Amygdala - How This Tiny, Little Almond-sized Part of Your brain Can help you Overcome Panic attacks
Ever wonder where fear comes from? Thanks to modern science and one of the most extraordinary discoveries ever of brain research, we now know just where fear comes from. Understanding that origin may be just what you're looking for to cure your fear and panic attacks.
The physical origin of fear is one, which might totally amaze you. If you went searching for your amygdala, better known as your subconscious, you would have to travel deep inside your brain. There you would find just a little moncler milano almond-sized oval shaped part that does absolutely amazing things and with a little help from you, maybe even make your panic attacks and fear of certain things, a thing of the past.
Can you imagine such a small part of your brain that size that actually controls your response to fear? This tiny little piece of your mind can actually save your life in a situation that requires you to respond with a fight or a very fast get-a-way.
Another small part of your brain, called the hippocampus, controls your conscious thought about things. For every conscious memory you have mediated by your hippocampus, a corresponding memory of physical response is mediated by your amygdala.
Let's look at an example. You're standing in line at the super mart and you're almost to the cashier when you start to feel a little different than normal. Maybe unusual sensations in your chest or perhaps you feel weak. You immediately get scared that something bad is happening but your mind sees this fear as you being in danger.
So your defense mechanism starts to kick in. You amygdala makes sure your body is prepared to run or fight by notifying your adrenal glands to release adrenaline into your body. And the process continues until the parasympathetic nervous system steps in to return your body functions to normal.
You might feel you're losing your mind because you have no explanation of what's happening. You may feel you're having a heart attack or maybe you think you are going to pass out. Of course these thoughts only worsen the fear response.
So immediately your hippocampus registers that memory in your conscious memory and the physical response is registered in your amygdala. So the next time you visit the super mart and get in the checkout line, guess what happens. You dr dre beats uk guessed it. Your hippocampus recalls the conscious memory and the amygdala kicks in the fear response. This only happens because you allowed fear to control the thought that entered your mind from the beginning.
I've just described the classic panic attack. You can replace the location with any other but the reaction of fear is the same. By reading the preceding, you may think that blocking the memory would be the only solution. After all, if the hippocampus can't recall the memory, then the amygdala can't respond with the fear reaction.
However the way we have to stop this situation from occurring is to retrain the amygdala to not produce the physical response of fear. The way we do that is by changing the negative thought process that created the memory to begin with.
The amygdala was simply responding as it was meant to respond. The amygdala is there to protect you in case you need to run or fight. The fear response is activated when the hippocampus encounters a situation that it already contains a prior canada goose trillium parka memory for and that memory had a physical fear response stored in the amygdala.
Deactivating the fear response is the process of letting your conscious thought teach your subconscious (amygdala) that there is nothing to fear. Thus panic attacks and phobias vanish.
