YOUR TWO BRAIN HEMISPHERES FIGHT FOR DOMINATION

If you’ve ever said or done something in the heat of the moment and later regretted it, then you’ve probably been emotionally hijacked. After an outburst, when you’ve calmed down, you can find yourself thinking ‘why did I say that’ or ‘why did I act in that way’? It’s almost like you were taken over by someone else.

?To begin to understand what emotional hijacking is all about, we need to look back in time to how your brain’s emotional centres evolved.

?Cave dwellers

?Your limbic system is the centre of your emotions. During our evolution, the emotional part of the brain served us very well with powerful feelings like love, hate, anger and fear which all played a key part in our survival as a species.

?Back in the days of the cave dwellers, love and affection were useful in forming family and friendship groups. We stood a much better chance of surviving if we grouped together rather than live in isolation in the jungle where we could be picked off by wild animals.

?The emotions of hate and anger also served us well. If our offspring or one of our tribe was threatened, by engaging with hate or anger, we could strike back and even kill if we had to.

?Fear was perhaps the most significant emotion for our survival as it gave us the instinct to run away as fast as possible if faced with a wild animal forty times larger than us.

?Our higher intelligence

?These emotions served us so well that we continued to evolve as a species and, as we did so, we slowly grew a whole new area of brain on top of the emotional brain; the neo cortex or higher intelligence.

?And it was in that part of the brain that we developed everything that came to separate us from the wild animals with the ability to think and reason, to speak and make tools, to plan and to problem solve.

?Most of the connections from the older, emotional brain to the more recently evolved neo cortex are on the right hand side of the head and most of the rational, logical connections are located on the left.

?Simply put, we have a brain of two halves that looks a bit like a walnut.

What happens in an emotional hijack??

Amazingly, the two halves of the brain do not work efficiently at the same time and, actually, the emotional and rational brains are constantly locked in a kind of battle for supremacy. But why is that??

The emotional brain must retain the ability to switch off the rational brain for survival reasons.?

Think of that wild animal running at you or perhaps the bus hurtling towards you in the road; there is no time to make a list of all the options. You’d be dead. You must take action immediately to save your skin.?

So the emotional brain switches off the thinking brain and goes into emergency mode. In fact, whenever you become emotional in any way, the limbic system starts to climb into the driver’s seat of your brain and influences how you think, feel and behave.?

But here’s the problem; your emotional brain, is a much older and more basic part of the brain and it sees things in polarised, black or white terms. It only understands extremes like ‘fight or flight’, ‘do or die’, ‘stay or go’ and ‘everything is ok or everything is not ok.’?

So, if you’ve ever sat in front of a doctor waiting for some test results, feeling stressed and anxious, then when you got home wondered ‘why didn’t I mention this’ or ‘why didn’t I ask that while I was in there…’

Or if you’ve felt harassed in a supermarket and, faced with a row of different brands of baked beans, weren’t able to choose the brand you want, perhaps even abandoning your shopping trolley and leaving the store…?

Or tried to read a book or a newspaper and, when you got to the bottom of the page, realise you haven’t taken in one word…?

…then you know what it feels like to have your rational brain disabled by your emotional brain.?

This is emotional hijacking and it’s at the core of things like anxiety attacks and anger attacks. It’s also the reason why any big emotion may dangerously affect your ability to focus, concentrate, problem solve or think clearly and make decisions.?

Monday: What happens in an emotional hijack?

?Do you want to take your skills to the next level?

Get the Fusion online programme Breathe Stress Away

Register your interest in the?Fusion Therapeutic Coaching Diploma?on?[email protected]

Follow this?link?for immediate?purchase of your Skills Workbook for ￡45

Access the Fusion?Mindfulness Based Mind Management programme here?

for just ￡395?for a limited time

If you would like specialist integrationist supervision you can contact me?here ?