Understanding the Neuroscience of Fear is a better idea than any drug to remove it.. The problem comes from our misunderstanding of Fear and therefore our unhelpful relationship to it. All Fears are a natural function of the Amygdala in 1 of the 3 brains we have in our heads.. So important to our survival that we have two. Problem is that what evolved over 100,000 years ago to get us to fight for our lives or run for our lives, can be triggered by Thought alone. In our more complicated modern world the Amygdala which is our brains Bodyguard can be triggered for no Good reason. As our Amygdala responds to the Thoughts we have about Potentially Challenging situations it begins a chemical process in our Animal Brain to ramp the body to take action. That action comes down to Am I going to eat it .. Or is it going to eat me. What was beautifully adapted over 100,000 years ago to daily life is now badly adapted for modern life. The processes in the brain and subsequent processes in the body only evolved for short busts of action after which it was all over one way or another. Death for it and dinner for you, or death for you and dinner for it. So thoughts become feelings, feelings lead to emotional states to drive actions and actions lead to outcomes. Next time you feel an event begin to Rattle your Cage bear in mind that the good old ten deep breaths will instruct the Amygdala that there is no real threat, as it sucks in oxygen to fight or flight, and in doing so starves our Thinking brains frontal lobes. Also the time taken to breath ten deep ones gets more oxygen to the brains frontal lobes. Here we can work out a best outcome course of action. One we wont regret later when the heat dies down. The time taken to breath deeply for ten, also builds a time-lock between impulse and action. Lets not be too hard on the Amygdala though because if your distant ancestors and mine didnt have them we wouldnt be here. They would have been somethings dinner.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 10:32:24 +0000
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