Thursday, January 11, 2024

Lessons Learned on Adrenaline: Tunnel Vision

When your adrenaline hits, you will be hyper focused. This is both good, but it is also bad. It is good, because you will be hyper focused on the threat. The yelling and screaming and other people around you will be muted. You will be staring down a fuzzy tunnel like a camera that has gone out of focus around the edges. There are things there, but you couldn't name them. 

I'm not sure if this will happen to you, but it happened to me. It happens to me no matter what, so you have to prepare for it. The problem is that you are so hyper focused on the threat that you can't really think of anything else. You're like a drunk who is hyper fixated on something for no reason. You could explain it, but the rest of the world doesn't matter. It doesn't matter more than this one thing. 

Even when I was able to think during an altercation, I still got tunnel vision. I just started to expect and plan for it. I knew it was coming. I knew that things were fuzzy, and I couldn't see as well as I wanted to see. I knew I had to look around, but that wasn't until I could think while the adrenaline hit.