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I don't know that I would describe it the same way, but I definitely experienced some sort of survival mode last month, when I (a software engineer) delivered my daughter at home, in a very much unplanned fashion.

I can remember the exact moment where I realised it was impossible to get my wife to hospital (we'd actually just been there and they sent us home). Something flicked, and it was just "Well, this is happening." I wouldn't describe myself as calm — but I definitely knew I had a responsibility and I was just going to do it. Of course, I was on the phone to the ambulance and following instructions.

Only a month later, I remember the experience in general, but aside from the moment described above, the rest of the details are pretty hazy. Fortunately, my daughter was/is fine.

When your boss said "deliver more", I don't think that's what they had in mind

(congratulations!)

You should read "the molecule of more". What you describe happens when dopaminergic circuits take control of the brain and prevent other circuits from interfering.

Why did they send you home if you were so close to childbirth?

Medical professionals ability to ignore, belittle, and misdiagnose women is unfortunately legendary.

Also, labour can occur surprisingly quickly, as happened to a friend of ours who gave birth on our driveway whilst dropping off their first child on the way to the hospital.

My mother recalls hearing doctors saying she was too calm to deliver on the day I was born.

By the time it was clear I was on the way it was too late to administer anesthesia.

But it was not the doctor’s pain to feel.

Probably by mistake. Every childbirth is different. Mostly things progress slowly, sometimes it happens quickly.

Usually they measure the regularity and intensity of the contractions. If the contractions are short and far between, the hospital will send the mother home, because it will probably be several hours before the child comes. However, some childbirths don't follow these rules.

It’s common to bring women in early labour in then send them home for a bit to wait it out until contractions become more frequent. At least, here in the UK that’s common. Idea is better to be more relaxed while the body does its thing.

As if a woman in labor could ever possibly be 'more relaxed'!

This is a thing! Lots of things can “stall” contractions, prolonging the already long and drawn out process that opens up a woman so that she can pass a child through an opening normally no larger than a pipet. Lights, beeping, iv’s, etc.

I think we have a difference of the definition of 'relaxed' in this case.

A normal definition would be along the lines of sipping mai-tais on the beach.

But in the case of active labor, then yes, you're correct. I have close family members that are quite familiar with stalled labor (30+ hours). However, in that particular case, it was due to really bad doctors.

I just wonder why giving birth in the hospital is so normalized; if there's no warning signs during pregnancy or close to birth, wouldn't it be better for everyone involved (mother, child, health care system) to deliver at home? No emergency / stressful trip to the hospital, no roadside / parking lot births, no stress of being in a foreign environment, and you still get taken care of at home by a rotation of midwives.

sometimes women go too early (cervix not dilated a certain amount yet, contractions are too far apart) and the hospital doesn't want to occupy a bed for someone who might still be a full day away from active labor

When I went skydiving, my body did it, and I was somewhere else at the time. I saw, and tried to talk myself through it, but body did what body did (it was a solo dive and I landed fine). I had no experience, no fear or joy or anything about it. I just watched myself do it. The instructor jumped with me, and was nearby giving hand signals like "check altitude", and I would indeed turn my head towards the altimeter, but to save my life I couldn't tell you what it said.

I talked to a paratrooper years later, and he said some people just do that. They disassociate completely from the experience. It's probably not a good thing, since you're basically in shock, doing the work to stay alive and not really a "team player". but it is what it is.

> One was during an actual life and death situation involving a rock slide and the other when playing Counter-Strike and my whole team got wiped out and the opposing team converged on my position.

Luckily, never experienced an actual life and death situation. But I do get into a flow state quite frequently while playing FPS games. Best way I can describe it is being in a state of complete automation, incredibly quick reflexes compared to your usual self, and making multiple correct decision in quick succession. It usually lasts a few seconds to a minute until you snap out of it after stepping on that random claymore at the top of the ladder ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The only way I know how long the sequence actually lasted is by rewatching the video recording and realizing it wasn't 5 minutes but a few seconds long.

Playing Doom 2016 or Doom Eternal is the quickest way for me to get into flow state. My eyes zoom out, I see tiny pixels moving and associate them, react to them, hand and eyes perfectly in sync. My brain basically turns off anything that isn't related to rip and tear. It's such a weird sensation because I know I'm in it because I'm not focusing my eyes on any one thing, it's like I focus to infinity and just sit still and shred.

I sometimes get in the zone a little playing Eternal, it's fun when it clicks but I can't zone in completely.

I'm also currently playing GT7 and if I'm medicated and JUST tired enough I can fall into this intense zone where I feel like a pro, connected to the car and laying down clean and fast laps. It's an amazing feeling but it's so short lived.

Everything bothering me, even physical things just disappear and I'm focused on the game. This is huge for me, due to skin sensitivities every few seconds I'm normally pulled from focus with a slight itch.

It would be great to be able to easily replicate.

Doom Eternal was a visceral experience. The music was absolutely top notch.

Thank you for articulating it, I’ve felt the exact same thing, in both run of the mill flow when coding / gaming / sparring, and the “other flow” you describe in real life threatening situations.

For me too, normal flow time speeds up, and in the other - slows down. You feel detached from your actions - like if I do this it will maximize my chances of survival as I see them now, with no connection or fear that being on the wrong side of the odds might mean your death. You just calculate and do what needs to be done. I’ve noticed that I also tremble a little bit afterwards, which I attribute to the flood of adrenaline … maybe this is just flow but with adrenaline? (Adrenaline flow?)

I was once driving through a bend of a sharp narrow cliff road, and some idiot truck driver was overtaking another truck, right as I entered the bend … with some quick reaction and placement of the car managed to pass both somehow, but I noticed that the other 3 people in the car all had very different reaction to this situation, - indifference, panic, crying, hyperventilation…

I remember how hard it was to sympathize with them right after it happened, as while I was in this hyped analytical state I just felt it was weird the rest were not calm about it as well.

Maybe it was because I was behind the wheel, but in similar situation as a passenger I would do the adrenaline flow as well, where I would coldly calculate if alerting / helping the driver would increase or decrease our chances of survival… so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies?

I’m just glad I’m not participating in a shooting war where I have to make those decisions all the time, I probably wouldn’t like what kind of person that would turn me into …

"so I don’t know, maybe we all have different intrinsic survival strategies"

Definitely. But it also varies for each person and time and day.

I had life and death situations, with me calmly and quickly doing the right thing (including the bullet time) while everyone else were literally running in circles. And I was also joining the panic circle at other times.

But I know that I usually perform well under extra odinary pressure situations - but slack off and get distracted in routine situations. For other people it's the other way around. And I think that makes sense evolutionary wise, so when there is an emergency, some people are adequate to handle it and save the tribe. And other people acomplish the boring, but still critical day to day jobs with care (which I can also do, but it is an effort for me).

Yeah, metoo; I thrive in intense situations when most are panicking and have serious issues staying motivated day to day.

I'm also grateful I never got into the military, because I would either be dead or loving it.

I have experienced both states in similar (programming, then my life or death) situations. I have found a third state, which I believe is related, that has happened a few times, and always with the same criteria.

The first is that someone else is about to come to harm, typically through falling onto something or something heavy is about to fall on them. Never me.

The second criterion is that I am unaware of the first, until later.

The third commonality is that I black out, or something. Anywhere from a few to as many as fifteen or twenty seconds are just ... skipped. I am in one place in one position, and then *blip* I am somewhere else, in a different position.

The fourth thing is that I have apparently done something acrobatic, or contorted my body, moved a few yards with alacrity, or whatnot. Muscles are strained or even torn, I come to in an odd position. Parts that do not normally hurt are hurting.

It's more than a little disturbing, because while I have stopped someone from falling face-first into a lot of cutlery, or a Sony Trinitron monitor from crushing the foot of an intern I have warned to be careful, there's absolutely no volition involved, no conscious thought, no precursor, it was like the governors were disabled and the limiters ignored as some kind of hindbrain function decided to run a big interrupt over a threat I might not have even been looking at was perceived. I have to reconstruct from my new position and whatever is now throbbing what kind of motion I had undertaken.

It makes me think that the Peter Watts' Blindsight idea, where our "self" being a waste of brainpower narrating and explaining (perhaps erroneously) what the true decision maker was doing as if the self was the entity responsible ... is more or less correct.

I'd like to know if there's a name for that.

> It makes me think that the Peter Watts' Blindsight idea, where our "self" being a waste of brainpower narrating and explaining (perhaps erroneously) what the true decision maker was doing as if the self was the entity responsible ... is more or less correct.

I definitely think it’s likely to some extent. Kahneman’s "Thinking Fast and Slow" hypothesis of Systems 1 and 2 is if course very much related (even though it has been criticized) and in these sorts of fight or flight situations it’s clear that there’s neither time or need to ask System 2 anything or even bother informing it about what’s happening. Updating short-term memory might also be an unneeded luxury, which could explain the blackout.

The overriding of normal physical safety regimes is commonly reported in these types of situations as well.

But it’s indeed an interesting question why your (and others’?) subjective experience of the "help other NOW" scenario has been so different from the usually reported "help yourself NOW" experience (detachment, slowdown of time, etc.) Though of course it's impossible to know whether "you" did actually experience that as it was happening but just don't remember it afterwards!

I did read Blindsight and I do think that the self is a story that the mind is constantly creating which narrates and explains things but disagree that it is a waste of brainpower since it is the only thing that can give value to things.

That other 'unconscious self' just sees things by what they really are and not what they mean, it has a theoretical understanding of what things are important to the 'conscious self' but it doesn't really understand why. In that 'life and death' flow state when playing that CS match I took out the whole team in the most incredible game I ever played but I remember how I felt as it happened. It was bored and it did not see the point of a game where you just dragged your mouse over and clicked on the pictures, its not like you could ever miss so what was the point of playing it?.

Not OP, but they likely mean a waste of brainpower in the survival or ability to function as an agent sense. Ontologically of course it's not a waste but that's not part of evolution's cost function.

The time skip with location displacement reminds me of a game I once played as a kid. Where someone would crouch down and take very deep breaths, then take a final deep breath, stand up and hold it and someone else would try to make them pass out by stretching the skin on their neck against the wall.

It was a very dumb game in hindsight but quite popular at the time. The amusing part was moving them to a different location and everyone would try and pretend to be doing something else.

From the point of view of the person passing out you felt as if you were teleported in place and time, and depending on how well everyone else could hold their laughter you would even wonder if everything before was just a dream.

> I'd like to know if there's a name for that.

Some people call it "Spidey-senses" or "Spidy-senses" after Spider Man, but from your description of the blackout parts reminds me more of how vampire super-speed is portrayed in movies, so a vampire trance maybe?

Sounds similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker but in a benevolent way.

> It makes me think that the Peter Watts' Blindsight idea, where our "self" being a waste of brainpower narrating and explaining (perhaps erroneously) what the true decision maker was doing as if the self was the entity responsible ... is more or less correct. I'd like to know if there's a name for that.

It thinks therefore I am.

It’s a recurring theme in the books written by Scott Bakker.

Your description sounds a lot like trauma response. Often in a true trauma response you don’t know what happened, and your body can lose it failsaves in that state.

You could ask a doc and perhaps someone skilled in hypnotherapy.

I think flow state is triggered by focus, bodily control, and a deep knowledge of what is required to achieve a task.

For instance, "flow toys" in the music scene are exactly for this. They require precision movements and focus to look how they're supposed to. You're constantly tuning minute parameters to achieve the task, sometimes making your body compromise in ways it hasn't before.

In shooting I'm almost always able to achieve a flow state by controlling my breathing. The way I was taught to shoot was breathing in rhythm, combined with maintaining sight picture and sight alignment I can almost "feel" it activate. This much more prevalent when I've done moving target drills. The world around me melts away, though I can hear interrupts as distant but interpretable sounds. Physical objects in front of me feel more predictable and slower. My senses are definitely heightened to a degree, and my olfactory senses especially are noticeably different in their operation.

Gaming can definitely trigger flow state. I have similar breathing rituals and focus when I play CS. Knowing the corners of a map, how to gode or stalk opponents, and the probability of another teams position has put me in flows where I'm merely balancing prioritization instead of trying to point and click.

The life and death one is weird when it happens.

I had a nice hunk of boar one time - but I undercooked it.

I tried to swallow a piece (having failed in my attempt to chew it) and it just rolled up in my throat - no way up, no way down.

Home alone and unable to breathe.

There was zero conscious consideration of the move sticking my finger down my throat to bring the meat back up. It just happened.

My conscious efforts to come up with a solution were irrelevant, the body acted seemingly on its own directed by some subconscious process that saved my life.

Huh. Interesting.

eating undercooked boar and deliberately swallowing without chewing, seems like you enjoy living on the simultaneously boring and dangerous side.

Shit man, I can't even hate you for that.

It wasn't that I didn't chew, it just didn't make a difference.

Honestly, it was fucking dumb - damned near as thoughtless as the manoeuvre which followed.

Part of me believes that the only animal equipped to eat a pig is the pig itself.

But I'm a guy who'll cook bacon without a shirt on - what is life without a little danger?

In Street Fighter terminology, I believe you are describing the difference between 無の拳 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Power_of_Nothingness) and 殺意の波動 (https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Satsui_no_Hado).

The Power of Nothingness is a state of consciousness transcending ordinary perspective, born through spiritual and mental refinement. It is the power to act without being attached to emotions and thought, free of fear, anger, pride, and ego, to draw upon the contents of one's heart intuitively without obstacle and hesitation, and to be aware of the world and to know one's place and meaning within its vastness, to flow with all of creation without the need of worry, desire, and doubt.

The Satsui no Hado is described as power rooted in the darker natural basis of the human instinct, including competition, survival, to trample on, impose, and thrive over opposition, and the manifestation of destruction borne out of conflict and fighting.

Wouldn't be the perception of things being easier/ performance improvement just another effect of having your brain soaked in chemicals?

I have been in life and death situations, once dragged by strong currents deep into the sea while swimming alone. I also moutain bike.

For me both states of mind are very different.

When doing sports there's definitely adrenaline but there is also a lot of confidence in what you are doing coming from knowledge, experience and having the right gear.

When I was trying to swim back to my campsite it was pure adrenaline without any experience or knowledge on how to swim in those conditions.

And the possibility of death was so intense and real that I entered a mode where I became my own guide, repeating myself to stay calm, save energy and try to swim sideways to get out of the area with the rip currents (that was totally made up, but maybe worked).

I ended up getting out of the water a mile from my campsite.

There's no mountain I could hit today that could match that experience.

It sounds like you made the right decision, "swim sideways" is what I have always heard to do if you find yourself in a rip current. I have luckily never had to use that information, but whenever I'm at the beach I try to repeat it to myself just in case, so at least hopefully it's somewhere readily accessible to my animal brain if it becomes important for survival.

If I remember correctly, some have called it the "Zone" and it is described in the book "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy Gallwey. It has been a long while since I read it.

I felt the second one once, and explained it to a therapist, who called it shock hypnosis.

Apparently this shuts down advanced functions and just focuses your brain on immediate survival.

I’ve also experienced time showing down in a life or death situation. The funny thing is, it’s seemingly impossible to know whether my subjective time slowed down or I just remembered it that way.

It makes sense that your brain would remember a very dangerous situation in great detail to aid with survival in a similar situation.

>Flow state is always described as being in a state of intense focus and where you might not even notice the passage of time.

Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon.

>Time slows down though, and even though you are relaxed and calm you feel the performance difference from what you are normally able to do and your fear is the knowledge that if you come out of this state before the danger is over you are done for.

It's always a bit mindblowing to remember that what we perceive are ultimately all just manifestations and creations of our brains. There's no such thing as time or light or sound or smell or taste or whatever else in our plane of existence, they're simply how we perceive it.

>That second state feels different and I'm sure its the 'flow' people that do extreme sports talk about. Is there a different name for that state?

I've often heard of it referred to as the "Fight-or-Flight Response" triggered by an increase in adrenaline, "sharpening your senses" per se in order to better respond to potential threats and/or the situation at hand. It's very expensive biologically speaking, though.

> Also known as the "What? It's 4am? I was just playing Civilization!" phenomenon.

Bedtime? Just ... one ... more ... turn ...

Japanese martial arts have a concept of mushin (no mind, from mushin no shin = the mind without mind). It's when all your thoughts go away and you just move as needed.

> Is there a different name for that state?

I call it "overdrive" or "NFS-brain" after the racing game series.