Tame Our Amygdala?

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Did you know that your amygdala stores every emotional response we choose to make? Or are you aware that the same responses – both good and bad – will get filed in our amygdala and then become our reactions to any similar situations that arise?

MYG (short for amygdala), is one of six fictitious characters (or namungos) with real brain parts.  Like the other five namungos MYG impact our lives daily. How does the amygdala work and what’s our part?

For a tiny sac of neurons,  the amygdala can zap an ordinary day into havoc – like lightning strikes an iron rod, long before we’re aware dragon moods strike. Whenever our day jolts us off reliable tracks, it’s likely the seething culprit, and in some senior brains it burns like fury just below our mental surface.

On the other hand recent research shows our amygdala as also a key to socializing, and a larger amygdala means more friends and family involvement.

Want to tackle hot topics without shout outs? Perhaps you’ve heard of the amygdala, or seen current research about its role in creating and storing emotional reactions to frightening situations. But have you heard how it turns ordinary days into train wrecks?

At times it’s a matter of learning to let go, yet once its power over our day is discovered, we can guide the amygdala to work more in our favor.  It even helps us move, for instance, from fear into freedom.

Are you aware of learning tools that add social and emotional health to our teens or grandchildren for instance? 

Located deep within our brain’s temporal lobes, this almond shaped amygdala mood bender,  helps to shape and store reactions to unexpected shockers in your day. Will you shout or smile? Will you freeze in fear or risk with courage? The little neuron group is conditioned over time by our actions and eventually pretty much decides for us. Sit through an upsetting meeting, and this tiny arousal center may well incite negative emotions in response, for example. Have you seen it happen?

There’s more too. This agitated control center engages brain stem circuits that impact facial expressions and body language. It also triggers release of chemicals such as serotonin or cortisol into the blood, to trigger often unwanted emotional response. It’s even activated by nasty odors on occasion. So why does the human brain come with such a pesky part?

It’s quite straightforward. Without our amygdala, we’d have no response to screams, cries for help, shocking movies, or other horrific encounters. It can even help us to bypass bullies and cynics and react kindly while maintaining our dignity.

Unfortunately though, it also tends to toss us into turmoil without much notice.  Can you see why people develop skills to tame dysfunctional thinking and modify behaviors that follow their amygdala triggers?

We’ve likely all experienced how reactions impact and shape the human brain, in almost in knee-jerk responses. Unwanted panic reactions pop up when we encounter sudden or startling situations, for instance. It doesn’t need to be that way.

Our amygdala can be tweaked to transform panic reactions into calm in the face of fear, anxiety, stress, or frustration encounters.  How does it happen?

Meet the namungo gang!

Simply act deliberately in the opposite direction of any volatile,  negative, or moody feelings.  If feeling fearful or if we are embarrassed, for instance, try disagreeing more with the brain in mind. In this way, the very act of using a skill to disagree well, begins to rewire our brain for healthier responses in similar situations.

Simply put, we can learn to bypass our amygdala‘s automatic default operations, in much the same way we choose to tap different buttons on a computer, to enter a different screen.

React in the default mode and our amygdala can heat up a situation by placing us in far too sensitive a mood, flooding our brain with cortisol chemicals, and causing us to overreact. Caught under attack we’ll respond accordingly, whether the attack is real or perceived, unless we intervene to help out our brain.

Because of our amygdala,  we can develop and use different strategies to add calm under pressure,  and as we build emotional patterns for dealing with stressors, we begin to see their practical usefulness.  Brain tactics help us to deal more calmly with life’s difficult situations, simply by doing what we’d like others to see in us.

Speaking of others – peers too can help tame an amygdala more than most people realize.  In fearful situations, others can support the opposite of fearful reactions for instance. With another  person’s encouragement, our stored amygdala’s typical fear response can suddenly fade or disappear – simply by support from a like minded individual.

Have emotional lightening strikes held us back, or do we snip our amygdala before we snipe back? Teach teens transformation tone tips that amp up their learning and laughter from diverse angles with a tamed amygdala!

 

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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset

61 thoughts on “Tame Our Amygdala?

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  3. Beryl

    Ledoux (1996) writes: ‘Unconscious fear memories established through the amygdala appear to be indelibly burned into the brain. They are probably with us for life….Therapy is just another way of creating synaptic potentiation in brain brain pathways that control the amygdala. The amygdala’s emotional memories, as we’ve seen, are indelibly burned into its circuits. The best we can hope to do is to regulate their expression. And the way we do this is by getting the cortex to control the amygdala.

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  8. Shane

    Dr. Ellen Webber. Very interesting. How can someone (Me) get rid of a panic attack that started on 2004-present? Usually, a panic attack lasts so many minutes but one day back in 2004 I had one and it never turned off. The panic just got worst and has not stopped. I have gone through Hell on earth but I am alive. I have taken all the pills and one worked. The one that worked (Thank You Lord ) was Celexa but it stopped 2 years later. Then, I was Blessed Miraculously by morphine which has lasted more than 2 years and I am still alive. I know you are probably thinking how does he know it is still there well I have tested it. Well, I just want to get well if you can help. I know I am a severe case. None of the Doctors have ever heard of it. Thanks Shane

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  56. eweber Post author

    I’ve set it in motion here at the MITA Brain Based Center again today — all because I am challenged by thinkers like you Jeanne!

  57. eweber Post author

    Thanks for stopping by Jeanne:-) The cool part about a human brain – is that it rewires each time we do any taming of that amygdala:-) Mine still needs taming fairly frequently, especially when the pressure’s on! 🙂

  58. Jeanne Dininni

    This has happened to me often, Ellen. But it’s nice to know that it doesn’t have to be that way if I make a deliberate effort to resist those automatic responses and think in other ways about the situations that trigger such negative responses in me.

    Thanks for sharing those words of wisdom!
    Jeanne

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