Leadership and empathy are instinctive responses to stress

Most people are familiar with the phrase “Fight or Flight” as a description of our body’s response to sudden threat – but did you know that humans have two additional biologically based, instinctive responses to threat and chronic stress?

One of those responses is called the “Freeze” response, and it happens when our capacity to fight back or run away is completely overwhelmed. In an upcoming blog post, we’ll talk more about this very important physiological reaction and why research shows that it may be the reason some people develop PTSD from traumatic experiences and others don’t.

Today, I want to focus on the third and least well-known response to stress, which is called “Tend and Befriend.”

“Tend and Befriend” is essentially the instinct to form relationships in response to stress and threat. Evolutionarily, this makes sense – building stable relationships, community and trust has always been an essential part of human society all the way back to our early tribal origins. Building trust and community has a preventative impact – i.e. it lessens the amount of threat and stress in our lives overall – but it can also be deployed in conditions of sudden threat.

We see this instinct at work in the exercise of leadership and diplomacy. Strong leaders learn to use their powers of observation, empathy and communication to understand where others are coming from and relate to their experience. Leaders within a community (including mothers and caregivers) routinely strengthen social relationships and soothe stress and tension through caregiving activities.

Research has shown that the “Tend and Befriend” response isn’t just a skill we can learn over time, it’s also an inherent instinct that we all have, just like “Fight or Flight.” So why haven’t we heard more about it? The answer might surprise you, but unfortunately it’s all too common.

For decades, researchers studying the stress response focused almost exclusively on male subjects, both animal and human. While people of all genders have access to both instincts, in general men are more likely to default to the Fight or Flight response and women are more likely to default to Tend and Befriend. So as a result, the Tend and Befriend response was never emphasized in the research.

That’s starting to change today, in part due to the groundbreaking work of Dr. Stephen Porges, who’s seminal book The Polyvagal Theory shed light on the essential importance of the Tend and Befriend response as the basis for resilient physiology and strong relationships. In our current time, with social connections and relationships increasingly under threat, our society has an urgent need to reclaim this vital instinct of human nature.