Sink, Swim, Or Sleep: Why Some People Respond To Stress With Sleep

May 28, 2018 by apost team

Have you ever found yourself overcome with exhaustion following stressful events like arguments or receiving bad news? If so, you may be wondering how you can just fall asleep immediately after such events when everything you’ve ever learned about human biology dictates you should be hyped up with an influx of hormones.

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My husband and I were arguing about finances not long after we’d been married. It became a mildly heated debate, enough so that voices were raised, heads bobbed, and hands waved for a few minutes. My adrenaline was pumping, and I was ready to figuratively fight for my points. He, however, suddenly began to yawn. Within moments, he’d given up on the discussion and his heartfelt points and fell fast asleep on the couch.

This sudden onset of fatigue perplexed me greatly as it continued through years of marriage and stereotypical ‘fights.’ My upbringing was one where you responded to problems with actions, discussion, and resolve, not by falling asleep.

Aside from my knowledge as a nurse, I remembered being taught fight or flight response in high school biology, which contradicted everything about my husband’s odd sleeping habit during stressful events and conflict.

Fight or flight mode is an automatic response to stressors, or anything we perceive as a threat. This doesn’t have to be a physical threat, either; psychological and emotional threats produce the same bio-chemical reaction.

It can be a perceived or real threat. In any event, the adrenal cortex releases stress hormones. These hormones prepare the body - breathing, pulse, blood flow, metabolism, and such all accelerate to ready the large muscles in the body (including the brain) to either fight or run away. It’s basically like drinking a shot of pure energy.

So, how is it, given the human automatic energy shot release, that anyone could fall asleep in response to conflict? Instead of readying to tackle stress, some people’s bodies actually shut down due to a concept called learned helplessness.

Any living being that comes to learn absolute helplessness during early development will hold on to that perceived helplessness throughout life, even when their control and environment changes - learned helplessness. My husband is just one of many who automatically shuts down, literally going sleep mode, verses the fight or flight response when faced with stress.

The concept of learned helplessness was first coined in the early 70s by Martin Seligman. It’s used to explain certain aspects of anxiety and depression, but it’s also used as an explanation for why some people lack fight or flight after they’ve been conditioned to feel helpless as a child and then carry that perception toward into adulthood.

Dogs were used in the first study of the concept. Research examined the long-term effects on two groups. The group with a means of self-preservation went on to do anything they could to deal with stressful situations later in life. The second group without any defense mechanism gave up immediately when faced with any stress later in life.

What research like the dog study and countless learned helplessness studies to follow have shown is that certain uncontrollable situations in life can condition the body and brain to respond to stressors with acquiescence.

Some, like my husband, experienced early childhood anxiety from environmental situations out of their control. He described watching his parents emotionally and physically abuse each other. Feeling helpless and powerless as young boy to control the environment and happenings around him, he would go to his room and shut it out with sleep. Others experiencing learned helplessness describe their own traumatic events as the initial source of basically turning off their fight or flight response, such as rape, abuse, abandonment, and deaths of loved ones.

In fact, some research has linked learned helplessness as an element that explains why so many women stay in abusive relationships despite knowing the life- threatening results and being offered a source of fight or flight. Learned helplessness has also been studied in infant sleep methodologies used by parents, such as the cry-it-out method where infants are left in a perceived helpless state with no choice but to sleep when cries go without attention.

As to the point that learned helplessness goes against the grain of biology in fight or flight, it’s all relative. While those experiencing the habit of sleeping in response to stress aren’t physically fighting or physically running away, they are escaping the best they know how. It’s a mental retreat involving going to the only safe place they know - sleep.

How do you respond to stressors - fight or flight or acquiescence? We’d love to hear your story, questions, and thoughts in our comment section.