Why do some people freeze up when you talk to them?
Physiology of "fight or flight" response
Did you have some people look at you frozen with that "thousand yard stare" when you talk to them?
For the longest time I couldn't understand why the other person stared at me without a blink instead of giving a response.
Now I do.
I read somewhere that brain has three partitions, or three zones.
The front is for rational thinking, calculations, etc.
The rear for autonomous system operations like breathing, temperature regulation, and the workings of internal organs, etc.
The middle is for survival.
When the organism perceives a threat, the mid-brain locks up and freezes all response until either the threat is eliminated or a way is found to cope with it. The famous "fight or flight" response is cooked up in mid-brain.
There is one particular person I remember who used to freeze up frequently when we were conversing.
Now I know what kind of a threat I represented for him even though I never meant to.
I feel sad of course. Who would want to walk around freezing another with trepidation and fear?
But now that I know what's going on under the hood, I feel better equipped for future exchanges when the other person turns catatonic in the middle of a sentence.