All human beings have a powerful mechanism that protects us from danger.
The principal source of this “fight or flight” mechanism is the amygdala, a small organ deep in the brain. Inputs from the outside world (such as sight and sound) enter the brain and take two paths; one path leads to the amygdala and the other much longer path leads to the cerebral cortex, the thinking, reasoning, conscious part of the brain.
So, the amygdala gets these signals before the conscious, reasoning part of the brain gets them.
It is too important for survival for a person to wait for the conscious brain to react to danger.
To put it simply, the amygdala monitors the signals entering the brain, sight, sound, saying at each instant “Does it eat me or do I eat it?” And it does this long before the cortex gets the signal.
If the answer is “It eats me”, the amygdala rings the alarm bells and triggers the adrenal gland which floods the body with hormones that stimulate faster heart rate and quick muscle reactions.
At the same time the amygdala is flooding the conscious part of the brain with neurochemicals that change its functioning.
All of this has the effect of making us more efficient killing or running machines. (Sometimes the response is to freeze.)
In its flooded state the cortex does not receive, process or store information in its normal way.
Thus when the signal finally reaches the cortex, the cortex is no longer capable of processing it in the normal fashion.
All this is triggered in a heartbeat.
Survival cannot wait for the conscious brain to react.
The difficulty here is that the amygdala can be triggered not only by the threat of physical pain, but also by the threat of psychological or emotional pain (social threats).
In our world today, the amygdala regularly hijacks the conscious brain in the face of the threat of psychological, not physical pain.
And the result can be highly counter-productive. We have all seen people “lose it” in reaction to some perceived insult or lack of respect. In the presence of an amygdala hijack there is virtually no chance to have a productive set of interactions in such situations.
It takes from 20 to 30 minutes of absence from the stimulus for the neurochemicals in the flooded brain to dissipate and thereby enable the possibility of a reasoned, rational interaction to occur. This behaviour is seen as a dysfunctional behaviour.
The neural connection runs not only up from the amygdala to the cortex, but also from the cortex down to the amygdala.
This downward link allows the prefrontal cortex to take some control of the amygdala.
You can think of this link as something like a neurological “muscle” that can be strengthened similarly to how one can strengthen a physical muscle.
Here are a few steps to help you reflect on your own reactions.
