One of the most common things that I hear from people is frustration around what they are experiencing. Whether it is panic attacks that come out of nowhere or a desire to run from a situation that seems, at least logically, safe. So what is going on in these situations?

One of the things that we need to first understand is that our body is designed for two things; survival and procreation. Every system operates with those two things in mind. It is only fairly recently in our human history that we could be concerned with more abstract things like love and compassion as well as self actualization. So let’s look at what is going on when our body responds inappropriately to our environment.

Let’s take a trip to a land of Imagination! *Cue Wayne’s World flashback sound*

Let’s say that one night you are driving home from work. You are feeling pretty good and decide to put on some Lady Gaga and jam out. As you pull through an intersection another car runs their red light and slam into you. While your car is pretty messed up, you seem to be physically fine apart from some aches and pains. Now a couple months pass and your body has completely healed. Yet you realize something weird is going on in your body. Every time you hear Lady Gaga on the radio you feel like your freaking out. Your heart starts pounding and you become hyper-aware of your surroundings. You immediately feel like you need to get out wherever you are, even though you can’t identify why. You try to understand it logically but it just leads to frustration because it just doesn’t make sense. What is going on in this moment is a Trauma Reaction.

Now to understand whats happening under the hood we are going to need to get a little nerdy. The part of the brain that is primarily at play in this situation is called the Amygdala. Nerd fact: Amygdala actually has a meaning apart from anatomy. In Greek Amygdala means Almond. Which is helpful as that tells us how big this part of the brain is. It is about the size of an Almond. Hey no one said scientist were creative when it came to names. Now the Amygdala provides the mechanisms for instinctual response, that is responses that do not require cognitive thought. Now I like to call the Amygdala the Lizard Brain, as it is about as complicated as one (no offense to any lizards who may be reading this). Now the Lizard Brain operates off of association. It perceives the environment, and based off of previous experiences, it associates an emotion that it believes is appropriate. At that point it send a signal to another part of the brain and the proper chemicals are released into the blood stream. Now when we look at this situation we can see that the Lizard Brain associates the traumatic experience of a car accident with Lady Gaga’s beautiful voice. If you find yourself thinking, “But Mike, that doesn’t make any logical sense. Lady Gaga is not responsible for the car accident. She is only responsible for beautiful songs about acceptance and love.” Well you would be correct. There is a reason why it doesn’t make sense, and that is because the Lizard Brain works very quickly. While the logical centers of our brain take much longer to analyze a situation. By the time the logical brain is finished analyzing the situation the chemical’s have already been released in the the body.

Now one can retrain the Lizard Brain. Since it works entirely off of association then one must take the Lizard Brain on a walk, so to speak. By staying in those safe situations that feel unsafe the lizard brain begins to re-associate those environmental details. Now sometimes, as is the case for most cases involving trauma, one needs more direct therapeutic interventions, and that is where EMDR comes in. Now EMDR deserves it’s own post, as does the full breakdown of what is happening inside of the body during a trauma reaction. For now we will stick with just understanding the Lizard Brain and it’s role in our lives.

Next time we will discuss the Lizard brain and it’s two friends, and how they work in normal situations and during a trauma reaction. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope that you found it helpful. Until next time, continue living the Wicked Life.