Physiological Reactions

This post is mostly because we're studying the connection between emotion and physical reactions in school right now.  It's just made me pay more attention to what my body does when I'm emotionally stimulated.

Today I was following random posts and pictures on Facebook until I found myself on an Ex's wall.  Meh.  I didn't feel much besides a mild, morbid curiosity to see how his relationship was doing after two years.  When there was no information about it, I clicked on his wife's wall.  I scrolled down and, as she doesn't post very much apparently, I soon found a post that she had written about me almost a year ago.  I'd known about the post because my current boyfriend was angry about it back then.  I hadn't cared enough to read it for myself.

Anyway, I read it today.  As my eyes swept over the insults and death threat, my heart started thudding loudly and heavily in my chest.  My breathing sped up.  I probably started sweating a little.  It's so weird.  I was sitting comfortably in my home, thousands of miles away from this woman reading something she'd written a year ago, and my body was reacting as if I were face to face with her!

I wonder if it was just the memory of our confrontation which triggered the fight or flight rush of adrenalin.  I don't think that my emotions while reading the post were anywhere near strong enough to invoke that kind of physical reaction.  I navigated away from her page feeling vaguely anxious and a little distressed that the post had affected me so strongly.

Not that I've had too much time to think about it, but the only explanation that I think might explain what happened is that, because her post invoked such a powerful memory (she was the most aggressively confrontational person I've talked to in a long time.  She was so mean that I cried after our exchange) and memory is strong enough to affect physiological responses, my adrenalin started pumping. Once my heart was pounding, my brain decided that there must be a reason my body was acting this way, and that reason must be because I was in some kind of danger so it produced fear, as the most logical reason for it.

I know that this makes me sound really passive.  Could I have controlled my reaction if I'd wanted to?  If I'd really tried?  I doubt it.  I wasn't expecting the reaction.  Like I said, that episode is supposed to be far, far behind me, both chronologically and physically.  I didn't anticipate the physical reaction, so I could not prepare for it and try to subdue it.  Afterwards, I was so busy being surprised that I didn't even try to control or analyze it until I was already calming down naturally.

It's been about half an hour now, and my heart still beats a little faster whenever I remember the post or my conversation with the woman. Though now I believe it is more anger than stress or fear.  It is a little distressing that it still affects me so readily.