PSYCHOLOGY OF US

Why We Experience Stress Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has been studying emotions for over 30 years. Damasio suggests that all emotions, positive and negative, have evolutionary functions geared towards our survival (1). Emotions are motivators that have evolved over millions of years. Each emotion is made up of neurochemicals that motivate us to fulfill certain basic […]

There’s an extraordinary new type of brain scan called an fMRI that allows us to witness creative thinking while it’s happening. For the first time, we can see that creative thinking is not a mystical or divine force that shines down on us from the heavens (sorry, Elizabeth Gilbert!).

You should stay away from your potential.  You don’t want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve if you gave it your all and devoted yourself to improving yourself … would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks. – Dylan Moran

    Perhaps you’ve heard of the amygdala. It is the lightning-fast brain section responsible for detecting potential threats and prompting fear responses, such as fight-or-flight. The amygdala sends signals to the hypothalamus to release bursts of stress hormones (such as cortisol and adrenaline), which promote arousal and prompt us to enact safety strategies.   […]

If you hide your trauma from yourself, you are likely to react like an animal in a thunderstorm, having a full body response to the hormones that signal danger. Without language or context, your awareness may be limited to ‘I am scared’. Yet, determined to stay in control, you are likely to avoid anybody or […]

Fear is the physical, mental, and emotional reaction to a threat that is present or imminent. Anxiety is caused by imagining threats or possible future danger. Our threat perception can be rational and reasonable or wildly disproportionate and unrealistic. However, our brains have difficulty telling the difference between real and imagined threats.