You React Before You Realize It: The Science of Split-Second Survival

Ep 144. Nature is one of the most powerful teachers of human behavior. From the earliest stages of life, we learn one of the most important survival skills: recognizing boundaries. What is safe to approach? What signals danger? What requires distance, caution, or immediate action?

These lessons form the foundation of how we navigate the world.

At its highest level, self-regulation is a conscious process. It involves deliberate decision-making—choosing how to respond, how to act, and how to maintain control in a given situation. This is the domain of awareness, intention, and higher-order cognitive processing.

But there is another level of self-regulation that operates far below conscious awareness.

This deeper system is rooted in ancient neurological wiring, processing information in milliseconds—often before we are even aware that something has happened. Through fast visual and sensory pathways, the brain rapidly detects potential threats and initiates protective responses. This is the body’s built-in survival intelligence, designed to preserve life without waiting for conscious thought.

In these moments, behavior is not chosen—it is triggered.

And when survival is perceived to be at stake, these responses may not always appear socially appropriate. They are efficient, automatic, and focused on one objective: safety and self-preservation.

This creates a critical challenge in modern life.

We must learn to operate effectively in a world that requires both rapid instinctive response and refined social interaction.

This is where deliberate self-regulation becomes essential.

True mastery lies in bridging the gap between subconscious survival responses and conscious awareness. When we develop the ability to recognize early signals of stress, threat, or activation, we gain the opportunity to influence our response—rather than being controlled by it.

This is the space where real skill is developed.

The Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Model operates within this intersection—where milliseconds matter, where awareness meets reaction, and where individuals can train themselves to maintain control across a wide range of environments:

• High-threat, high-stress situations
 • Dynamic interpersonal and social interactions
 • Everyday decision-making and performance settings

By training both the conscious and subconscious layers of response, we build not only awareness—but adaptability, composure, and control.

Self-regulation is not just about staying calm.
 It is about staying effective—no matter the environment.

Train the body. Train the mind. Recognize the signal early.

Take care. Walk well.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back, folks, to episode one hundred and forty-four of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to discuss today has to do with nature's signals of safety and danger boundaries and ambiguity. But what we are also going to put this under is the umbrella of what we will call deliberate life regulation. Now, this podcast is largely focused on self-regulatory skills, and there's a reason for that. Part of it's that uh my goal is to be able to educate people and how to self-regulate, not so much that we don't know how, it's just that there is so much to learning how to become skillful at self-regulation whenever maybe we've had models that were lacking or raised by people that weren't really good at it or demonstrated how not to regulate effectively. And uh sometimes the lives that we lead often have very unsatisfying results in the sense that we might be getting in trouble or causing things to occur in our lives that often we don't realize are perpetual um psychological program loop that we keep repeating, and it's hard to get off of that because it's so well practiced. And also the speed of which those programs pop up can cause us to go into modes of reactivity and what we'll call uh unhealthy behaviors or maladaptive behaviors, or we want to use the psychological term, that will bring us into situations that will always repeat, and then we may not even be able to see beyond that loop to where we start feeling like we're living a life that's cursed or somehow wrong or bad, or somehow even worse. I'm fundamentally broken or wrong, and therefore this is probably the best I can hope for. So when it comes to self-regulation, it's a very deep topic and a broadly applicable thing, but uh it's also very skill born uh in the sense that the better you are at it, that means that more likely you've repeated a lot, and the more skillful you are at it, the easier it is. And those decisions on the side of generativity and also being adaptable become a lot easier over time. So to start the discussion off, after I've uh opened up on what self-regulation is, let's talk about deliberate life regulation. Now, self-regulation and deliberate life regulation, they are very closely tied. And deliberate life regulation has to do with an auto-generated or self-generated sense of I am controlling this or keeping this within parameters as far as behaviors go, um, that I consider consciously chosen. So to be able to be deliberate means that I've picked or chosen, and that's a very high cognitive process in the sense that that is definitely a prefrontal cortical process where we take and weigh options and also potentials that we may be thinking about that could occur, and we start to kind of predict and get an idea of an expectation as a result. So this happens moment to moment, day to day, and it doesn't always have to be uh something that's life changing or life endangering or life engendering for that matter, um, such that it's a huge decision. But the term deliberate life regulation, it's what we're doing whenever we're guiding and picking and choosing moment to moment. So this is a really important term to keep in mind as we move the discussion forward. The natural question that we're gonna ask first is, well, what are we regulating if we're self-regulating? And two, why would I choose to intentionally regulate uh an experience, whether it be a thought process or maybe how I'm feeling? And feelings um aren't always something we can regulate directly, but more so indirectly, because that is something that arises from what we'll call our perception, uh, that arises from our senses moment to moment that tells us that something is um dangerous to us in the immediate physical environment or something that we would conceive could become dangerous in our minds, um, that over time if we do not take care of or change or move or regulate our environment, so to speak, um, then they could become dangerous or useful to us. Whatever direction I might take with that. But the important thing is that whenever we're looking at feelings, not necessarily just emotions that arrive that have an opinion and a cognitive process attached to it, uh the feelings are the pressures that we interpret um of the environment that tell us whether or not we're safe or not. Or assumption of safety, that term that I continually use, it's a very important tool to help us understand is that being met as far as my organism, my body, my human, my person, do I feel safe? And that will give us a very distinct and exact, for instance, whenever we're being raised by parents and we're used to a home that we go to every day, or that we see every day from a very young age when we're pre-verbal, when we're largely learning our world moment to moment, and we're technically unsocialized little savages, I love that term, um, up until about age two, and we start learning the rules and guidelines that keep us not only safe but out of trouble, and also in the good graces of those that feed us, house us, and uh wash us, clean us, and all that good stuff. And um this is one of the really important principles um in learning is that we are regulated and taught how to regulate by the models that that one we choose if we're older or the ones that we are born to. But that commonality, that space, that regular I remember this, I recognize this, has a lot to do with how I learn boundaries, also how I learn what the signals of safety and danger are, and these are things that arise from nature, um, but also the parenting that we're getting and the rearing, so to speak, if we're being raised at the hands and and knees of people other than our direct biofamily. But uh just important stuff that plays a large part in our development of our sense of safety and what our assumption of safety is, that when met, we feel the most comfortable and able to not only learn because I'm not in danger, I'm not in pain, and I am in a state of social homeostasis, how we get along uh together as a whole, and also as an individual within that space, if I'm like two and running around the house exploring, that I have the capacity to feel like I can do that without running the risk of hurt, harm, danger, this sort of thing, that we learn to recognize rather young. We may not have the fullest of the understanding that comes with understanding what's dangerous to us because we're in exploratory mode, but we will learn at the hands of experience, at the hands and feet of the people that raise us, this sort of thing. But the assumption of safety does have a lot to do with self-regulatory skill that we gain, that's regulating myself, um, which is what we call the deliberate life regulation, that in a bigger nature sense, uh is something that we all have, have to learn, and um we become more conscious of and we'll discuss that level of below conscious intent where it becomes deliberate to the not so conscious intent when things aren't as deliberate but more uh programmatic and neurologically re reflexive, so to speak, and uh we'll discuss that part next. Now the next part I want to enter into this um by recognizing uh a neuroscientist, his name is Antonio Damasio, and um he had been a neuroscientist for many decades and written quite a few books, but the book that I held on to, and I've mentioned it a few times on this podcast, is called Descartes' Error, and that error having to do with uh uh Descartes' idea of I think therefore I am, as a foundation for his argument that there are some true subtleties in our neurological development that are lean more on the bio side of things versus just strictly in the higher cognitive to make sense of what we call consciousness moment to moment. Now, what does this have to do with self-regulation? Well, I'll be very honest, it has a lot to do with self-regulation because that is a deliberate life regulation, but is also one that hinges on the not so deliberate what we would call our natural protective mechanisms that are under the threshold of consciousness. And this is where the running man program rides best in that we bridge between what we call our deliberate life regulation or self-regulation to those things that are regulating me. And it's still self, but it is more on on the short and dirty or the quick and dirty path that is pre-conscious uh riding under the the level of conscious deliberate choice and uh our subjective capacity to interpret what my experience is and give it a name, a label, a narrative isn't occurring at this point. This is just the raw data that we're responding to whenever things are very sudden, and my assumption of safety is no longer being met, it's been shattered or destroyed, so to speak. But uh that level of arousal that increases often is kicked into uh motion by signals having to do with our environment external, but also it can come up from what my expectations and fear from a prior experience, um, subjective experience at this point, because I'm pulling up memory, uh, have brought about such that my body believes and it can't tell the difference. And this is where we're basically straddling the fence of conscious awareness and conscious deliberation and what we'd call pre-conscious subthreshold uh awareness, and this is where our body is aware of things, but so fast that my conscious mind can't pick it up. Mind you, signals of of uh interoception are incredibly fast. That means that the signals that are coming in from my body at the interoceptive level, this has to do with not only balance, but tension in my stomach, uh, any kind of things having to do with autonomic conditioning. And this has to do with stuff that goes to your eyes, your ears, your mouth. For all those uh senses that we use our taste, our touch, our hearing, our sight, and also how we digest and rest, this sort of thing, having to do with autonomic responses, our subconscious once again, but our our body uh can sense those things, and this is where our bridge to what we call consciousness occurs. And that was a long, hairy run on sentence, I'm sure, but uh the reason I say it this way is that there's so much in that it's so close, they're butted up right next to each other, and we're straddling that fence at times whenever things basically become autonomic wherever I get scared and my temperature regulation and my flushing and my skin starts to happen because I'm responding to an environmental cue, something that's sudden or loud or shocking to me, and I have no conscious override for that within the moment that it's occurring. The body is making safe, and it is not time to make sandwiches, it's not safe enough to sit down, rest and digest and make friends right now. It is now time to organize and orient to whatever it is that's going on and determine whether or not I need to run, fight, or flee, and oh my, I'm the baloney sandwich, I'm gonna get eaten, this sort of thing, or I want to prevent that by doing what? Not being there. So important stuff to think about. So from the perspective of Damasio, he basically was saying that Descartes was thinking and getting stuck in the thinking process, which he did an incredibly deep thinking exercise, and what arose from that also came the idea of the ghost in the machine, wherever our consciousness resides in this machine, our body, and it's somehow separate. And we know now, uh by virtue of our neuroscience and and and and exercise sciences that there is no such thing as a mind-body dichotomy, it is a mind-body unity or union. It is consciously one whole thing versus two separate bits, which is what Descartes determined that later we found out was indeed an error, but he did an incredible job and he uh requires his credit too for moving things in the right direction. So what are boundaries is a good question. Um socially, when we talk about boundaries, this has become one of the things that with uh self-help has become an incredibly useful tool to help people recognize that you do have the right uh to protect yourself and not allow people into certain physical spaces, don't touch me, to mental spaces, not allowing them to have their opinion riding about in your mind, rent-free, so to speak, and causing you harm or or or sense of stress or safe unsafety or anxiety. And these are important ideas to to work with. They're strategies that we determine will actually lessen stress and anxiety whenever someone has an opinion. Remember, we realize that whatever their opinions are, that's their business, has nothing to do with me. It doesn't mean that you don't exist in the social world where you interact with them, but what their opinions are of you do not have to be considered sacrosanct and they said it so therefore it must be. Well, what happens to your opinion of you is the question. And what do you think of yourself and why is theirs so much more important than yours? And why are you feeling so anxious and upset because of what they said? Possibly. And there's a belief quality that goes w with that. There's definitely a social dynamic and power differential there, and I've discussed it on a few other episodes, but it's really very important to this uh conversation in particular, in that often we like what we say and the voice we speak it into ourselves, our self-talk, but there are those that have influence that we value. And sometimes there's some very deep visceral ties to that, wherever if we let's say argue with mom or dad and say, hey, that worked for you, but this isn't working for me when we start to differentiate. Often there's internal tension, there's mental, emotional anguish that one feels, physical feelings of discomfort as a result of saying, I can't do what you do, or I'm not gonna believe what you believe. Not so much that everything else gets thrown out uh wholesale, but rather that there are bits and pieces of what they came up with that served them at that time. And it's not so much that they were bad things, but maybe they don't serve you well, and maybe it doesn't make you feel good when you do the things that they encourage you to do, let's say, whether it'd be voting, going to church or doing certain things on certain holidays or going places and recognizing that there's discomfort and being true to yourself and realizing that this makes me feel bad, so I don't want to do this in heaven. An honest conversation often helps, but not always. Often people are so seated into traditions, and this is how we do it, such that they override the best benefit of the individual, and many individuals run around experiencing discomfort. Now, whenever you're with family, you have to do things with family, that's understandable. But there are also some times that not only with family, but with friends or even at work, where not only mindsets are set, but things like policies, procedures, protocols, um, are probably the closest crystallized sense of things that we can do that once they're no longer useful, we can change them. So it's a good example of how to change. But often, sometimes, even in business and things that we would consider impersonal as an individual worker for somebody, um, they won't change because this is how we do it and that's it, even though there may be a better way. Of course, people pay for consultants to create change and knowing that there are problems, but not knowing how to go about it, that's an honest way of doing things, that's okay. But sometimes having an honest conversation is helpful, but doesn't always occur when it comes more to the the personal interpersonals versus the professionals, so to speak. And this is where we have to learn to advocate for ourselves. But uh to be able to advocate for self, you have to be aware of self. And this is something that Damasio spoke about as well. Those things that are interoceptive, the neurological structures, the neurons that are interoceptive that are the rawest signal interpretation do not have myelin. Myelin is like a sheath like you would find on a wire, and um that is uh made of little fatty compounds that actually insulate our neurons, so that way whatever uh brain signal going up the spine and and down the brain into the spine, this sort of thing, so we can act on things. The least amount of myelin are the ones that are more apt to have aberrations of signal. But at the level of interoception, this is where the signal is pure and raw from environment to the softer uh structures that our body receives uh pressure from the environment through. And the fact that there's no myelin, that means that that signal, that neuron is touching muscular structure at a level that uh it's experiencing the signal directly. And this is where there is no insulation, no difference, and this is also where we become aware of a signal at the point of the signal uh before it travels up the brain, which becomes incredibly powerful to think about um how we become aware, but at that moment is whenever awareness arises, and this is where the plethora of different options that we have to choose, to think, to decide, where deliberate self-regulation, deliberate life regulation starts to occur. So is it a preconscious thing to say self-regulation um starts at the impulse or or the energetic level wherever a signal comes in from a physical structure into the into the neuronal structure? Well, you can say that. But uh when we become more consciously aware as a higher cognitive process, it has crossed that threshold from the subconscious where we're experiencing the program, and we catch it early enough, we can self-regulate. But whenever it starts running, and let's say it's a particularly dangerous situation or shocking situation, chances are your conscious mind isn't gonna catch up. If it's 400 times slower, that means that uh we're talking at about sixty um milliseconds or less. We're not gonna consciously be able to deal with it other than treating it as a fr a threat by default, which means make safe first, make organism organism safe, and then you can say sorry later if you act in a way that's uh one maladaptive or too uh shocking or or strange or even uh dangerous to someone else or something else. And when things pop up that way, usually there there is something that is uh a non-social quality to what it is that we do to protect ourselves. It's not about looking pretty, it's not about uh having your hair done and your lipstick on and being well dressed and having your perfume on has nothing to do with that. Those are social schemes that are very uh higher conscious processes, but when it comes to self-defense, self-protection, self-preservation, uh things are a little more raw. And and that's okay. There's a beauty within that, but it's not one that'll win beauty contests. It's about uh being very safe, secure, and in the immediate moment capable of getting away and making egress from those things that could cause you danger, harm, or worse yet, uh cause you not to be here anymore. So some ideas once again, but very important, very closely tied to not only self-regulation, but deliberate life regulation, as much as it is to the subconscious, I'm not aware of what's going on. So therefore my body is regulating itself out of the environment, in the environment, so to speak. And uh also uh these are very uh closely tied at the level of interoception, once again, where the neurons have no covers. So the next thing we're going to discuss are not only boundaries that we learned when we're little, but also recognizing that nature has boundaries. And also we've talked about communication uh starting at the nonverbal level. Communication is a default rapport, is communication with trust, and generally speaking, that has to do with body language first. Uh if we have any messages going across the communication barrier, um, the space between, let's say, minimum two people. Uh body language is the first thing, and the influences about 50% of the message of any message you're trying to send. And tonal is the way we speak it, how we arrive, and how we sound when we're delivering the 7% of the message, because 43% of that influences the sound of our voice, so to speak, um, will influence whether or not the 7%, the really important part, the message we're carrying on a silver platter that's really important. You've won the lottery, for instance, um, is going to be received or whether it'll be rejected. And all that happens within a fraction of a moment. But uh our presentation and also how we sound when we're presenting uh determines whether or not our message is acceptable. And this is an important detail to pay attention to. Now, whenever we're looking at boundaries, the boundary often is that distance, that is our default boundary. One of the boundaries that comes up has to do with presentation. You know, is it acceptable? What's it look like? Do they look threatening? What does it sound like? Are they loud, abrupt, shocking, or is it soft and soothing? Those things are determiners or whether or not we will accept or be willing to listen to anything that's being said at that point, but also speed of which, speed of onset, how things come on at any one moment. And once again, this is neurological signal that is a boundary that is endogenous, that tells us whether or not we can approach or even tell trust uh messages being given momentum. Moment to moment. And um then finally the words. Once we get there, if everything else is met, that means it's not that our assumption of safety is fully met, but our assumption of safety is being built at that point. And boundaries help with this. Now, boundaries, once again, are the things that self-help has brought into the fore, and everyone bec has become aware of these things. And I speak of everyone, those that have been involved in self-help or even clinical work, but learning to understand that, you know, there are certain things that are acceptable, certain things that are not, and it's okay to say no. It's okay to say, okay, that's too close, too fast, too much, too loud. It's okay to say those things. Now, there are those that would use those things to try to control what's going on in the environment, and a lot of times that speaks more so to levels of stress, anxiety, panic, or feelings of unsafety. And uh it's not always about people just wanting to control for the sake of controlling, but rather it's kind of reflective of the level of discomfort that's going on inside of the individual. So it's a different way of looking at things that I'm proffering here, but it's also one that's very useful in understanding that uh we shouldn't take it personal when people are trying to be controlling in that sense, but also the tone of voice where they may have a really high tone and staccato speech or maybe really loud, um, having to do with a sense of I have to get things under control or I feel out of control uh is a perfect example of uh description of that. Um but these boundaries, once again, they're things that arise naturally. Now, nature signals danger by um putting bright colors on creatures such as bugs and snakes and this sort of thing, or even birds, um, to tell you don't go near this. Usually bright colors like reds and yellows, you would think that's not really good camouflage. Well, they don't need the camouflage if they're dangerous. Whenever you have certain beetles that are all stinky, you know, they're generally black. Um the thing that they give off versus the visual thing whenever you're dealing with things that have simpler eyes, uh the smell itself, some give off a little droplet of of uh liquid that stinks to high heaven like a skunk, a little tiny bug, and then you have a skunk that has a bright white stripe and stripes in some cases, and you would think, well, they don't hide very well. Well, they don't need to. They're not the best fighters, they don't run very fast, they tend to waddle. They're beautiful little creatures. I like to appreciate them at a distance because they're kind of funky when they do let go, but uh they aren't the best fighters in the world, but they have the best defense, and most of the animal kingdom does not like to be around them. And often if we look at that, that is a deliberate life regulation, and it can also be for them a reflexive one if you shock them, because there are some creatures that have been picked up, little skunks, and they do not scent. But yet if they shock them or feel threatened, they do, and it's an automatic thing, but they can consciously control it for the most part, which is really kind of cool. But uh, on top of that, you know, that is uh an example of a boundary. Sometimes we set up a boundary verbally by the way we act, by the tension that we we keep in our body and looking abrupt, and this is where we start looking into the social scheme and what's called bravado. Now, bravado is an act where we want to appear bigger and stronger, more intimidating than otherwise we actually might be, and putting on the show hoping people will buy into the fact that if I look like too much trouble, people won't mess with me. And sometimes it's work, it doesn't always, but if it doesn't, you better have the backup for it because chances are you're gonna be tested or look really bad in the social scheme. But uh the reason I mention this is that often that is a way of setting up boundaries. Much of the boundaries we set up are not only how we arrive, but how we speak. And uh there are some times where we have people that are acting in a way that are overstepping our boundaries, and sometimes we have to let them know. And whenever we don't let them know, we let them run over as roughshot, and then all of a sudden we stand up, they get offended because they've become entitled to that sense of behaving without correction. And this can become problematic in a social sense, but also at work, and uh even animals, whenever we're teaching them, they may get a little abrupt with us, but they will learn with repetition. But the fact of the matter is whenever we have ambiguous boundaries, uh we become uncomfortable, not only us as in interacting with folks, but we start to be a little anxious and tense, and we start to pad around and maybe test and see where can we go, where can't we? Some are a little more bold about it, some are a little more cautious. But uh caution is necessary because when there is ambiguity, there's a potential for novelty, interesting, hey, this is fun, not only new, but it is it can also be dangerous, and lots of unknown right there. So those are things that we try to protect against because sometimes the unknown brings uh not only unknown but unwanted consequences and circumstances. So very important to the idea of self-regulation, not uh running off and just playing as if there is no danger and assuming that things are safe when there's a possibility that they couldn't be, or they might be dangerous to you. But also walk in warily without necessarily being anxious or stressed and worrying that uh the other shoe's gonna drop, even though it possibly could, but at least being aware enough that you don't lunge forward and put yourself into unnecessary danger. And uh this has to do with once again deliberate life regulation and uh not being foolish, so to speak. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread is something that we uh usually speak about doing things foolishly and haphazardly and without thinking. And this is actually a really great guideline and kind of reflects what it is that our neurological system does and also what we try to gain whenever we learn deliberate self-regulation. The self-regulation skills project of the running man model is what this is about, learning how to gain more control and a sense of safety as you move through your world day-to-day. And I certainly encourage every one of y'all to work at becoming more skillful and becoming more aware of not only self, but also those signals that kind of go really fast and make me wonder why I did this, and know that those things can be changed. And uh tip of the hat to Antonio D'Amasio and Descartes era, amazing book. I love the book, many years back came out in '94. I would encourage y'all to pick that up if you all want a good neuroscientific read. But beyond that, I just want to tell you thank you for passing this uh Sunday morning with me, and I really enjoyed talking about this. It was very uh fun to kind of research what it was I was going to be doing for this podcast. But on top of that, I want to tell you thank you for listening. And for all those that are now listening new, uh, I want to tell you thank you for giving me some of your time as well. But if there are any questions or concerns, or even any kind of feedback you'd like to give give me or any requests, please send them to the email at running man get skills project at Gmail. I'd love to hear from you. And above all and beyond all, please make sure that you're safe. Take care, walk well.