight-or-flight reaction is triggered, men "freak out" and take a while to calm down. Whereas women start calm (or maybe it was get calm very quickly), but then after the event is over, we have the freakout (crying). I haven't heard this before; is this from a study, or widely known in sports?

([Edit:] I thought everyone, male or female, felt like crap when they come down off the adrenaline, because you've just used up your entire supply of adrenaline for the day.)

I tried doing a web search but all I keep finding is that damn tend-and-befriend study.

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From:

walkitout

My adrenaline response has changed a lot over the last few years. I used to do something that I now recognize as very dissociative, which was very useful, but I did not like. In my martial arts class, we do a lot of stuff in a very learn-the-mechanics/get-the-move-right way, and then we do some stuff in a woof-the-student-and-see-if-she-can-cope way. Maybe because I've just gotten so damn much practice at getting adrenalized (dunno if that's a word or not) in such a clearly safe in every way context (it's all fun and games until someone gets poked in the eye), and maybe because it isn't useful to stop feeling my body-in-detail the way I used to (you lose that internal feedback while doing martial arts and it just doesn't work quite as well, in my experience) -- and maybe because I've spent a few more years not being around the sources of my major life problems for a few years -- in any event, I no longer get that float-y feeling I used to get when adrenalized. I still get the time-stop effect, but I now feel the cascade of chemistry internally, and can use it somewhat to my benefit.

It is still not particularly helpful to feel that when the ABS kicks in while driving. Then, you just keep doing the right thing and hope it works.I And I don't know if this is related, but I used to get real chatty as I was coming down; now I get really chat before the high has even crested. You should have heard me in Leavenworth a couple weeks ago.

Speaking of martial arts, we've been doing a log of arm drags lately, and I had a technical question about what to do if someone slipped out of a particular move the one way it is possible to slip out (tightening up does not help). We got down on the mat so Korbett could demonstrate how that works on the ground, then got back up again to do a different maneuver standing up (the move on the ground involves a leg to the hip, and then over the head, which doesn't work so well standing). When we did any kind of floor work a couple years ago, I found it absolutely nerve-wracking, unintuitive and just plain hard. Now, apparently, I just automatically do the right thing, quite calmly (internally and externally), slowly and precisely. Weeeeeeiiiiiirrrrrd. My current theory is that 40+ hours of labor with some very, very close friends did a lot to get me over my remaining body hangups.