Most of us would agree that we're living at a time when great troubles stalk the land. Whether we have been impacted by wildfires, flooding, food shortages, job insecurity, health issues, or other challenging situations, many of us are experiencing a heightened sense of survival fear—that is, the fear of not surviving.

Self-preservation is a basic instinct humans share with other sentient beings. Real or perceived threats to our survival trigger a sympathetic nervous system response, the familiar “fight, flight, or freeze” behavior that has been extensively researched in recent years. (See “Unfreezing Fear: Connection and Action Can Change Everything.”)1

What I’ve been wondering about is an opposite behavior I notice in myself and others: What is going on when we adapt to dangerous situations and no longer respond to a threat?

For example, I live in a city surrounded by four lakes. When I first moved here, the lakes were clean and unpolluted. However, over the years, due to runoff from farm and lawn fertilizers and pesticides, the lakes have become unswimmable because of an overgrowth of aquatic weeds. A combination of warming weather and run-off chemicals has produced toxic algae blooms, bacteria that, when they decompose, consume oxygen from the lakes. The lack of oxygen leads to a die-off of fish and is injurious to birds and other creatures that feed on the fish. Humans and

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