Have you ever been inevitably overwhelmed by a very powerful emotion that made you lose control?Have you ever let yourself go and say things you quickly regret?Have you ever felt it was an emotion that animated your brain?If you answered yes, to any of these questions, it means you were kidnapped at some point by your amygdala.
Tonsil detour is a term used by psychologist Daniel Goleman to explain this type of uncontrollable emotional reaction, who as an emotional intelligence specialist explains that the secret to becoming irrational has to do with the momentary and immediate lack of emotional control, as the amygdala takes control of the brain.
- “Strong negative emotions consume an individual’s attention.
- Preventing any attempt to deal with anything else.
- ? Daniel Goleman?.
The amygdala is a structure located inside the medial temporal lobe, usually easily recognizable because it is shaped like an almond, along with the hippocampus, hypothalamus and orbital cortex, is part of what is called the emotional or limbic brain. System.
The limbic system controls physiological responses to certain stimuli, i. e. all of its structures are essential for emotional control of human behavior, but what distinguishes the amygdala within the limbic system is that it is crucial for survival, because its main function is to integrate emotions into the corresponding response patterns, whether physiological or behavioral.
The most important thing to understand your emotional abduction ability is to understand that the amygdala not only provokes an emotional reaction, but also, because of its connection to the frontal lobe, allows inhibition of behavior.
The deviation of the amygdala is an immediate and disproportionate emotional reaction to the stimulus that triggered it, understood as a threat to emotional stability, this occurs because the amygdala steals the activation of other areas of the brain, mainly the cortex, dominating the behavior of the subject and disabling the area that makes us more rational, more human.
The frontal area of the cortex inhibited by kidnapping is responsible for logical thinking and planning our actions, on the contrary, the amygdala is one of the most primitive structures of the brain and controls emotions, so our logical thinking is subject to control of our emotions.
“We must consider that momentum is the vehicle of emotion and that the seed of each impulse is an expansive feeling that seeks to express oneseed in action. Daniel Goleman?
Perhaps it is a little strange that the more developed part of the brain, such as the cortex, may be dominated by a structure as primitive as the amygdala; however, it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Thousands of years ago, it was a matter of survival.
When we hunted in the jungle and, for example, we ran into a lion, the amygdala disabled the rest of the brain functions because it wasn’t time to stop and think about danger or digest or ovulate, it was time for the fight. / leak response.
However, in today’s world, when faced with an event of major stress, although our survival does not threaten, like a traffic jam, the amygdala kidnaps us, which causes our whole body to fill with adrenaline and cortisol, which alter our organism. over a four-hour period of emotional fun.
And so, after an intense emotion caused by a great stressor, we usually feel for a while what we can call an ’emotional hangover’, which is due to the hormones that still circulate through our body and make the discomfort last much longer.
Maybe you’ve heard that? When you’re angry, annoying, it’s good to count to ten, but if you’re very angry, count to a thousand?. It’s a very smart strategy because when we start counting, it activates the cortex, frontal and logical part of the brain, which, as we said earlier, is inhibited during emotional abduction.
So, if you start counting when stress-induced intense emotion occurs, you can stay away from it, gain space, and understand what’s going on. You’ll be able to reuse the logical part of your brain to avoid these impulsive responses that are triggered. when you’re under a tonsil kidnapping.
Another strategy that usually works is to focus on conscious breathing, the typical breathing of mindfulness, when your attention is focused on your breathing, every time you inhale you put yourself in the present moment and stay calm, activate your parasympathetic nervous system that inhibits the sympathetic nervous system, which is what is activated during the experience of deviation from the amygdala.
In short, to get out of the deviation of the amygdala when an important stressor activates it, it is necessary to create a space between what happened and the present moment, it is highly advisable to perform activities that activate the logical part of your brain or others, such as mindfulness, that focus on the present and teach new ways of experiencing the emotion you are feeling.