Conversations
Here we are again. Another milestone reached with another chapter that I’m proud to publish. This marks the first conversation I’ve shared during the process of writing this book, which begins to take us into the purpose of exploring my story in this way.
I’ve mentioned before that I never wanted this book to be the same as my presentations or my film, so it’s important to commit to a structure and a format that reveal a side of my experience that neither you nor I have encountered yet. I’ll be honest, I find it intimidating to ask people to contribute in this way, especially when they are people I don’t know. Luckily, in this case, Matt Davidson, who you will hear from in the chapter, was more than happy to share his experience and be involved.
He has a wealth of knowledge in the field of cognitive neuroscience, and I thought it would be an interesting conversation to pursue, given how little we know about how humans process death and traumatic events.
I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities between my story and those of other shark attack survivors, with some near-identical details that seem to recur. Beyond that, I’ve learned that these details aren’t always specific to shark attacks, so my curiosity has led me to wonder whether the human brain has some sort of mechanism to deal with these situations.
Like anything requiring an understanding of the human brain, I’ve come to learn that there aren’t always answers that help us rationalise how the human brain works, which often leads to more and more questions, as you’ll find out.
This conversation happened nearly 2 years ago, and it was a driver in how I’ve approached this book with an open mind and a willingness to have my beliefs, views, and opinions challenged.
I hope that, after reading this, you’ll understand the angle this book takes on challenging not only me but also readers and the way we approach people, things and topics we might not agree with.
I hope you enjoy it, and as always, please leave a comment with some feedback that I’d love to use to make this the best it can be.
Part I, Chapter 4 – Fight, Flight, Freeze
I first met Matt Davidson when he was sitting behind me on Insight, an Australian television show that explores unique conversations and experiences on a specialised topic of the week. The episode we both appeared in examined near-death moments, documenting how they work and how they affect people’s lives. I was immediately captivated by Matt’s hopeful honesty on a subject where many assert answers with authoritative finality. “There have been some suggestions in the neuroscience literature that account for some features that are common in a near-death experience, but it’s important to express that these are very preliminary hypotheses because the fact is that we don’t have any neurological data at the critical moment of a near-death experience.”
In my desire to understand more about my experience, I reached out to Matt to see if he could help me make sense of my shark attack by explaining the facts, decisions, and emotions of the ordeal. After a thirty-minute drive north to Wollongong, with the promise of a coffee and a shared appreciation of the ocean, I was able to delve into my story with Matt, who applied his keen eye to the details.
I’ve often been interested in people’s comments and assumptions whenever they claim that surviving a shark attack must require quick thinking and bravery. It’s easy to look back on a situation and apply those ideas, but the main question I want to answer in speaking with Matt is — Did my actions and response to the shark attack directly lead to me being alive today, or, as humans, do we possess internal mechanisms that are hardwired for survival?
Matt Davidson is a cognitive neuroscientist and lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, with a PhD in the neuroscience of consciousness. While cognitive neuroscience examines how changes in brain activity, structure, and function influence our perception of the world and our behaviours, Matt’s expertise in consciousness blends the subjective view of events as characterised by our brains.
Consciousness can be a confusing concept — it's like trying to understand how we view a photo rather than just the camera's settings. But as Matt explains, “Conscious feels like an amorphous, difficult-to-reach goal. But breaking it down into things like emotions and memory, which we all feel occur in our head, helps us see things much more clearly, and that is consciousness.”
As I start to walk Matt through my experience, I sense patience and genuine intrigue in the unfolding events. I’ve shared this story many times since the attack, and despite most people’s thirst for the dramatic, performative aspects of the account, I find myself sticking to the chronological details, as I want Matt’s curiosity to guide the recount.
The first point we delve into is the moment frozen in time—the point of impact, when it felt like the world ground to a halt as I tried my best to make sense of the situation. My senses were heightened in touch, yet deadened in my ability to hear anything. There was an overload of information that would typically be helpful if you had the time to analyse it, despite the reality of what was in front of me.
On the notion of time dilation, Matt says, “This phenomenon is frequently reported in hypertraumatic events. We don’t know all that much about how the brain codes time; it’s not like we have an internal clock in our head ticking away, but how we process these moments can indicate that perhaps all of this detailed information is always available to us, but sometimes we don’t need it or we’re not in a state to recognise it.”
He then goes on to suggest that there is potential to theorise that time slowing down could be an evolutionary response we developed from being in these situations more frequently in the past. This aligns with my view of what makes a shark attack such an intriguing prospect that humans latch onto, as it offers a glimpse into a position in the food chain we’ve long since escaped.
While this may be a point of insight, Matt notes that we experience these sensations even when outside of the food chain (Similar responses have been reported many times in car accidents). “Either way, there is potential to think that this response is there for a reason because it gives us the tools to survive, like removing pain and giving us the ability to slow things down to make better decisions.”
When discussing trauma, I have learned that individual responses, outcomes, and perceptions can vary significantly from person to person, with many factors to consider. Therefore, it makes sense to me that Matt is rarely definitive in the suggestions he offers to clarify what my experience could teach others, or even the broader field of neuroscience. Still, I’m curious to see whether he can help me make sense of my own thoughts and theories about what happened next in my story.
Most people are familiar with the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response that we can exhibit in situations where our safety is at risk. My story is unique in that I experienced all three responses in a logical, flowchart-like sequence as I fought for my life and escaped the shark. I’m also keen to know whether Matt has any thoughts on this.
The moment I described, when time slows and I have acute awareness of my surroundings, is typical of the ‘freeze’ response. Freezing sounds counterintuitive in the face of something critical, like a shark attack, because we often think of it as ‘playing dead’ or ‘giving up’. But what if ‘freeze’ is simply ‘fight/flight’ on hold while you gather the information needed to make the best decision?
In my case, the information I gathered made it clear what I was facing and what was immediately around me that I could use to survive. Unfortunately, my surfboard was out of reach because the shark’s teeth had sliced through my legrope during the initial impact. This meant I had no makeshift tools to help fend off the shark. There was no one nearby to assist, and I was acutely aware that the shark could drag me underwater at any moment if I didn’t act quickly.
This is the moment I decided to ‘fight’. A perfectly reasonable response, as you’re always told that if you come face to face with a shark, you’ve got to either punch it in the nose or poke it in the eyes. However, this is much easier said than done, because punching through water is not a simple task. The power and velocity of any punch are immediately dispersed by the fluid. What feels like a desperate, life-saving punch ends up as a light tap on the snout for a predator that’s designed to withstand much more impact. So this response, one driven by fight, flight, or freeze, developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, has failed me at a moment when I needed it more than anything. I was at a loss and had only one response left: flight.
Flight seems like the most logical response of the three because if you’re close to something you don’t want to be near, it makes sense to run away. Unfortunately for me, I had a few issues that prevented me from escaping. The biggest of those issues was that I was stuck in the jaws of a shark. So to escape, I needed to somehow remove the shark from my leg. With no time to think about the best way to do this, I made the mistake of simply trying to pull away from the shark. This is categorised as a ‘mistake’ because the shark doesn’t recognise your intentions, so it will never relent or release its grip on you. This is a ‘mistake’ because human flesh is no match for how sharp a shark's teeth are. This is a ‘mistake’ because as I pulled away from the shark, it continued to hold on to my leg and subsequently tore a large chunk of my thigh away from my body.
My immediate instinct was not to look down at the damage. Firstly, I wanted to avoid being distracted by what I saw and the shock it could cause. Secondly, my dominant drive in that moment was “flight” — this was my window for escape. I kept my head down and swam as hard as I could towards the beach. I wasn’t safe yet, but those few seconds of pure survival, which felt like they stretched over 5 minutes, were finally over. At least, that’s what I thought.
Before continuing the story, I want to get Matt’s take on my ‘flowchart of survival’. Since the attack, I’ve been fascinated by the intricacies of trauma and have gained significant insight, which has helped me understand and explain the critical aspects of the shark attack in a way that makes sense to me.
To appeal to Matt’s clinical background, I reference the work of Bessel Van Der Kolk in ‘The Body Keeps The Score,’ where he explains what happens in the brain when we experience trauma. I learned that the ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response aligns with my experience and occurs in our ‘reptilian brain,’ the simplest and oldest part of the brain that takes care of many of our basic human needs. He also presents research he has conducted with trauma victims, mapping brain function to areas that are active when recreating or recounting their experiences. His work suggests that the brain is capable of ‘turning off’ certain parts responsible for functions such as speech or hearing, and that, in doing so, it can create efficiencies that give the instinctual survival response the best chance of success.
This research has always stood out to me because it explains my lack of hearing during the attack. It also provides answers to my questions about instinct. I can’t truly explain why I made some of the decisions that led to my survival from the shark attack. Some of them make logical sense, like avoiding looking down at my leg, but I wouldn’t call them ‘decisions’ that I took time and consideration to get right. If we are hardwired for survival in this case, does that give us an evolutionary edge? And can it translate to other areas of life?
Matt remains reserved but optimistic. “We’ve got no idea what’s happening in the brain at times like this because you can’t record or study it. While you can study memories and reliving experiences, these are not true trauma. Most of the examples we have are from people in hospital settings where there’s a greater chance of survival too. We don’t hear the stories of the people who do not survive.”
He then goes on to say, “We may not be able to capture the true evolutionary response in a situation like this, but there is hope that we can understand how the human body and brain respond to dying which is in a nearby neighbourhood. We have to wonder.”
Our conversation has, if anything, reinforced how much of a mystery the human brain remains to science. The novelty of this fact is perfectly illustrated by Emerson M. Pugh’s quote, “If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
At this point in the conversation, Matt delves into the realm of consciousness by asking whether I remembered having this much insight during the attack, or whether it has resurfaced through remembering, rethinking, and retelling.
It’s a question I’ve always been afraid to ask myself. Despite how much I remember of the story, the details, and all the intricacies, I have learned over the years that human recollection, especially when it involves trauma, is fickle at best.
It’s easy to become defensive when confronted with a question that contradicts something that has shaped my life, work, and personality for almost a decade. However, I remind myself that this is why I have undertaken the process of writing this book, speaking to these people, and exploring perspectives that challenge me. It’s time to step outside my comfort zone.
Matt explains that people tend to recall events in much greater detail when more emotion is involved. He states that “Hypertrauma can hijack memory and lead to ultra-detailed memories, which is seen in some PTSD cases.” I want to explore this idea by discussing the part of the attack I’ve thought about most, so I return to my story.
After I sacrificed the large portion of my quad to escape the shark, I found myself swimming as hard as I could towards the beach. There was no plan or strategy, just a single-minded focus on reaching the shore. I can’t recall whether my mangled leg was kicking in an effort to help, or if there was a trail of blood following in my wake. At this stage, some of my senses had returned, including my hearing; however, the only sound I could perceive was a penetrating white noise that seemed to envelop my entire head. Without knowing the severity of my injuries, I understood that my ability to get to shore would determine whether I lived or died.
Each stroke took every ounce of energy I had, and despite the fact that I’d made it 30 metres closer to the shore, I felt like it was an uphill battle and that I was going nowhere.
Suddenly, as I was struck by the clarity of thought, I was pummeled by the terror of realisation.
What if this thing comes back again?
This thought was the only thing that could have interrupted my efforts to swim towards the beach, and in hindsight, I was glad it did. The only thing scarier than having that thought was the moment I looked over my shoulder and had to react immediately, because the shark was right there. I put my hands out to try to stop the shark from taking another bite, my right hand firmly planted on its nose, while my left took an ill-advised detour and was about to find out just how sharp those teeth were. As I pulled my hand out of the shark’s mouth, the faintest grazes against its closing teeth took a sizeable chunk of flesh from my palm, along with some smaller marks on my wrist. My hand was safe for now, but I had another dilemma to deal with.
As if reliving the entire fight, flight, or freeze response, I found myself looking for an escape. With both hands now holding the creature at arm's length, I looked around for any chance of survival. There was no need to fight; I knew that would be a fruitless endeavour, but I did notice a wave approaching that might help my cause. My plan was to wait for the wave to hit us and, at the moment of impact, try to push the shark to one side, hoping the wave would have enough power to propel me closer to the shore, all while disorienting the shark and getting it as far away from me as possible.
My plan worked. As soon as the wave hit us, I pushed off the shark and immediately tumbled underwater in the direction I’d hoped. By then, I’d expended so much energy in the battle that I had little control over my limbs as they flailed in the whitewash. In my experience surfing, I’ve always felt that the time you spend underwater after a wipeout seems longer and worse than it is. This was the only time in my life when I wanted to be underwater, holding my breath, getting thrashed around for as long as possible.
By the time I resurfaced, I felt sand under my feet for the first time. As I regained my bearings, I steadied myself and noticed the water was only waist-deep. The wave had pushed me much further in than I’d expected, which was just what I needed. As I looked up this time, I was greeted by the best sight imaginable in a moment like that: Joel, only metres away, still paddling towards me with desperation, determination, and bravery that made me feel I wasn’t alone in my fight. I wasn’t safe yet, but suddenly the fear of the shark returning had dissipated, and I knew I had help.
After Matt’s inquiry into how much detail and emotion I felt at the time, compared with how we retell or reconstruct stories afterwards, I realise I need to understand why the second coming of the shark felt different to me. Whether you can tell from reading my story or not, Matt certainly picks up on some differences: “You’ve told this with increasing clarity as time goes on, but clearly you’ve lost blood by that point and many people would experience the opposite.”
What accounts for the increasing clarity? Is it the brain protecting itself from the trauma? Does the introduction of another point of view in Joel provide another angle to consider things from?
Our back and forth on this topic represents a significant intersection between cognitive neuroscience and consciousness.
I need to compose myself, so I take a sip of my coffee before asking a question that may or may not change my entire story “How reliable is human memory in an experience like that?”
Matt takes a thoughtful pause before delivering the truth I both fear and expect: “Unfortunately, not very.”
Although confronted, I feel the need to be reflective before explaining “Everything I’ve told you is exactly how I remember it, but if someone was sitting next to me at the time, witnessed the whole situation and told me things actually happened differently, it would be hard to come to terms with, but without that confirmation, I’ll never know”
Matt nodded before offering his explanation and some hope. “People aren’t good at remembering point-by-point detail when it’s emotional and when it’s being retold. Emotions can become skewed, people can come and go. I’m sure that the experience you’ve shared today is a very close map to what’s happened, but I would not doubt that there are elements that your brain has filled in because it’s clear that in a situation like that, you aren’t able to think clearly.
It’s not about making it up, but there’s always that filter or inference between you and the outside world and you’d be foolish to think in a situation like that that your brain would be functioning normally. It needs to take those shortcuts to survive and how it fills in those gaps can be unpredictable.
Regardless, it’s an experience that’s happened to you, and that’s what matters most in regards to coping after the fact”
Whether I’m coming to terms with reality or realising that perception plays such a large role in the reality you believe, I can’t help but agree: “You’re right. Whether the emotions are skewed or not, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m missing 3/4 of my left quad.”
As we both sit in silence, I realise that the rest of the small back room at the café have joined us in this moment of solitude. We weren’t speaking loudly, but our conversation seems to have captured the interest of others, which means I have chosen the right person to help me understand this part of my story.
Matt’s introduction of consciousness to an experience like mine has certainly opened my eyes to the importance of how we perceive the events that occur in our lives. Broadly speaking, the way we see the world is shaped by three factors: our bodily state, past experiences, and expectations, which vary from person to person. We operate on a system of best guesses, and these elements can significantly influence how we view the world.
“Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking there’s a little man inside our head who can see and decipher the information. It’s a weird thought but the brain has no way of getting certainty on the outside world and determining why it’s reacting in certain ways. What’s happening inside our brains IS consciousness.”
If I am to understand what my experience can mean for others, I must first come to terms with what it means for me. Consolidating a record of events is always an important part of the process, but it’s become evident that self-awareness and an understanding of one’s own perception are the logical first steps in creating a point of reference to lean on.
If anything, my conversation with Matt has reinforced why I am seeking different perspectives that challenge the way I think about my experience. As humans, we are designed to withstand far more than we might believe. I don’t think there was anything ‘special’ I did to escape the shark, which leads me to consider that humans can find strength and hope in a variety of circumstances that may seem unimaginable. The shark attack I experienced is one of these circumstances; however, my battle for life, which was just beginning, was about to take me to another phase where I would need all the strength and hope I could find.