Читать книгу Anxiety Toolbox: The Complete Fear-Free Plan - Gloria Thomas - Страница 57

The fear response originates in the limbic system, which is towards the back of the brain. This centre, amongst other functions, generates basic emotional responses. These responses are unconscious – in other words they operate out of your awareness. The limbic system is the part of the brain that initially decides whether we should be fearful, angry or loving. It passes this information to the frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that consciously registers emotion and floods it into our consciousness.

The limbic brain is responsible for the feeling of fear and out of fear comes anxiety. Other primary emotions are love, anger and disgust, sadness, joy, shame, grief and surprise. These emotions are, at their most basic, survival mechanisms that have evolved to help us to run from danger, stand and fight, or move towards more pleasurable states. Although there are a number of primary emotional states, a number of others has developed – for example, frustration, resentment, excitement and so on.

Our emotional states can change from moment to moment depending on what we are thinking at the time. This means we are constantly creating some kind of emotion, whether it is a negative or a positive one. Emotions just seem to happen and it appears impossible to stop them or catch them in the act. Try to control them at a conscious level and you are likely to find it difficult. Emotions are powerful things and at times your emotions can override reason.

The limbic system is made up of a number of structures that work in conjunction to make sense of, and respond to, the incoming information from the world around you: the thalamus organizes the data and information that comes in from the senses; the amygdala, brain’s main alarm system, signals and generates emotion; the hippocampus is responsible for storing your memories; the neo cortex is the conscious, thinking part of the mind, whose job it is to make sense of information; and the hypothalamus is the master gland that regulates and controls involuntary functions.