Amygdala/Emotional Hijack

Amygdala Hijack is a physiological process in our brain with regard to how we respond to stimuli.

The amygdala is a pair of regions in the brain located deep within the temporal lobes of the brain

Primary role is the prepossessing of memory, emotional reactions, and decision making.

Both amygdala have independent memory systems, but work together to store, encode, and interpret emotions.

How the amygdala works is that when you receive stimuli from your senses (have well over 20 internal and external senses), a signal is sent to both your neocortex and amygdala (from the thalamus, which acts as a hub) at the same time. The neocortex is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and language. Basically, the neocortex processes a stimuli and tells your brain how to react to it.

However, a millisecond before the neocortex activates, the amygdala analyses the stimuli. It looks at the stimuli and checks to see if it has a record of it or the hippocampus (short-term and long-term memory) has record of it. If there is a match, it activates what is known as an amygdala hijack.

In many ways, the amygdala acts as a cheat sheet for the brain, to know exactly how to react to a stimuli. Not for every single one, but for the ones that have a strong emotional connection. If someone threatens to kill you, your amygdala tells your brain to be afraid, to which you begin to act with fear.

As you develop as a child and adult, you learn how to link emotional stimuli, keeping a memory of those. It is rather difficult to unlearn these, and you don’t realize you’re doing it as it happens. Generally it requires therapy to teach your mind how not to immediately react to a situation, teaching your brain to rely more on the neocortex and less on the amygdala.

The hijack is simply that when the amygdala links a stimuli to an emotional memory, it then takes over the brain for a short time to express that memory. The crazy thing about this process is that it likely happens several times a day and you are completely unaware it happens. A good way to find out if it happens is when you have an emotional reaction to something, ask yourself why did you react to that.

The most common amygdala hijack is the fight-or-flight response (also known as, flight,flight, or freeze response). This occurs when your amygdala perceives a harmful event, attack, or threat of survival. Your amygdala tells your brain to react specifically to that, resulting in a domino effect starting with chemicals in your blood stream to physiological changes in organs and senses.

How can you stop an amygdala hijack?

Symptoms of amygdala hijack can be eased or stopped by consciously activating your frontal cortex, the rational, logical part of your brain. This may take some practice and persistence.

The first step is to acknowledge that you feel threatened or stressed and that your fight-or-flight response has been activated. Become aware of how your emotions and body react to significant stress. Reviewing an episode after it’s over can help.

When you notice the fight-or-flight response has been activated, your goal is to calm down and take control. Remind yourself that what you’re feeling is an automatic response, not necessarily the best or most logical one.

When you’re calm, consciously engage your frontal lobes by thinking about the situation and finding a thoughtful, rational solution.

Become aware of your triggers and warning signs, and notice when they’re present. A good way to stay calm is to pay attention to your breathing.

Breathe slowly and evenly. Think about the speed and rhythm of your breaths, and focus on what’s going on in your body as you inhale and exhale.

How to prevent an amygdala hijack

The first step in preventing an amygdala attack is to identify what triggers it. When you feel the symptoms of amygdala hijack starting, try to pause for a moment to notice what triggered it.

Anything that causes emotional, physical, or mental stress can be a trigger. There are general categories of stressors that affect everyone to some degree, but specific triggers will be different for everyone.

It’s also helpful to identify other things that trigger the onset of amygdala hijack for you. When you feel threatened or afraid, pause and look for behaviors, bodily changes, or warning signs that are happening at the same time.

A good way to do this is with mindfulness. This refers to staying in the present and being aware of what you’re feeling and thinking, your bodily sensations, and stimuli from your environment.

Don’t try to judge or label the situation as good or bad. Focus only on the current moment, not future tasks or past problems.

Mindfulness takes practice, but it can be done at almost any time. When you’re waiting in the car or going for a walk, take time to focus on what you’re thinking and feeling and what’s happening around you.

At first, your mind will quickly start to wander. With more practice, though, it’ll be easier to stay in the moment.

Another way to stay present is to focus on your breathing. Focus on the air moving in and out of your nose and how it changes between inhaling and exhaling. Notice which parts of your body move when you take a breath.

There are two main ways to prevent amygdala hijack. Using these techniques, you can stop the shutdown of your frontal lobes, override the automatic response of your amygdala, and consciously control your response.

TECHNIQUES TO STOP AMYGDALA HIJACK

Reasoning. This means you use your frontal lobes to think the situation through, review the possible options, and choose the most rational and logical way to respond.
Meditation. By relaxing your body and mind through meditation or deep breathing, you can change your brain’s focus from responding to a threat or stress to inner peace and calmness.

Practice these techniques when you’re not experiencing an amygdala hijack so you can use them the next time you’re in a stressful situation.

The takeaway

The modern world is full of stress. We often feel this psychological stress when we see things on the news or social media, such as dangerous events and natural disasters.

Your amygdala can respond to this stress as if it’s a physical threat to you. It can take control of your brain and trigger your fight-or-flight response.

You can prevent or stop an amygdala hijack by breathing, slowing down, and trying to focus your thoughts. This allows your frontal cortex to regain control. You can then choose the most reasonable and appropriate way to respond to the situation.

Cause

When you see, hear, touch, or taste something, that sensory information first heads to the thalamus, which acts as your brain’s relay station. The thalamus then relays that information to the neocortex (the “thinking brain”). From there, it is sent to the amygdala (the “emotional brain”) which produces the appropriate emotional response.

However, when faced with a threatening situation, the thalamus sends sensory information to both the amygdala and the neocortex. If the amygdala senses danger, it makes a split-second decision to initiate the fight-or-flight response before the neocortex has time to overrule it.

This cascade of events triggers the release of stress hormones, including the hormones epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) and cortisol. These hormones prepare your body to flee or flight by increasing your heart rate, elevating your blood pressure, and boosting your energy levels, among other things.

While many of the threats we face today are symbolic, evolutionarily, our brains evolved to deal with physical threats to our survival that required a quick response. As a result, our body still responds with biological changes that prepare us to fight or flight, even though there is no actual physical threat with which we must contend.

Chronic Stress and Amygdala Hijacks

Chronic stress and certain mental health conditions can also play a role in the functioning of fear circuitry in the brain, which can result in greater chances of amygdala hijacking.

People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), for example, show greater amygdala activation and therefore, increased emotional responding including fear and anxiety responses.² People with other anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder (SAD) and panic disorder may also respond more strongly in their amygdala.³

Even without a diagnosis of PTSD or anxiety disorder, chronic stress can lead to an overactive fear and anxiety circuit in your brain, which also reduces the functioning of other areas of the brain that help with inhibition of fear, such as the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex.

All of this means that chronic stress can trigger more frequent amygdala hijacks and even subsequent problems with short-term memory, which is why it is important to work on understanding and taking charge of your emotional reactions. One way to do this is through preventative work. Learning coping mechanisms and planning ahead can positively influence how you will respond in times of stress and help avoid an amygdala-induced overreaction.

Prevention

The best way to prevent an amygdala hijack is to increase your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence describes your ability to understand and manage your emotions and use this information in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, and defuse conflict.

A person who is emotionally intelligent has strong connections between the emotional center of the brain and the executive (thinking) center. Emotionally intelligent people know how to de-escalate their own emotions by becoming engaged, focused, and attentive to their thoughts and feelings.

Although some people are naturally more emotionally intelligent than others, like many skill sets, emotional intelligence can be cultivated. One way is by practicing mindfulness.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present, aware of where you are and what you’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around you. Mindfulness meditation can help improve your emotional intelligence in three major ways:

Improves your ability to comprehend your own emotions
Helps you learn how to recognize the emotions of others
Strengthens your ability to control your emotions

By practicing mindfulness every day, you will develop this part of your brain and make it stronger. Then, when you find yourself in a stressful situation, it will be easier to switch on the mindful part of your mind.⁵ If you still find yourself having trouble with this concept, try keeping notes throughout the day about situations that cause you to feel strong emotions.

Stress Management

Another key to preventing amygdala hijacking is being aware of your stressors and identifying when acute, everyday stress has turned into chronic stress. If you find yourself constantly in a state of stress, employing stress management techniques can help. Effective stress management should include fast-acting stress relievers (like breathing exercises) for immediate relief in stressful situations as well as healthy habits that reduce overall stress (like meditation)

Coping

Though very effective in preventing amygdala hijacks, it can take time to learn and incorporate mindfulness and stress management into your daily routine. If despite your best efforts at prevention, you find yourself in the middle of a hijack, there are a number of things you can do to quickly get your unwanted emotions under control:

Name it. Notice when you’ve been triggered and identify what’s triggering you. Notice changes in your tone, tightness in your chest or stomach, clenching in your jaw or hands, etc. In these moments, say to yourself, “I’m feeling triggered right now.”
Remember the 6-second rule.It takes the chemicals that are released during the amygdala hijacking about 6 seconds to dissipate. Using this time to focus on something pleasant will prevent your amygdala from taking control and causing an emotional reaction
Breathe. Become aware of your breath and slow it down. When you slow down your breathing and make it rhythmic, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system which is your rest response. This type of deep breathing calms down your nervous system and allows you to make thoughtful decisions in stressful times.⁶
Draw on mindfulness. Look around you and notice things in the environment. This will help you to move out of your head and back into the present.
Take a timeout. If you are truly feeling out of control, excuse yourself from the situation you are in to get a hold of your emotions.

While preventing an overreaction in the first place or diffusing it in the moment may be the ultimate goal, it’s OK to slip up. If you do find yourself in the aftermath of a full-blown amygdala hijack, take some time to acknowledge your actions and review what happened. Spending some time thinking about your reactions—especially when they aren’t a reflection of your best self—can help to shift you toward a mindful way of viewing your experience. Over time, this practice will help to develop your emotional intelligence as well.

The amygdala hijack is an immediate, overwhelming emotional response with a later realization that the response was inappropriately strong given the trigger.

Some emotional information travels directly from the thalamus to the amygdala without engaging the neocortex, or higher brain regions. This causes a strong emotional response that precedes more rational thought.

Under normal circumstances, you process information through your neocortex or “thinking brain” where logic occurs. The neocortex then routes the information to the amygdala, a small organ which lies deep in the center of your “emotional brain.” On occasion, there is a short-circuit whereby the “thinking brain” is bypassed and signals are sent straight to the “emotional brain.” When this happens, you have an immediate, overwhelming emotional response disproportionate to the original event. The information is later relayed to higher brain regions that perform logic and decision-making processes, causing you to realize the inappropriateness of your original emotional response.

Knowing about the amygdala hijack allows you to prevent it or better deal with it by remaining aware of your emotions during potentially triggering events.

The amygdala hijack is an immediate, overwhelming emotional response with a later realization that the response was disppropotionately strong given the trigger. Emotional information travels directly from the thalamus to the amygdala without engaging the neocortex, or higher brain regions. This causes a strong emotional response that precedes more rational thought.

Knowing about the amygdala hijack allows you tolessen it and over time practicing how to prevent it by remaining aware of your emotions during potentially triggering events.

Over time, you can change the way your brain responds to emotional triggers, preventing the amygdala hijacking response. To rewire your brain in this way, think carefully about the triggering situation after you tame your emotional reaction. Identify the trigger and determine a more appropriate response to use next time. Your amygdala learns from past experiences, allowing you to change the way in which you react to a similar situation in the future.

Calming Your Brain During Conflict

When we perceive a threat, the amygdala sounds an alarm, releasing a cascade of chemicals in the body. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol flood our system, immediately preparing us for fight or flight. When this deeply instinctive function takes over, we call it what Daniel Goleman coined in Emotional Intelligence as “amygdala hijack.” In common psychological parlance we say, “We’ve been triggered.” We notice immediate changes like an increased heart rate or sweaty palms. Our breathing becomes more shallow and rapid as we take in more oxygen, preparing to bolt if we have to.

The flood of stress hormones create other sensations like a quivering in our solar plexus, limbs, or our voice. We may notice heat flush our face, our throat constrict, or the back of our neck tighten and jaw set. We are in the grip of a highly efficient, but prehistoric set of physiological responses. These sensations are not exactly pleasant — they’re not meant for relaxation. They’re designed to move us to action.

The active amygdala also immediately shuts down the neural pathway to our prefrontal cortex so we can become disoriented in a heated conversation. Complex decision-making disappears, as does our access to multiple perspectives. As our attention narrows, we find ourselves trapped in the one perspective that makes us feel the most safe: “I’m right and you’re wrong,” even though we ordinarily see more perspectives.

And if that wasn’t enough, our memory becomes untrustworthy. Have you ever been in a fight with your partner or friend, and you literally can’t remember a positive thing about them? It’s as though the brain drops the memory function altogether in an effort to survive the threat. When our memory is compromised like this, we can’t recall something from the past that might help us calm down. In fact, we can’t remember much of anything. Instead, we’re simply filled with the flashing red light of the amygdala indicating “Danger, react. Danger, protect. Danger, attack.”

In the throes of amygdala hijack, we can’t choose how we want to react because the old protective mechanism in the nervous system does it for us — even before we glimpse that there could be a choice. It is ridiculous.

Practicing Mindfulness in Conflict

Our basic impulse to protect ourselves is automatic and unconscious.

We have two amygdala, one on each side of the brain, behind the eyes and the optical nerves. The amygdala is the brain’s “smoke detector.” It’s responsible for detecting fear and preparing our body for an emergency response.

The active amygdala also immediately shuts down the neural pathway to our prefrontal cortex so we can become disoriented. Complex decision-making disappears, as does our access to multiple perspectives.

And if that wasn’t enough, our memory becomes untrustworthy. It’s as though the brain drops the memory function altogether in an effort to survive the threat. When our memory is compromised like this, we can’t recall something from the past that might help us calm down. In fact, we can’t remember much of anything. Instead, we’re simply filled with the flashing red light of the amygdala indicating “Danger, react. Danger, protect.”

Mindfulness is the perfect awareness technique to employ when a conflict arises . It allows us to override the conditioned nervous system with conscious awareness. We can learn to stay present, participate in regulating our own nervous system, and eventually, develop new, more free and helpful ways of interacting with triggers.

Practicing mindfulness in the middle of a conflict demands a willingness to stay present, to feel intensely, to override our negative thoughts, and to engage our breath to maintain presence with the body. Like any skill, it takes practice.

There are different approaches to working with a provoked nervous system and intense emotions, but they all have some elements in common. Here are four simple steps that I try to use when I find myself with an overloaded nervous system and a body racing with a fight or flight impulse.

Step 1: Stay present.

The first step in practicing mindfulness when triggered is to notice we are provoked. We may notice a change in our tone of voice, gripping sensations in the belly, or a sudden desire to withdraw. Each of us has particular bodily and behavioral cues that alert us to the reality that we feel threatened, and are therefore running on automatic pilot.

We have to decide to stay put and present, to be curious and explore our experience.

Step 2: Let go of the story.

This might be the most difficult part of the practice. We need to completely let go of the thinking and judging mind. This is a very challenging step because when we feel threatened, the mind immediately fills with all kinds of difficult thoughts and stories about what’s happening. But we must be willing to forget the story, just for a minute, because there is a feedback loop between our thoughts and our body. If the negative thoughts persist, so do the stressful hormones. It isn’t that we’re wrong, but we will be more far more clear in our perceptions when the nervous system has relaxed.

Step 3: Focus on the body.

Now simply focus on feeling and exploring whatever feelings arise in the body. We feel them naturally, just as they are, not trying to control or change them. We allow the mind to be as open as possible, noticing the different places in the body where feelings occur.

Step 4: Finally, breathe.

Everybody knows that it helps to breathe. There are many different qualities of the breath, but we only need to learn about two: Rhythm and smoothness. If we focus on these two dimensions, even for a few short minutes, the production of the cortisol and adrenaline will stop.

To breath rhythmically means that the in-breath and out-breath occur repeatedly at the same intervals.

At the same time, we should invite the breath to be even or smooth, meaning that the volume of the breath stays consistent as it moves in and out, like sipping liquid through a narrow straw. If we manage those two qualities for just a few minutes, the breath assists us in remaining present, making it possible to stay with intense feelings in the body.

Paying attention to our body re-establishes equilibrium faster, restoring our ability to think. This takes practice, but eventually, we retrain ourselves to respond rather than to react.

Becoming more in-tune with our body’s response to a hijacked nervous system is challenging, but do-able.

Each time we succeed in being mindful of our body in moments of distress, we develop our capacity. When anything new happens, taking note of it helps to free us of the pattern to our old way of doing things. Before we know it, our old habit of fight or flight is changing, and the world is a safer place.

Your Brain on Change, Part 1: The Amygdala Hijack

Here we can learn a better understanding of how our neurological wiring predisposes us to relate to change. In many ways this wiring represents an obstacle — our brains don’t like change that much. Describing these obstacles serves two functions. First, it helps us to validate our own experiences, and therefore to have more compassion and acceptance for ourselves when we struggle. Secondly, only when we understand the particular contours of an obstacle, can we identify strategies for surmounting it or going around it. What stands in the way is the way. THE OBSTACLE IS THE PATH

The amygdala receives information about the outside world from other parts of the brain. It’s basic function is to determine whether we are faced with a threat, and if so, to mobilize a response to it. So the amygdala has a hair trigger in its search for threats. If it encounters something unfamiliar, it’s likely to sound the alarm.

Once it determines that there is a threat, the amygdala sets off a bunch of physiological reactions associated with our fight or flight response. If the response is strong enough, it will suddenly disrupt our ability to think clearly, to plan, or to modulate our emotions.

To recover from an amygdala hijack, we need to re-engage the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that plans and reasons. One key technique for doing so is labeling. Because language is in the domain of the pre-frontal cortex, when we can use language to name the reaction that we are having, it starts to reactivate. We can label what emotion we’re feeling, what the feeling is about, and why it matters to us. We can also just tell ourselves “I’m having an amygdala/emotional hijack right now.”

Emotional triggering is, at its heart, a survival response and the brain creates powerful associations between things that hurt you and whatever was going on when this hurt occurred.

In neuropsychological terms, it’s the limbic system — of which the amygdala is a part — that controls your emotional responses and the behaviours that stem from these emotions. Consisting of two almond-sized nuclei located behind the eyes and optical nerves, the amygdala operates beyond conscious awareness, tapping into emotional memory at a very high speed. This quick processing means your emotional responses cause other more rational parts of the brain to freeze, so that you react, rather than respond, to whatever is happening around you. It is reactive, rather than responsive, process.

To properly address and manage the real emotion behind an overwhelming feeling, it is important to be able to accurately identify it.

While the perceived threats of today are generally not, the same as your past traumatic experiences, the response of the amygdala is just the same, creating havoc with your chemistry and shutting down the neocortex as a range of hormones course through your veins. The shutting down of the neocortex circumvents your ability to make a reasoned response to a perceived threat, reducing you to mechanisms and habitual behavioural patterns.

Being able to recognise and manage emotions is a basic tenant of emotional intelligence, yet many of us struggle to find the awareness needed to begin the process of harnessing and productively directing these emotions. It is crucial for contentment, good mental health and fulfilling relationships that you are not only able to harness your emotional responses, but can accurately identify what it is you are truly feeling.

So, what can you do? How do you protect yourself from an amygdala/emotional hijack? The first step is recognizing physiological cues, acknowledging your triggers, identifying and naming emotions, becoming aware of habitual responses and applying conscious effort to moderate your responses when and where required.

Emotion and the body

When a threat is perceived, the amygdala generates an alarm, releasing a torrent of chemicals in the body. Stress hormones including adrenaline and cortisol flood the system, immediately preparing you for the fight, flight or freeze response.

Trigger points

The amygdala draws on emotional memory as much as it does instinct, so that past experiences and the expectations you have based on the past will determine when you will react and how intense your reaction to specific moments will be.

Becoming aware of your triggers gives you control over your emotional responses. Awareness creates responsibility to recognize your triggering situations so you can change your unconscious reactions, leading you towards wiser thoughts and actions.

Yyour emotional responses are purely your own. Any number of people will respond to the same catalyst differently, depending on their perception of it. Essentially, it is your beliefs or feelings about the event that generate your personal response. Beliefs about a situation are just one way that emotional triggers can influence your behaviour.

When you are unaware of your emotional triggers, these negative behaviours can seem automatic and out of your control but through awareness you can begin to monitor your most extreme emotional responses. It is important in becoming aware that you remember a trigger is an experience that draws you back into the past and causes old feelings to arise.

To begin the process of awareness, take note of the situations you are in when your responses are excessive. Include the people who were there and what was happening, pay particular attention to the moment when you could feel your tension and emotion begin to rise. With attention and practice, you may begin to see a pattern that will better enable you to identify the cause of your reactions. While it is important to understand the external stimuli that push your emotional buttons it is also important to understand that emotions/feelings are intrinsically linked to your past thoughts, feelings and beliefs. (limiting beliefs)

In many instances these thoughts, expectations, judgments and prejudices are inaccurate, unhelpful or no longer relevant. As such, when you become aware of them, you are in a better position to challenge them and ultimately change or at least moderate them.

Learning to pause

During the process of awareness as you explore and discover your emotional triggers, you will also find that you have created an opportunity to intervene in the space between the triggering event and your response.

This space allows you to create a more desirable situation by giving you time to rethink your habitual responses. Learning to control and calm your own feelings of agitation or distress so you don’t create your own amygdala hijack or buy into another person’s emotional turmoil is an important aspect of emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence represents the ability you have to recognise your own and other people’s emotions, discern between different emotions and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour and manage or adjust emotions to better manage situations.

When talking about emotional triggers, the focus is on self-awareness and self-regulation.

Self-awareness refers to knowledge about how you feel at any given time.

Self-regulation is about using the information gleaned through self-awareness to regulate feelings and actions. Self-regulation is about staying in control to ensure the best outcomes for yourself.

Self-regulation occurs in that space you created with self-awareness that exists between emotion and reaction. It is sometimes referred to as activating your PAUSE button. Your mental pause button provides space within which you can emotionally disengage from the moment, giving yourself time to decide on the best response to external stimuli.

Your pause button lessens the perceived danger, through awareness and practice, by giving you space to employ strategies that can help you to reappraise the situation and challenge your thoughts and limiting beliefs.

Activating your pause button

Tune into your body: recognise the signs you have been triggered.

Breathe: take a few deep breaths to give you time to think and your body to calm.

Acknowledge the emotion: name it and you’ll find that the feeling is easier to control. If you don’t recognise your feelings, you can’t challenge them or manage them.

Reframe the situation: reappraising a situation will diffuse emotional reactions.

Let’s look at how we receive and process information.

The journey begins with sensation received
by our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth which
are routed to the thalamus.
The thalamus acts as “air traffic controller”
to keep the signals moving. In a typic
situation, the thalamus directs the impulse
to the cortex for processing.
The cortex “thinks” about the impulse and
makes sense. “Aha,” it says, “this is
…………… It means I should …………..”
That signal is then sent to the amygdala
where a flood of peptides and hormones are
released to create emotion and action.
In “The Hijacking of the Amygdala,” the thalamus
has a different reaction. Like any skilled air
traffic controller, the thalamus can quickly
react to potential threat. In that case, it
bypasses the cortex — the thinking brain —
and the signal goes straight to the
amygdala. The amygdala can only react
based on previously stored patterns.

The amygdala is the “fight or flight” and emotional
memory part of the brain. Its job is to protect by comparing incoming data with emotional memories.
An amygdala hijack occurs when we respond out of measure with the actual threat because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat. For instance, the amygdala will react similarly to
the threat of being eaten by a tiger (physical threat) and the threat of an ego attack (emotional threat) by bringing on the fight or flight reaction.
When one experiences an amygdala hijack, the amygdala overtakes the cerebrum (the thinking part of the brain) and there’s little or no ability to rely on intelligence or reasoning. The effect is that energy
is drawn exclusively into the hijack. The immediate result of a hijack is a decrease in working memory. Adrenaline is released and will be present and effective for 18 minutes, and other hormones are released into the bloodstream that will take 3 – 4 hours to clear.

So what can I do?
Some simple steps to reduce the chance of an amydala hijack occurring are:
Stop. Stop whatever you’re doing. Ask yourself what just happened. Replay the comments in your head. This step keeps the neocortex engaged and can prevent the amagdala’s takeover.
Oxygenate. Breathe deeply, with intention and purpose. This step also keeps the neocortex engaged.
Strengthen appreciation. It’s difficult to have two emotional experiences at the same time, and appreciation counters the hijack. While it’s especially effective to appreciate the source of the hijack (i.e. appreciating the parent’s support of their child by attending the game), any appreciation of anything will be helpful. If you can’t appreciate the person who is the source of the conflict, appreciate parts of your own life, such as your family and friends.
Survey the landscape. After the hijack, spend some time exploring what happened and why.
Recognising the trigger will allow you to avoid being triggered in the future.

The Cerebrum
The biggest part of the brain is the cerebrum. The cerebrum makes up 85% of the brain’s weight, and it’s easy to see why. The cerebrum is the thinking part of the brain and it controls your voluntary muscles — the ones that move when you want them to. So you can’t dance or kick a soccer ball
without your cerebrum. Some can’t dance anyway but that’s another story entirely.
When you’re thinking hard, you’re using your cerebrum. You need it to solve maths problems, figure out a video game, and draw a picture. Your memory lives in the cerebrum — both short-term memory
(what you ate for dinner last night) and long-term memory (where you were when the All Blacks lost another key World Cup game). The cerebrum also helps you reason, like when you figure out that you’d better stay late at work tonight so you can leave a little early tomorrow.
The cerebrum has two halves, with one on either side of the head. Some scientists think that the right half helps you think about abstract things like music, colours, and shapes. The left half is said to be more analytical, helping you with maths, logic, and speech. Scientists do know for sure that the right half of the cerebrum controls the left side of your body, and the left half controls the right side.

Corpus Callosum
The corpus callosum is the arched bridge of nervous tissue that connects the two cerebral hemispheres, allowing communication between the right and left sides of the brain.

Thalamus
The thalamus is a large ovoid mass of grey matter situated in the posterior part of the forebrain that relays sensory impulses to the cerebral cortex.

Hypothalamus
The hypothalamus is like your brain’s inner thermostat. The hypothalamus knows what temperature your body should be (about 98.6° Fahrenheit or 37° Celsius). If your body is too hot, the hypothalamus tells it to sweat. If you’re too cold, the hypothalamus gets you shivering. Both shivering and sweating are attempts to get your body’s temperature back where it needs to be.

Amygdala
The amygdala is a bunch of cells on each side of the brain. The word amygdala is Latin for the word
almond. That is what the area of cells looks like. This part of the brain is responsible for emotions. The amygdala is believed to serve as a communications hub between the parts of the brain that
process incoming sensory signals and the parts that interpret them. It can signal that a threat is present, and trigger a fear response or anxiety. It appears that emotional memories stored in the central part of the amygdala may play a role in disorders involving very distinct fears, like phobias,
while different parts may be involved in other forms of anxiety.

Hippocampus
The hippocampus is a part of the cerebrum, and that’s the area of your brain that deals with memory.
There are different kinds of memory, short-term and long-term.
Short-term memory describes information that the brain has recently received. Long-term memory deals with things that have happened in the past.

The Cerebellum
The cerebellum is at the back of the brain, below the cerebrum. It’s a lot smaller than the cerebrum at only 1/8 of its size. But it’s a very important part of the brain. It controls balance, movement, and
coordination (how your muscles work together).
Because of your cerebellum, you can stand upright, keep your balance, and move around. It is also the part of the brain where the high level functions take place and information is integrated.

Brain Stem
Another brain part that’s small but mighty is the brain stem. The brain stem sits beneath the cerebrum and in front of the cerebellum. It connects the rest of the brain to the spinal cord, which runs down your neck and back. The brain stem is in charge of all the functions your body needs to stay alive, like breathing air, digesting food, and circulating blood.
Part of the brain stem’s job is to control your involuntary muscles — the ones that work automatically, without you even thinking about it. There are involuntary muscles in the heart and stomach, and it’s the brain stem that tells your heart to pump more blood when you’re biking or your stomach to start digesting your lunch. The brain stem also sorts through the millions of messages that the brain and the rest of the body send back and forth.

PRACTICE IN PROGRESS

begin here