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 I am the sum total of all I have experienced. Or am I? It is really difficult to change our automatic responses to things that push our buttons, especially if we have experienced a strong emotion attached to that experience. Balancing these almost spontaneous reactions with the cool strategies of logic is what makes up what is known as our emotional intelligence.
When experiences even vaguely resemble a past trauma, a part of the brain known as the amygdala acts in a way that some refer to as an emotional hijacking. Some will freeze from fright, while others will become aggressive. This is commonly referred to as the 'fight or flight mechanism.' Rather than being channeled mostly to the prefrontal cortex, sensory input streams directly to the amygdala, overriding facts, overwhelming logical thought and causing one to react without conscious thought. An emotional hijacking can come in many forms. It is often the culprit when one finds himself or herself apologizing for behaving badly. Emotional hijacking often results in a lower emotional intelligence.
For those who have experienced a trauma, learning to recognize the specific triggers that cause this purely emotional response and then train the brain to sort the emotional response through the reasoning process, is key to reducing and eliminating anxiety. MRI's and PET scans show, that when we view a picture of an object, certain parts of the brain are activated. They also show that if one closes her eyes and simply imagines that object, the same parts of the brain are activated. In counseling, clients practice and build this ability to visualize reality by using therapeutic role-play. It stands to reason that if one believes they will experience fear in the future, their chance of experiencing anything other than fear is very limited. The same holds true for visualizing happiness. By asking questions such as imagine if . . . we practice changing our responses to things that trigger anxiety, so that when the 'real thing' occurs one can be prepared. This training improves a person's emotional intelligence.
Do you want to live today, based on your past? There is another option. Rather than allowing a past trauma to define who you will be in the future, you can practice intentionality and emotional intelligence. Intentionality promotes the perspective that our future does not have to be a predictable response conditioned by our past experiences.
No one must be a walking reaction to the past. We all have the ability to view the world in a telescopic fashion, anticipating problems and solving them before they happen. Each of us can develop a conscious capacity to choose from a plethora of options for how our future will unfold. One must learn to sort emotions through their reasoning mind, then endeavor to learning from the past, so it may influence the present and the future but not unconsciously dictate it. We can prevent the amygdala from hijacking us emotionally, using its arsenal of vaguely linked memories that prevents us from responding to the here and now with the spontaneous creativity that makes each day so worth living. |
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