The Biological Basis of Courage
Courage is a highly desirable attribute which can be understood and enhanced from our biological states.
Dr. Darin Davidson partners with Learner+, a CME/CE reflective learning platform for healthcare providers. For the opportunity to reflect on this article and earn CE/CME credits, Launch here. Check out all past articles which are also eligible for reflections and CE/CME credits.
Across all domains of life, a common attribute which is highly sought after is courage. Whether we are considering performing physical skills or the ability to manage high demand situations we often consider courage to be a necessary and highly valuable trait which allows us to perform necessary skills, in particular in high demand situations, which may be greater than our current capabilities. It is often considered that courage allows us to manage situations in which we may be inherently fearful. This applies to both physical and emotional scenarios.
In the pursuit of sustainable high performance, we are continually striving to increase our capacity and ability not only in the performance of physical craft specific skills but also in the application of mind-based and body-based skills to leverage our biology. By continually pushing the limits of our comfort and current ability, we are often faced with situations which maybe beyond our current capability. This can lead to physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges and distress. The ability to persevere despite the inherent discomfort with these scenarios is a necessary and highly desirable attribute. This is often characterized as courage.
With an understanding of the benefits of courage in mind, it is useful to turn attention towards enhancing and cultivating our level of courage. This is best considered from the biological perspective which is the framework for the Practices of the Healthcare Athlete. We all have the common experience that our degree of courage is not static. Rather, it is a dynamic attribute as evidenced by the reality that we may experience greater degrees of courage across different situations as well as varying magnitudes within similar situations at different times. This is consistent with our overall understanding that our attributes are dynamic and emerge from our underlying biological states.
From anchored and grounded states, we often experience greater degrees of courage. Conversely when we have shifted into activated, attacking, aggressive, anxious, overwhelmed, or shutdown states our degree of courage is diminished. In large part, this variation is reflected through activation of our amygdala and subsequent impact on our salience network resulting from shifts into activated and overwhelmed states. From a neurophysiological perspective, as discussed in past articles, this shift impacts our salience network such that there is an increased negativity bias. It can be appreciated that when we have a more negative outlook, we will be less optimistic about our abilities to persevere through any given situation which will then have direct impact upon our level of courage. When the negativity bias is lessened, as occurs in grounded and anchored states, the resulting positivity and optimism readily extends to include our belief that we can manage difficult situations, thereby increasing our degree of courage.
The above discussion informs that when considered from a biological perspective, courage emerges from anchored and grounded states. If we seek to increase our degree of courage, this can be accomplished by increasing the strength of our anchored and grounds states at baseline. In addition, we can increase our degree of courage through shifting our biological state towards those which are most conducive to higher degrees of courage. An additional important consideration is that we can recognize our level of courage and use this information as an indicator of our biological state.
Another important consideration which emerges from the above discussion is that when we are supporting others to increase their degree of courage we can do so through relational interactions. Through the emergence of the attributes associated with grounded and anchored states within ourselves, we provide cues, through activation of the social engagement system, of anchoring and grounding to others thereby influencing their biology to shift towards these states. As discussed above, this will lead to increased degrees of courage amongst those individuals. It is, therefore, hoped that it will be appreciated that in order to assist others with increasing their degree of courage to allow them to persevere through high demand situations it is necessary to leverage our biology towards anchored and grounded states so that we will provide cues supportive of these biological states to those around us.
The above discussion informs how we can foster courage within ourselves and those around us. When understood from a biological perspective, we can readily appreciate how increasing our degree of anchored and grounded state will enhance not only our own level of courage but that of those around us. This allows us to optimize our courage when faced with high demand situations both for ourselves as well as others. This is particularly relevant when working in a team under high demand scenarios.
To learn more, including about polyvagal informed coaching for healthcare professionals and others in high demand domains, please visit www.darindavidson.com.
Dr. Darin Davidson partners with Learner+, a CME/CE reflective learning platform for healthcare providers. For the opportunity to reflect on this article and earn CE/CME credits, Launch here. Check out all past articles which are also eligible for reflections and CE/CME credits.