How to Calm Down the Overactive Amygdala
This post was originally published on September 18th, 2018. It was edited and republished on July 15th, 2019.
Distinctly I remember a day in September when I was feeling like the best version of myself..for awhile. Rolling through conference calls, I said what I wanted to, listened when I needed to, and promoted good ideas. I felt free and strong. Then I got on the phone with Bill.
Something about Bill’s aloof demeanor made me feel smaller. Then he pushed back on me in a way that I read as a rejection of my ideas. I deal with difficult people and situations every day, but this one triggered a reaction in my brain. And from there, I just wasn’t my best self anymore.
The Physical Effects of an Amygdala Hijack
In his book The Body Keeps the Score, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk calls the amygdala your brain’s “smoke detector.” It detects fear and prepares your body for emergency response. When you perceive a threat, the amygdala pumps stress hormones into your body. This deeply instinctive function is the fight, flight, or freeze response Daniel Goleman called an “amygdala hijack.” As psychologists put it, “You’ve been triggered.”
Being triggered has a strong physical effect. Your heart rate increases, breathing becomes shallower, your limbs or voice might quiver, your throat constricts, and your neck tightens. Conflict mediator Diane Musho Hamilton points out that these responses are “not meant for relaxation. They’re designed to move us to action.”
Furthermore, when it’s hijacked, the amygdala shuts down the neural pathway to your prefrontal cortex. This creates a disorienting effect, limiting your ability to see other perspectives and reducing your memory function. This makes it hard to remember all the facts, including what may be good about yourself and others.
When the amygdala is running the show, you’re not your best self. You’ve got to find ways of regulating your nervous system and developing freer and more helpful ways of interacting.
4 Steps to Manage Your Overactive Amygdala
These days, most everyone has an overactive amygdala. Whether it’s from a difficult conversation, getting a rude response, or feeling intimidated by a situation. You and I are never going to avoid the constraining effects of a triggered amygdala. It’s part of being human. We can, however, manage our minds and bodies to be our best triggered self. Here are four steps to do it:
- Realize you’ve been triggered. Metacognition, the ability to think about your thinking, is a higher-level skill that top performers master. You can do this, too. Notice changes in your tone, tightness in your stomach, or a sudden desire to explode or run. In these moments, say to yourself (and sometimes to the person in front of you, if you have high trust), “I’m feeling triggered right now.”
- Let go of the story. This excellent suggestion comes from Musho Hamilton, who says this is the most difficult step. “We need to completely let go of the thinking and judging mind,” she explains. “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. It isn’t that we’re wrong, but we will be far more clear in our perceptions when the nervous system has relaxed.”
- Release the tension. According to Steven Kotler and his team’s research at the Flow Genome Project, to be your best self, you have to move past the struggle of anxiety to a “release.” This requires persisting through the amygdala hijack, breathing, and quieting your mind. When you can persist to the release, you’ll get nitric oxide flowing through your body, and your brain will enter a clearer space. This is the space right before what they call “flow.”
- “Remember who you are.” I love that line from the movie The Lion King, when the spirit of his father encourages Simba. I first saw the movie in a theater during the heavy amygdala-hijacking years of high school. Walking out of the theater crying (which was really embarrassing in high school), I realized the centering effects of a clear identity. “Remember who you are.” To know my value doesn’t come from the approval or reaction of others freed me to be my best self.
Being human means you can’t always be the best version of yourself. An overactive amygdala will physiologically disagree because it wants you to be ready to react with fight, flight, or freeze. So how do you manage your amygdala to be your best triggered self?
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