Have you ever found yourself on the fireline, feeling overwhelmed? Or maybe you felt fully in control, hyped up with adrenaline. Your body and brain may not have been in alignment, but you charged on. Perhaps you’ve felt angry, or as if you wanted to run away, or your brain was foggy, or even a bit lethargic and physically unable to keep up. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar? Now, recall a traumatic fire event in which you were involved; how did you respond?

I’ve written a lot about the autonomic nervous system and the importance of understanding its involvement in wildland fire. Just being a wildland firefighter puts people at a higher risk for nervous system overwhelm and dysregulation, especially with the unprecedented wildland fire seasons we’re experiencing. That’s why it’s important to understand your default state of survival, and how best to mitigate and manage when your autonomic nervous system gets overwhelmed. Understanding how you respond under duress and when you’re overwhelmed can be essential to your health and wellness, and especially to your safety on the fireline.

I remember the 1982 fire season; I was assigned to a wildfire in the Capitan Mountains in New Mexico. It was a lightning fire and several members of the Smokey Bear Hotshot crew and the Capitan Helitack crew I was on were flown into the fire. We had dug fireline for most of the day, finally bedding down about 2200 hours. We had only our sleeping bags, and I was the only female.

As usual, I could not go right to sleep. Somehow, I had convinced myself that a bear was going to come into our sleeping area because we had seen fresh bear scat. About midnight, I started hearing bushes rattling and twigs breaking and was convinced that the bear was coming to get me.

I lay in my sleeping bag, frozen in fear. Then came the growls; they seemed to get closer and louder, and I lay frozen. I started whispering to my crew mates, “Dan, is that you, do you hear that?” Nothing. Then, “Brian, do you hear that?” I went around to several others but there were no replies. After about 30 minutes, the growls subsided, but I still lay awake, my heart beating, my palms sweaty. The next morning it became apparent that the growling had been one of the crewmembers snoring loudly. I had been frozen in the survival response of hypoarousal or dorsal vagal parasympathetic shutdown; my nervous system was trying to keep me safe and out of harm’s way.

When we’re stable and not dealing with the chaos and trauma of wildfire, our autonomic nervous system falls into a normal range within our window of tolerance. The window of tolerance refers to the optimal zone of emotional and physiological arousal when a person can function effectively while managing stress; it’s where we feel functional, clarity, safety, stability, grounded, and able to make decisions. If you were to use a stoplight as an analogy, the window of tolerance would be green; it’s the place we want to practice being, where we feel that we can deal with the chaos and bounce back from adversity. When trauma and stress shrink your window of tolerance, it doesn’t take much to throw you off balance, to become overwhelmed and dysregulated. Everyone’s window of tolerance is different, and factors that can affect it include past trauma, neurobiology, and social support.

When we are stressed or overwhelmed, our window of tolerance shrinks, activating the sympathetic survival mode, referred to as hyperarousal, or red, meaning STOP; we feel activated, triggered, want to fight or flee. Red is where we are so activated or anxious that we can’t make rational decisions because our prefrontal cortex (cognitive brain) has gone offline. Red is a place of anxiety, hyperarousal, hypersensitivity, and overwhelm. Our stress hormones are in overdrive, and our system wants to keep us safe. Yet, this state can be detrimental and unsafe in a fire situation.

Then there’s the parasympathetic dorsal vagal survival mode, also known as hypoarousal, where we tend to freeze, shut down and collapse, often unable to move or speak, and a dangerous place to be in a fast-moving wildfire. Hypoarousal is where you might feel spaced out and even numb; it’s often where depression occurs because our nervous system is trying to slow down to keep us safe.

These reactions are not something we choose, they just take over, leaving us little control, other than learning to manage and mitigate their effects. Once you begin to pay attention, being mindful of how you respond to trauma and stress, you will be better able to handle different nervous system states. Awareness is the first step. Step two would be paying attention to where you feel these responses in your body. What does anger feel like in your body, and where do you feel it? What does flight mode feel in your body and where is it located? What about freeze and shut down? Where do you notice it in your body?

Once we begin to recognize our unique survival default state, we can work with our nervous system, helping it become stronger and more resilient for when danger happens. The nervous system becomes your personal warning system. Most importantly, you want to begin practicing coping techniques and tools before you are dealing with chaos; doing so makes it easier to defer to the skills when your body and brain are in survival mode. Everyone’s coping skills and tools will be different, so please find what works for you and throw out the rest.