![]() ![]() To explain emotional hijacking, there are two key players you should know: the amygdala (the emotional processor) and the prefrontal cortex (the thinker).ĭuring an emotional hijack, your amygdala shuts down your prefrontal cortex’s normal reasoning process in order to take over a certain situation. Your brain’s response would then be to prepare your body to either act against the threat or escape through a raised heart rate (more blood to the muscles and brain), rapid breathing (more oxygen to your body) and shutting down certain bodily functions (to preserve energy and remain focused on the task at hand).īut what about when a car cuts you off in traffic? Or your mother-in-law critiques your parenting? Or you find out skinny jeans are under attack?Ĭhances are, your pulse starts to race, you breathe a little faster and suddenly that’s all you can think about… sound familiar? That’s because as we evolved, our brains kept the same tried-and-true process despite our lives becoming more socially complex - meaning our brain can’t always differentiate between actual physical threats and emotional reactions. If you ran into a bear, your emotional response would be fear, which would signal your brain the situation is unpleasant and you need to avoid it somehow. ![]() The process to deal with it was just as simple: Your brain looked for emotional cues to decide if the situation was pleasant, unpleasant or neutral and initiated an action to either approach, avoid or ignore it. Way back in the caveman days, threats were pretty straightforward - animals, weather and the occasional interaction with another caveman. And that means it’s constantly looking for and responding to anything it perceives as a threat to our survival. Out of all the incredible things our brain can do, its No. It’s the command center of the body and is what makes it possible to carry out all of our daily functions. The three-pound, jelly-like mass has as many neurons as there are stars in the milky way and consumes 20% of the body’s energy. We can all agree the human brain is one of the most fascinating organs. ![]()
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