The Emotion Rabbit Hole

Huberman

Emotions: Subjective Yet Tractable

Everyone’s perception of emotions is slightly different. Our perceptions, genetics, and processing are all different.

To Understand Your Emotions: Look at Infancy & Puberty

The limbic system is not the only pure emotion area. Areas that contribute to the perception and experience are spread out.

They arise in the brain and body because of the many connections between different areas. The areas and their connections are built in early development.

Interoception and exteroception sets the foundation for emotions. Infants have no idea what they need. When you need something, you experience anxiety.

Your First Feeling Was Anxiety

When feeling agitation, you would make noise and somebody would sort it out for you. All babies know is that crying to the outside world results in somebody solving the problem for you. You then develop a relationship to that caregiver and you learn from them. Neglect results in development issues.

What Are “Healthy Emotions”?

Emotions are about forming bonds and predicting things in the world. Expressions give a cue as to how someone feels but we can never really know how somebody else feels.

Digital Tool for Predicting Your Emotions: Mood Meter App

Helps to work out a deeper understanding of how you feel. Helps you to predict how you’ll feel later on in the day based on your input.

The Architecture of a Feeling: (At Least) 3 Key Questions to Ask Yourself

What is your level of autonomic arousal (alert to calm, panic to drowsy)?

Do you feel good or bad (valence)?

How much you are interocepting or exterocepting? Stressed people can be extremely interoceptive (heart beating fast) unless an external stressor is the cause (somebody doing something disagreeable).

You Are an Infant: Bonds & Predictions

Infants start to look into the outside world to make predictions. Crying = mother feeding. Not crying enough = cry louder for feeding.

We make these predictions and relationships to get our needs met.

As our young infant you mainly start focusing inward.

Attachment Style Hinges on How You Handle Disappointment

Strange situation task: baby and mother play. Mother leaves and comes back. The research is about the response of the child to the mother leaving and coming back. Based on the bond and attachment.

A babies: kids that get upset and would be happy when they return (secure attached). Healthy response to separation and re-engaging

B babies: Less likely to seek comfort when they would return. Avoidant babies.

C babies: Respond with acts of annoyance. Looks like they want to reengage but are annoyed. Ambivalent babies.

D babies: Avoided interactions with everyone and acted fearful when they returned. Disorganized babies.

“Glue Points” Of Emotional Bonds: Gaze, Voice, Affect, Touch, (& written)

Gaze (eye contact), vocalizations, affect, and touch. The core of social bonds and emotionality. Cries of their babies are sometimes remarkable to parents.

Inflections and subtleties. People are better at it with those they know but some are better than others.

“Emotional Health”: Awareness of the Interoceptive-Exteroceptive Dynamic

An ability to recognize when your own internal state is driven by external events as important for emotional regulation. Those who can’t are emotionally labile.

Likely determined by your developmental emotionality and attachment style.

An Exercise: Controlling Interoceptive-Exteroceptive Bias

Effective athletes talk about getting out of their head. It is useful to have your attention focused outward for sociality.

Close your eyes, concentrate on your contact with the earth, bring as much attention to it as possible, feel your internal structures to see how you feel, then put your eyes and ears to a purely external space (exterocept). Hard to place 100% attention on exteroception. Your emotions are tethered interoceptively.

Getting Out of Your Head: The Attentional Aperture

When you are in environments you can deliberately narrow your aperture exteroceptively.

These exercises are at the core of these emotional bonds. Some people have a hard time breaking out of either mode.

When you can build better bonds, you are better able to trust that your interoceptive needs are met. Roots in trauma and PTSD.

Extreme negative emotions (sadness) will drive us to be mostly interoceptive even if the cause was outside. Feeling extremely happy we’ll feel interoceptive too. The heightened feeling is hard to ignore.

Oxytocin: The Molecule of Synchronizing States

Released in response to lactation in females, sexual interaction, non-sexual touch, males and females, pair bonding. Increases synchrony in internal states and emotional states of the partner. Evaluating a match between states and increasing awareness of others.

Mirror Neurons: Are Not For “Empathy”, Maybe for Predicting Behavior

Controversial and may not exist. There are neurons that represent the actions of others but the data doesn’t really support an emotional connection.

Primate species will make predictions of the likeliness of future behavior and can do that by reading other’s behavior to guide our own.

Promoting Trust & Monogamy

Increased positive communication and reduced cortisol in arguing couples receiving intranasal oxytocin.

Oxytocin administration seems to promote monogamous behavior.

Ways To Increase Oxytocin

Vitamin D is required for production of oxytocin and melatonin and can have an effect on increased release.

Vasopressin: Aphrodisiac, Non-Monogamy and Anti-Bed-Wetting Qualities

Suppresses urination. Water retention. Can have an effect on the brain and cause giddy love. Increases memory in potent ways. So many effects on the body so it is dodgy to use. Can also possibly relate to monogamy.

Bonding Bodies, Not Just Minds: Vagus Nerve, Depression Relief Via the Body

Stimulating the vagus will not lead to calmness. Can increase dopamine release and alertness when stimulated. A patient with a vagal stimulator went from depressed to cheerful by increasing from 1.2 to 1.5 milliamps.

Calmness and alertness level is a component of emotion, also valence, and interoception and exteroception.

A Powerful Tool for Enhancing Range & Depth of Emotional Experience

Think about emotions as elements of the brain and body that encompass levels of alertness that include a dynamic with the outside world and your perception of your internal state. Thinking about your emotions in a structured way can help you to understand the pathology and anxiety, as well as developing a richer experience to everything. Things don’t have to be seen in a reductionist manner. Just less reactive.

MDMA and Other Psychedelic Compounds: Building A Framework

These affect aspects of emotionality. It needs to be broken down into universal truths rather than storytelling.

The Stress RESPONSE: Generic, Channels blood, Biases Action

Stressors can be psychological or physical. Food, rest, sleep, or social connection be affected. Stress is generic and does not distinguish the difference between them.

The sympathetic chain ganglia (neurons starting at neck, down to naval) when something stresses us out it becomes activated all at once and release acetylcholine at various sites. Instead of causing tetanus, it activates the postganglionic neurons which release epinephrine. That epinephrine acts on muscles and hearts that have the beta receptor, making blood vessels dilate to get more blood and heart rate speed up. It also binds to receptors that contract blood vessels to systems that are not needed (digestion, rest, salivary glands, etc.). A sense of agitation to make you move.

When stressed you are more likely to say or do something.

Tools to Actually Control Stress: Reduce Alertness or Increase Calm

Tools that have a direct line to the ANS seem to work the best. Can’t just tell yourself to calm down. The PNS nerves live in the neck and lower brainstem and pelvic area. The PNS (especially cranial nerves) have a direct line to eyes, pupil dilation, tongue, facial muscles, etc. The neurons in the pelvic area are in control of bladder, genitals, and rectum. No direct way to control those.

The Fastest Way to Reduce Stress in Real Time: “Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia”

The physiological sigh. When you inhale, the diaphragm moves down, heart gets bigger in the expanded space, blood is now moving slower at the larger volume, the sinoatrial (SA) node pays attention to the rate of flow and tells the brain the blood is slower. The brain tells it to speed up. Meaning, if the inhales are longer than exhales, you’re speeding up your heart.

When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up, heart smaller, blood flows more quickly, SA node notices and tells brain, PNS sends a signal to slow the heart down.

The Fastlane to Calm

The physiological sigh is what people and animals do before going to sleep. Humans do it while crying to calm down too.

The phrenic nerve innervates the diaphragm. You can do a double inhale and a long exhale. The double inhale re-inflates the alveoli so that the long exhale is more effective at ridding the body of CO2.

A powerful way of bringing physiological arousal and stress down. Do it 2-3 times.

Positive Effects of Short-Term Stress: Immunity and Focus

Short-term, medium term, and long-term stress.

Acute stress is good for the immune system. The stress response is organized to combat bacterial and viral infection. Other neurons will activate NK cells.

Stress Inoculation Tools: Separating Mind & Body, On Purpose

Raise stress threshold by placing oneself deliberately into a higher adrenaline situation and becoming calm in that situation. Relax the mind while the body is activated to raise stress capacity. Raise the heart rate and use the visual system to dilate your gaze, fighting the typical tunnel vision reaction.

Use Vision to Calm the Mind When the Body Is Agitated

Use the body to bring up level of activation and then dissociate the mental response with the wider gaze. Medium term stressors become more manageable when you are trained.

Delight and Flexibility

Play is associated with the serotonin system. Relationships take work and require flexibility, but are incredibly powerful for stress reduction. Find just a few people to build relationships with, to mitigate long term stress. Interacting with so many people without an actual connection is stressful.

Chemical Irritants We Make but Can Control: Tachykinin

A molecule that makes us more fearful and paranoid. Tells us we aren’t spending enough time doing things we enjoy or around people we trust. Feeling like we are connected suppresses it. It promotes irritation too. Serotonin works on much faster timescales than oxytocin and more relevant.

Impactful Gratitude

Writing down things you are grateful for does seem to have a positive effect on the serotonin system.

Adrenal Burnout Is a Myth… But Why You Need to Know About It Anyway

There is no physiological exhaustion. There is adrenal insufficiency syndrome where people have impaired adrenals. Melatonin at high levels can create a pseudo-adrenal insufficiency syndrome.

L-Theanine for Stress Reduction and Task Completion Anxiety

100-200mg – Increases GABA which turns off the forebrain a little to prevent rumination and help for sleep. Increase relaxation and a minor effect on anxiety, reduce task completion anxiety, reduce blood pressure, etc.

Beware Taurine and Energy Drinks with Taurine

Effects on microvasculature – can burst blood vessels in the eyes.

Ashwagandha: Can Powerfully Lower Anxiety and Cortisol

Strong effect – 14.5-27.9% reduction in cortisol.

Lowers total cholesterol up to 10%.

Mild reduction in depression.

How This All Relates to Emotions: State Versus Demand = Valence

Respiration, eye dilation, sleep, nutrition, exercise, social interaction.

Emotions are context and cultural dependent. When our internal state matches or mismatches our demands on us, we will interpret that as good or bad.

If we are too tired or stressed the valence will not feel good and the same as if we are too hyped.

Modulating Reactivity, Mindfulness, & Functionality with Objective Tools

If your job is to take feedback, you know you need to reduce your stress response to better react in an effective way. Modulate your reactivity in real time. Being too observant can take you out so it is best to just control the stress response than to be too mindful.

Drugs That Shift Exteroception Versus Interoception

Marijuana and opioids (anything that hits serotonin hard) make people lethargic and not want to pursue much at all. Appetite goes up but that’s because of an effect on insulin and blood sugar.

Emotional Balance, Active & Passive Manipulation

People always in anticipation are great at pursuing goals but are known to be very manipulative. They learn passive manipulation is a good way to get what you want. Type A is active pursuit or by serving others through a passive way. Dopamine doesn’t care, it just wants you to pursue to avoid pain.

Procrastination: Leveraging Stress, Breathing, Caffeine, L-Tyrosine, Prescription Drugs

People like stress to avoid procrastination by tapping into epinephrine.

WHM will boost adrenaline and focus.

Coffee or yerba mate has caffeine. Nucleus accumbens increase of 30%.

L-tyrosine to get a boost but might crash later.

Schizophrenics shouldn’t boost dopamine.

When Enough Is Never Enough; How Dopamine Undermines Itself

High dopamine = pleasure and a sense of not enough. Growth mindset is good for pursuit but will result in greater pursuits. Never ending and greater pain.

Cortisol & Cholesterol, Competition with Testosterone & Estrogen

Cortisol is a steroid hormone (derived from cholesterol). Cholesterol can be made into testosterone and estrogen too, but will be devoted to cortisol if stress is high. You want cortisol levels reasonable, just not too high or at the wrong time of day.

Adrenaline (Epinephrine) Is Your (Immune Systems) Best Friend

Good for the immune system function and for memory.

Cortisol Basics in Two (Actually 1) Minute/s

Brain makes CRH, causes pituitary to release ACTH, causes adrenals to release cortisol. A hormone of energy, where we want to move and likely not eat.

Adrenaline Basics in Two Minutes

When you sense a stressor, a signal is sent to the sympathetic chain ganglia and it hoses the body with epinephrine. This with increase heart rate, breathing rate, supply blood flow to the core/vital organs. You also release adrenaline from your adrenals (on top of kidneys). Second system where you get flooded in pulses. The locus coeruleus release of epinephrine creates alertness in your brain.

Tool: Time Your Cortisol Peak to Waking Using Specific Light Intensities

Support healthy state of mind and reduce mental illness. Make sure the highest levels of cortisol are when you wake up. Sunlight 30 minutes after waking with no sunglasses. The brighter the day, the less time required. This will improve focus, energy levels, and learning. Late shifting your cortisol is a signature feature of many mental health disorders, i.e. depression, anxiety, insomnia.

Looking through a window is not good enough. On a sunny day, the intensity of light is about 100,000 lux (5-10 minutes). On a cloudy day it is about 10,000 lux (10-20 minutes). Very bright artificial light is about 1,000 lux (6 hours).

Brief Increases in Cortisol & Adrenaline Boost Energy, Focus & Immunity

There will be brief bursts of cortisol and adrenaline during stressful periods throughout the day. The key is to keep them brief. Don’t allow it to become chronically activated. Use the physiological sigh if need be. The increase in energy is healthy but only if we need it momentarily.

Ways To Increase Adrenaline, Epinephrine & Cortisol & Why That Is Good

WHM breathing, ice baths, etc., can either enhance or deplete your immune system. How often you use them and when is the key. These techniques stress the body out momentarily. If your body is already too stressed it may be detrimental. This is because it causes an increase in cortisol and epinephrine. This is the same situation as working out hard when you are stressed or tired.

If you struggle with energy and alertness, these techniques can be useful. The body can’t distinguish from a troubling message or cold baths. It only understands it as stress.

Does Mindset During Stress Matter?

Dopamine is the precursor to epinephrine. If you tell yourself you enjoy something stressful you can reframe it to an extent to get more epinephrine. It also gives you a better sense of control.

Protocols: Adrenaline Breathing Described

WHM breathing, cold exposure, or something equivalent every 3 days or so. Cold itself can increase brown fat thermogenesis and metabolism, HIIT can have other cardiovascular and muscle growth effects… What is important is the ability to build a system that allows you to buffer stress during life events and also increase your immune system and energy on demand.

Practices To Increase Energy Without Increasing Stress

Cortisol can bind to receptors in the brain, also the amygdala. Adrenaline cannot get through the BBB. This is why it is released from the adrenals and the locus coeruleus. This means the body can enter states of alertness while the brain remains calm.

If you want energy and/or immune function, pick an exercise (cold water, exercise, breathing, or even confrontations with people). A cold shower, for example, keep yourself subjectively calm by telling yourself it is enjoyable or using calm breathing, to heighten your alertness without agitating the mind with epinephrine in the brain. Feel the body response but mediate the mind one. Epinephrine will have an effect on the immune system when released in the body and energy when released in the mind.

Using Stressors to ENHANCE Our Immune System: Science & Tools

Following the practice, your body will be primed to fight infection in the short term with high epinephrine release from the adrenals.

Brief bouts of stress can improve the immune system activity. The nervous system provides the alarm to the immune organs, which can stay active form 1-4 days. Without the adrenals there is no effect. This is why short bouts of exercise, cyclic breathing, and cold exposure can improve the immune system. Caffeine could be used this way if you don’t use it chronically.

Find a short-term adrenaline boosting protocol that you can do occasionally. You can take precautionary measures when you feel yourself get a little bit sick. IL-10 can be produced and IL-6 reduced. Learning to turn on and off adrenaline and cortisol can allow you to take control of your immune system.

Biology of Comfort Foods: From Negative to Positive Feedback Loops

High levels of glucocorticoids shut off the releasing hormones in the brain and pituitary, shutting down the negative feedback loop. Cortisol levels go down. Chronic stress causes changes in the feedback loop between the adrenals and brain and pituitary, creating a positive feedback loop. Subjects would increase sugar and fat when chronic stress increased. Body fat receives neural innervation. Body fat releases hormones, adrenals release cortisol, and these signals go to the brain to make you want sugary and fatty foods.

Short term stress blocks hunger and long term increases it.

Bombesin: Energy Without Eating

Bombesin reduces eating. Stress liberates it and makes you want to eat less.

How Stress Makes Our Hair Gray, & How to Prevent Stress-Induced-Graying

Depends on genetic factors. Stem cells called niche in the follicle that can produce more of the given hair cell and they’re peroxide groups. You can produce your own that will cause it to go grey. Pigmentation of hair is controlled by melanocytes. Overactivation of the SNS drives depletion the melanocytes. Sunlight stimulates melanocytes to counter/reduce stress induced depletion.

Blunting Chronic Cortisol, Including: Ashwagandha & Science Of

Low thyroid hormone is associated with depression.

Any stress that lasts longer than a few days should be considered concerning and moving towards chronic stress. Ashwagandha has been used to enhance power output in athletes, increase testosterone, lower LDL cholesterol, a profound effect on anxiety, strong effect on cortisol. Taking it chronically may not be good. Use it when needed, rather than consistently.

The downstream effects of lowering cortisol with ashwagandha are reduced CRP, heart palpitations, obsessions and compulsions, cardiovascular issues, macular degenerations, serum T3 and T4 increased, etc. Slightly improved memory, decreased pain, increased reaction time… Take later in the day if you are chronically stressed or not sleeping well.

Licorice Increases Cortisol & Blood Pressure, & Reduces Testosterone (by Glycyrrhizin)

Not huge but significant increase in serum cortisol and lowered testosterone.

Apigenin: Anti-Cortisol

Found in chamomile. Mild anti-estrogen and has an anti-anxiolytic effect. Adjusts GABA and chloride levels too.

Protocols For Optimizing Energy & Immune System Function (& Learning)

Fasting as a source of epinephrine. Any time we haven’t eaten for 6 or more hours levels of cortisol or epinephrine will increase. You can always follow a circadian schedule and only eat when the sun is up. Or you can intermittently fast. Get your cortisol release with the sun, fast or be low carb throughout the day, then you can have more carbs around exercise or for dinner to make yourself feel sleepy.

We all eat to suppress cortisol and epinephrine. If you drink too much coffee, have some carbohydrates to elevate blood glucose to saturate the caffeine in the system.

If you want to be alert, fast, but make sure you are hydrated. Breathing, cold exposure, exercise will give the increase in the immune system function.

When Fasting, Exercise, Cold & Intense Breathing Become Detrimental

If you experience lots of stressors you are compounding the cortisol and epinephrine to a detrimental level.

If you are exhausted or burnt out, avoid these methods. Buffer with sleep, baths, ashwagandha, etc.

Tools For Accessing Alert & Calm States of “Energy”: Separating the Brain & Body

Most of the high levels of stress in our lives today are due to an inability to regulate our response to stressful events, other people, or text. Stay calm so you can regulate your action. Deliberately increase adrenaline with things like exercise while staying calm mentally. A deliberate dissociation.

Huberman + Sapolsky Stress and Testosterone

Stress: Short & Long-Term, Good & Bad

Short term saves you from a predator and helps you think clearly. The right amount of stress is stimulation. With too little there is boredom and too much is what we call “stress”.

Valence & Amygdala

If you’re in a circumstance that requires your heart to speed up and the mind to be more alert, you’ll be physiologically feeling the same regardless of the cue. Unless the amygdala is activated. The check point between excitement and terror.

Testosterone: Common Myths vs. Actual Truths

Fear or aggression when the amygdala is activated? Castrate a male and aggression goes down but testosterone doesn’t CAUSE aggression. It just lowers the threshold for things that would normally provoke you to act in an aggressive manner. Systems that are already turned on are louder. Amplifying the preexisting patterns of aggression and social learning.

If the amygdala is already being stimulated it increases the rate of neuronal firing. Shortens after hyperpolarization.

Behaviors that Affect Testosterone

Sexual behavior raises testosterone levels and so does aggressive behavior. Somewhat of a neuromodulator of what is already there. The reverse is sort of true but not is a causative way.

Mindsets & Contexts that Affect Testosterone

The psychological framing will affect testosterone increases. An example is watching a sports game and your team starts winning.

How Finger Length Ratios Reflect Prenatal Hormone Levels

The 2nd to 4th digit ratio is in other primates too. More similar ratio in females than males.

Aggression: Male-Female, Female-Male, & Female-Female

Normally, the female also has testosterone as a major player of aggression, except during post parturition where it is estrogen that drives them to protect their offspring.

Testosterone: The Challenge Hypothesis

When it comes to motivated strong behaviors, testosterone ups the volume on these behaviors.

What you secrete when your status is being challenge. In humans we have many more ways of accessing this pathway. Our species hands out status in so many ways. Such as altruism, performance, fame (social status), and financial status.

If we have a problem with too much aggression, it is the overemphasis on status that is the problem, not the testosterone.

It makes people more confident. Good unless your confidence is inaccurate. If you are winning in a game, it makes you less likely to cooperate and lowers your risk assessment competence.

How Dopamine Impacts Testosterone & Motivation

Dopamine has a salient role in creating a bias towards exteroception (outward goals). It is about anticipation of reward.

Testosterone increases energy and presence of alertness for the given task. Increases glucose uptake into skeletal muscle. These behaviors will intertwine with dopamine release.

Estrogen: Improves Brain & Longevity BUT TIMING IS KEY

Estrogen enhances cognition, stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampus, increases glucose and oxygen delivery, protects you from dementia, decreases inflammatory oxidative damage to blood vessels (good for CVD protection). Testosterone seems to make those things worse.

Post-menopausal estrogen was increasing risk of dementia, stroke, CVD, etc. When there is a lag time with a drop of estrogen during menopause before giving them a top up, that’s when all the bad effects occur. Keeping levels consistent seems to be better.

Letting your hormone levels drop for too long will be worse than keeping them up. Although, the ratios between the different sex hormones make this all a bit more complicated.

Stress Mitigation & Our Sense of Control

Do you have a sense of control? Control makes stress less stressful. Except in circumstances where it is a major stressor that we couldn’t prevent. We believe we failed even if we didn’t have control.

Sense of predictability? If you have a warning before stressful events, you will be less stressed. As long as the warning isn’t too early (anxiety) or too late (not useful).

Knowing when you’re finally safe.

Outlets for frustration. Avoid the desire to aggressively dump on others as an outlet.

If you preach to those who are going through problems it becomes privileged heartlessness because they have a different reference point.

Social support is important but should not be mistaken for using people as a sound board to bitch about others and expecting them to fix your problems instead of doing things reciprocally. It will also be dangerous to mistake acquaintances for social support as there be instability and bad advice. Temporarily these options may reduce stress but will result in terrible friendships and worse outcomes in the long run.

How Best to Buffer Stress

Transcendental meditation, mindfulness, exercise, prayer, gratitude practices, etc., collectively work on average but they compromise us. If you don’t like doing them, you’ll end up more stressed. It must be something that works for you and can be done at any time. Can’t be saved for the weekend.

Say no to stuff that are compromising your wellbeing. Understand that your wellbeing is important enough to prioritize it.

Don’t trust anybody who says their brand of stress management works better than anybody else’s.

Power of Perception, Choice & Individual Differences

All you need to do is think about something terrifying and you can completely change your current physiology to be in a threat state.

Context-Setting, Prefrontal Cortex & Hierarchy

All the contextual information that shapes the way you think will direct how you react/respond and interact with the world.

Testosterone increases after winning something is more about context too. Somebody who comes 70th in a race but performs much better than they expected may have a greater increase than the 1st place runner who expected it.

When somebody does something horrible, we are great at just thinking they themselves are horrible. When we do something wrong, we are quick to attribute it to situational dependent context (not sleeping well, not eating well, etc.).

We do and feel the same stuff as other primates but we experience them in more abstract ways, due to social networks, storytelling, and hierarchy.

What is Fear?

Emotions include responses within our bodies – changes in heart rate, blow flow, temperature, etc. – as well as a cognitive component.

We cannot have fear without several or more of the stress responses (quickening of heart rate and breathing, blood flow to some areas and not others, hypervigilance and awareness, etc.). Although, you can have stress without fear. You also can’t really have fear without experiencing some of the elements of anxiety.

The operational definition of trauma is that some fear took place, which caused stress and anxiety, and that fear somehow gets embedded or activated in our nervous system, that shows up at times where it is maladaptive.

Panic attacks are the experiences of extreme fear but without the fear inducing stimulus.

A phobia tends to be extreme fear of something specific.

Autonomic Arousal: “Alertness” vs. “Calmness”

Digestion, urination, sexual behavior, stress, sleep desire, etc. SNS and PNS. Acts as a see-saw to adjust levels of alertness.

Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA axis)

Accelerators and brakes in the hypothalamus for temperature sexual desire, eating, thirst, etc. he pituitary releases hormones into the blood stream to trigger other hormones to be released.

Epinephrine and cortisol are stress hormones, that are also involved in waking.

One of the hallmarks of fear and trauma is fear responses that are long lasting, even if the cause is brief. Longer lasting stress responses can change the system and change gene expression.

“The Threat Reflex”: Neural Circuits for Fear

Amygdala is part of the threat reflex, increased heart rate, vigilance, attentional systems on, energy store accessibility, etc. Peripheral vision and calming circuits get shut down when the threat reflex is activated.

The threat response is very vague and general. Meaning we can become afraid of anything as long as the stimuli is present during the threat reflex activation.

The amygdaloid complex has about 12-14 areas. Information from our memory and sensory systems flow into the lateral portion and there are multiple outputs. One involves the hypothalamus and also the adrenals for alertness and action. There are also neurons that feed out to the periaqueductal gray, which can trigger freezing. Neurons there also produce endogenous opioids that give us a sense of numbing from pain, in the case of a physical insult. It also goes to the locus coeruleus, which causes a sense of arousal, by releasing adrenaline and noradrenaline.

So, a sensory experience (immediate) or even a memory can elicit a fear response due to the threat reflex being activated. Resulting in freezing, activation of the adrenals, activation of the locus coeruleus for arousal and alertness, activation of the endogenous pain system in the PAG. Also, a pathway for reward and addiction – mesolimbic reward pathway (nucleus accumbens).

Controlling Fear: Top-Down Processing

Top-down processing is a way for the PFC to control or suppress a reflex. You provide a narrative where you “want” to do something or are going to do it regardless of fear.

Some people like the sensation of adrenaline. Most people do not. The threat reflex inevitably involves the release of adrenaline into the system. It then becomes a question of whether you move forward, remain still, or retreat from the experience (threat reflex).

Narratives: “Protective or Dangerous”

Fear, in some cases, is an adaptive response. It is there to prevent us from dying. Memories that evoke fear can either be protective or dangerous (limiting our behavior/maladaptive). The threat system can be activated in anticipation of what might happen.

Attaching Fear to Events: Classical Conditioning & Memory

UC stimulus evokes a response. CS is something that is associated with a stimulus (bell and salivation). This is how our fear system works. The system is set up for learning to keep us safe, where one bad experience can cause intense fear in the moment and gets wired in immediately.

Some people it is more of an accumulation of experiences, like a bad relationship. Batching many moments in time for the conditioning of one fear.

How Fear Learning Occurs: Long Term Potentiation, NMDA

LTP involves the strengthening of particular connections between neurons. A change in synaptic strength is what we refer to when talking about fear being wired up.

NMDA receptors are activated when the neuron is activated strongly, causing a change in the gene expression, leading to more receptors to the surface, and greater reactivity for later.

LTD is the weakening of neurons.

Extinguishing (Reducing) Fears

Rather than strengthening connections, we need to weaken them by associating the previously fearful experience with a new, more positive, one. You can’t just extinguish the fear.

Many treatments for PTSD, such as SSRIs, benzodiazepines (anxiolytics), antipsychotic drugs, or beta blockers/adrenergic blockers. Some people may get some sort of relief by using these drugs, but none are based on the neurobiology of fear. Someone may have a reduction in the sensation of fear.

Cognitive (Narrative) Therapies for Fear

Prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and cognitive processing. The experience of fear when they retell their trauma for the first time, there is a tremendous anxiety response. Sometimes greater than the actual experience of the trauma itself. They are asked to speak in full sentences, provide full rich detail, how they felt during and after, etc. The next few retellings progressively diminish the anxious feelings.

The retelling is important. Taking a traumatic experience and making it boring, uncoupling the threat reflex from the narrative (fear extinction).

Can be done in a therapist’s office and can be written out in a journal. Although, it is important to have the right social support available to relearn better/healthier behaviors and responses.

Repetition of Narrative, Overwriting Bad Experiences with Good

Clearing away the association first. Then there is the need to relearn a new narrative. The fear circuits that underlie trauma need to be mapped into new experiences that are of a positive association. Also, that it be linked back to the traumatic experience. Enjoying something despite the fact that something happened.

The top-down circuitry, from the PFC to the threat reflect circuits, are not like the other connections (glutamatergic and excitatory), they are inhibitory, preventing activation of the threat activation. This is why we need to attach a new positive memory onto the previous fear response, to make the reliving of the experience much less likely. However, extinction is essential first. A sense of reward tacked back.

The PFC has an amazing ability to attach meaning and rationalization as a tool to rewire our circuitry.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing

Moving the eyes side to side while recounting a traumatic narrative. Lateral eye movements reduce/inhibit fear reflex circuitry. The eye movements reduce activation of the amygdala activation and related circuits, which reduces anxiety and the amplitude of the threat reflex and SNS. These are the eye movements that we make when we are ambulating/moving through space, though some sort of self-generated motion. Forward movement and fear are generally incompatible (neither fleeing or freezing).

Particularly useful for single event trauma, not so much for relieving trauma from multiple events, such as a bad marriage.

EMDR only really attaches to the extinction portion of trauma recovery. Retelling while reducing the physiological experience with the exercise. However, there isn’t much of a victory over the trauma if you just bypass the experience by removing the physiology.

Social Connection & Isolation Are Chemically Powerful

Tachykinin is activated in neurons in the central amygdala very soon after a traumatic experience (fear inducing) appears. It sets in motion changes in gene expression and potentiation (LTP) that reinforce that fearful experience. Leading to low to moderate levels of anxiety and even aggression. Levels are further increased by social isolation. Social connection (conversing with, eating with, physical contact) with people we trust serve to reduce effectiveness of tachykinin.

It is important to access social connection outside of the clinician/therapist situation.

Trans-Generational Trauma

We have the capacity to inherit a predisposition to certain trauma. Association of FKBP5 polymorphisms and childhood abuse with risk of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in adults.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18349090/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3923835/

If you had a parent, bias towards father, that experienced abuse, this causes changes in his genetics (in his sperm), that can be passed onto offspring, such that the offspring have a lower threshold to develop trauma or extreme fear to certain events. A predisposition, not a specific fear.

What gets passed on is a propensity for the threat reflex to get activated and attached to a wider variety of inputs and experiences. A gene modification increasing predisposition.

PTSD Treatments: Ketamine, MDMA, oxytocin

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic – as making a patient feel like they were getting out of a cockpit of a plane, but observing themselves doing it. It changes the rhythm of cortical activity (1-3Hz rhythm), in layer 5 of the retrosplenial cortex. Brings us to the PFC top-down input, allowing the patient to recount their trauma while feeling while feeling none or a different set of emotional experiences than the traumatic experience. A replacement of emotional experience. Diminishing the old with dissociation, extinction, then relearning.

MDMA is a powerful synthetic drug that creates a dopamine and serotonin releasing state at the same time. Dopamine is usually related to seeking whereas serotonin is more about relaxing and being satiated. The combination of these two are not that normal. People report feelings of connection or resonance with people or things. MDMA causes massive releases of oxytocin too. The dopamine release is related to the euphoria, the serotonin leads to the safety and comfort. For trauma, this allows a fast relearning of new associations to the experience, without the need for many repetitions.

How Do You Know If You Are Traumatized?

The insular is associated with determining whether or not one’s internal sensations are reasonable or not, given the circumstances. The main effect of inhibiting the insula was that the intensity of the outside experience was not consistent with the physiological response. Then anything paired with that experience would elicit that problem.

Recalibrating the relationship between inside and outside events can potentially reduce the amount of trauma we experience.

Deliberate Brief Stress Can Erase Fears & Trauma

Daily short bouts reversed/alleviate symptoms of stress in mice.

Erasing Fears & Traumas In 5 Minutes Per Day

When it comes to trauma, anxiety, and PTSD it is not just the state that you are in or that you got into, it’s how you got there and whether you had anything to do with it.

The insula calibrates how we feel internally vs. what is happening externally. We have a system that can generate threat responses, and in the case of PTSD, anxiety, high stress, etc., that system can get ramped up so that it takes very little – maybe even a memory or an association we aren’t aware of – to trigger the symptomology.

Most drug treatments just suppress the arousal. By doing this you just create a different miscalibration. Doing a physiological sigh is a way to calm the system when the early signs of stress start to arise. Using cyclic hyperventilation, unless you are prone to panic attacks, can be a good way to elicit minor stress daily on your own terms. Recalibrating your stress threshold via deliberate reactivation of the sensations of the body without the fear being attributed. It seems it could be used in a therapeutic setting to awaken the threat response with your own agency, before addressing the traumatic issue.

All you need is self-directed adrenaline release. Could be a cold shower or hyperventilating. Do it in conjunction with support.

Nutrition, Sleep, & Other General Support Erasing Fear & Trauma

Sleep regularly for better functioning fear circuits. Dysregulated means we can have a higher propensity for sympathetic activation.

“If the tide is high enough, the boat can leave the shore.”

Supplements for Anxiety, Fear: Saffron, Inositol, Kava

Saffron (30mg) has been reliable in treating the effects of anxiety. Inositol (18g for a full month) is on par with antidepressants. Also used for OCD. Don’t take before treatment because you’ll short-circuit the extinguishing effect. Driving the trauma/anxiety deeper into the system. Kava has been shown to have a potent effect on anxiety by increasing GABA, inhibiting the threat reflex.