Let’s meet the amygdala

The amygdala (Latin word for almond because of their similarities) is our environmental scanning system. It scans the environment for danger and prepares a response to it. Incredibly research has shown that the amygdala can become aware of danger before we are even consciously aware of it. This is because the amygdala is connected to the thalamus (which if you recall from the last post, is our first line of data processing) and thalamus can send the danger signal to the amygdala before it’s even been processed by the frontal cortex. This is fantastic if we are in real danger. The amygdala then sends information to the hypothalamus to trigger our fight/flight/freeze response.

The amygdala also is responsible for storing fear memories. Therefore it is not super surprising that the amygdala plays a major role in anxiety. While fear is the emotion around a real danger, anxiety is the anticipated dread that accompanies a particular stimuli. Of course we now know that the amygdala plays a far more complex role than just the fear response. However, it is important to understand that during traumatic circumstances, our amygdala is very active.

Repeated experience of trauma, and stress associated with trauma, has been found to sensitize the amygdala to danger response. In other words a person who has experienced repeated trauma can become very sensitive to danger, will be more likely to react to triggers, especially emotional ones and will find it difficult to regulate their own emotions.

If you are prone to anxiety, it maybe worthwhile understanding your triggers, doing calming practices such as deep breath work, visualization, yoga, stretches, praying, meditation all of which will send a safety message to your amygdala, reducing your anxieties.