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The self-defense situations that you watch in the movies and television will be no help to you in figuring out what to do in a real life situation. No matter what you may imagine you will do if you find yourself in a difficult situation, there will be one major difference between the movie and reality. This difference will occur on a cellular level, as a sudden flash of feeling, and how you will deal with it has already been set by evolution.
it all comes down to adrenaline. In a threatening situation the sudden ‘flash’ of adrenaline into your bloodstream causes a reaction that was put there eons ago through the evolutionary process. This reaction manifests as a three way choice, you either Fight, take Flight, or Freeze.
Fight
Flight
Freeze
Freezing may work well for animals in the wild that become aware of a predator before it sees them. Predators are alert to motion, and freezing may allow their prey to remain unseen. Predators also know not to eat already dead animals, and animals that ‘freeze’ in order to appear dead (playing Possum) will be often left alone to survive.
Unfortunately, freezing is exactly the wrong thing to do when a human means you harm. Action, either Fight or Flight, or a combination of the two, will be what is required for self-preservation.
In the cinema, everyone always acts, dishing out rough justice to perpetrators of all kinds. Women weighing 50 Kilos regularly destroy bad guys weighing twice as much. In real life?…not so much.
In the real world, the outcome will be based on Fight, Flight, or Freeze.
Strength and Resilience 
I believe that the fight, flight or freeze response may be a bit outdated. From my understanding, this theory is used to describe the reaction of the sympathetic nervous system in an animals response to a threat. Since humans have more evolved brains, would there not be more options available? For humans, we can break it down further to flight, submit, posture, fight, freeze. I recently read an article that went even further to add redirect and collapse, which I think makes a lot of sense. Here is a link, please let me know what you think. http://prevailmartialarts.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/fight-or-flight-the-false-dichotomy-and-levels-of-de-escalation/.
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for the comment. It is an interesting read in the link you posted. I believe with the exception of faint, the other options that are talked about in the article, and including what you mention, submit, posture, and redirect, are actually trained reactions that are available to those people who ‘practice’ in some way, either through direct MA practice, or through life practice from growing up in confrontational circumstances.
For the vast majority of other people, when suddenly confronted by a threatening situation, the SNS kicks in, and I would submit that more people freeze(which can look at times like submit) than flee, fight, or faint. I won’t disagree that humans haven’t had evolution impact their brains, just that the part of the brain that is stimulated by life threatening stress in untrained individuals hasn’t been part of that evolution…
Our advice to all people? Get some training to familiarize yourself with the intensity of the SNS kick. More behavioral options are alwqys better than less, and fight, flight, freeze, or faint are definitely not enough.
After reading your response, I definitely have changed my position. I didn’t think of those as learned responses but it makes so much sense. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!