Does your heart race when you get an unexpected text? Do you find yourself jumping at small noises or feeling constantly on edge? Your amygdala - your brain's built-in alarm system - might be working overtime. It is trying to protect you from danger, even when there isn't any. That's its job. Not to decide when there is danger, but to be ready- in case there is some. While this ancient protective mechanism kept our ancestors alive, it can become overwhelmed by modern life's constant stream of perceived "threats" that aren't physically dangerous - from work deadlines to social media notifications.
Does your heart race when you get an unexpected text? Do you find yourself jumping at small noises or feeling constantly on edge? Your amygdala - your brain's built-in alarm system - might be working overtime. It is trying to protect you from danger, even when there isn't any. That's its job. Not to decide when there is danger, but to be ready- in case there is some. While this ancient protective mechanism kept our ancestors alive, it can become overwhelmed by modern life's constant stream of perceived "threats" that aren't physically dangerous - from work deadlines to social media notifications.
In this episode, we explore the science behind anxiety in simple terms, discovering how to recognize when your brain's alarm system is activated and, most importantly, give you the steps to reset it. Whether you're dealing with everyday stress or chronic anxiety, understanding your amygdala is the first step to reclaiming your calm.
Key Takeaways:
🔹 Understanding the Amygdala: Its role in processing emotions like fear and stress.
🔹 Amygdala Hijack: Why emotional reactions can feel overwhelming and how to manage them.
🔹 Calming Techniques: Simple practices like mindfulness and breathing exercises to soothe an overactive amygdala.
🔹 Emotional Regulation: Tools to help you respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.
🔹 Reducing Anxiety: How understanding your brain can help you foster resilience and well-being.
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[00:00:00] Dr. Jodi: How to understand your amygdala. So your amygdala is this tiny almond shaped part of your brain inside. The brain is split in two, so one half is exactly like the other half an anatomically and the amygdala has a little almond shape on both sides, but it's in the center. It's in there.
[00:00:20] Dr. Jodi: All the way in there. Your amygdala is so important to how you feel and how you live your life because it is what triggers your sympathetic nervous system to release your adrenaline and adrenaline. If you don't know, but probably you do know, is that hormone that. Stimulates all of those anxious responses, and that's not what it's supposed to do.
[00:00:44] Dr. Jodi: It's not, the amygdala is not to release the adrenaline, to stimulate the anxiety. It's to get your body ready in case it was in danger. We know this, we learned it in middle school science class, right? That fight, flight, or [00:01:00] freeze, that's your amygdala, releasing the adrenaline in your body so that it could get ready in case you were in danger.
[00:01:09] Dr. Jodi: 98% of the time, you are not in danger when that system goes off. That's a sympathetic nervous system when that goes off. It is in case you're in danger. If there's anything that might be threatening around or anything relating to anything in the past that might have been threatening, your amygdala is gonna release.
[00:01:32] Dr. Jodi: And let me just tell you a little bit about it because in this episode I'm gonna use this episode as a training for how to understand the amygdala, how to reset the amygdala. And what I mean is how to un-trigger it. Once an event triggers it, I'm gonna explain that I'm gonna teach you in this episode how to un-trigger, and this is a trauma informed training because mostly when our amygdala has [00:02:00] a trigger, it usually came from some kind of trauma in our past, and it could be small T trauma.
[00:02:07] Dr. Jodi: Let's define trauma. Trauma is when your emotions are overwhelmed. Any event that you're experiencing or that you're thinking about. 'cause there's secondary trauma. Any event that you're experiencing yourself or watching or thinking about. Your senses over overwhelmed. Your five senses, like your sight, you're hearing, you're feeling, your emotions are overwhelming in that moment.
[00:02:34] Dr. Jodi: What happens is there's functions in your brain that turn off the hippocampus, which stories are memory, right? Which processes? Memory stories, I'm using story as a verb. It creates a story in that way. It processes a memory, so it's, it makes sense, it has an understanding and it's processed in the brain.
[00:02:58] Dr. Jodi: When you are [00:03:00] overwhelmed by emotion that turns off, the hippocampus turns off. And the amygdala starts lying down, laying down memory, but it lays down this emotional memory, not a cognitive memory. So it's not like saying the hippocampus is the cognitive memory, right? It's the understanding, the biological memory that amygdala is laying down an emotional memory attached to that event.
[00:03:28] Dr. Jodi: So say you were in a situation where you were hearing. Wine glasses cl together and then you heard really bad news. Or you heard wine glasses cling together and there was an explosion where there was the person who abused you when you were young, yelled a lot. So yelling that is a stimulation is a trigger.
[00:03:49] Dr. Jodi: Let me give you some more examples. A smell. So someone who hurt you or abused you or mean to you physically, sexually, whatever. They had [00:04:00] a certain cologne. So if you smell that cologne somewhere, your amygdala is laying down. When you experience that, again, the sound, the wine glasses clinking together, the smell, the time of day some other correlation to that event that happened that was traumatic.
[00:04:19] Dr. Jodi: It could be small, too traumatic, right? It could be throwing up in a car. So if you threw up in a car 'cause you were car sick, or maybe you had the flu one day and you threw up in the car, the amygdala might attach to the car. So the next time you go in the car, you might have a release of adrenaline because your amygdala's like this is a overwhelming, this could be overwhelming.
[00:04:38] Dr. Jodi: Again, this is when we have to keep Jodi safe. Your amygdala is trying to keep you safe. So if I was sick, if they had the flu and I was sick and I threw up in the car, and the next time I'm in the car, my amygdala's something's wrong in this kind of place. I gotta protect Jodi. So put the adrenaline out, get the body ready, cause that adrenaline, when I said those anxious responses, that is [00:05:00] actually things that you could do to keep yourself safe if there was a real threat, a real physical threat to your body. It conserves the energy from digesting food so it could put it to your large muscles so that you could run away or fight the threat.
[00:05:16] Dr. Jodi: It gives you tunnel vision so you could really focus, it puts a lot of energy into your prefrontal cortex so you could analyze the situation and make decisions really quickly about what to do, makes you find the problem and analyze the problem. What are the other things that adrenaline does? It makes you hot so that your muscles are warm so that they could fight or run faster when your muscles, that's why when you're exercising, how you warm your muscles up and then they're better.
[00:05:44] Dr. Jodi: Your adrenaline's gonna warm your body up so that your muscles could work better. All of that. So sometimes you feel numb. That's again, trying to get your muscles all the energy that they can. You start breathing heavy and your heart rate starts going again. That's getting oxygen to your [00:06:00] muscles. So all of these responses to the adrenaline is really about keeping you safe.
[00:06:06] Dr. Jodi: So if you have an event, even if it's a small T trauma, and some of these traumas that you've had in your life are big T traumas. So it's the same. When our emotions are overwhelmed in a situation, our amygdala starts laying down memory, and there it's gonna lay down emotional memory. So an emotional attachment to that event.
[00:06:26] Dr. Jodi: So wine glasses clinking together some yelling or some smell. It connects the emotional memory. And this is why it is because the emotions are faster, right? Our cognitions, our thoughts, our autobiographical thoughts. Our thoughts of this might happen is too slow and it has to rely on emotional memory 'cause it's fast and we want the adrenaline to release as fast as possible because if there was a physical threat, we want our body to be ready when our [00:07:00] prefrontal cortex decides what to do.
[00:07:02] Dr. Jodi: So this is why we talk about the amygdala, and this is why we understand the triggers of the amygdala. Because after that event happens and this emotional memory is laid down, then every time you're in a similar situation and the amygdala is this is where we have to help Jodi. So my anxiety, you all know that I've had anxiety.
[00:07:22] Dr. Jodi: I wrote about my books. I didn't bring my books in front of me just now tonight, but I used to get around dinner time. This is back when I had it. I at dinnertime at five o'clock because it became like this habit and the amygdala is this is when we have to protect Jodi and the adrenaline would release, but obviously it wasn't in danger in those moments.
[00:07:44] Dr. Jodi: I was just home with my family. But I had anxiety right around five o'clock every night. And then bedtime, same thing. I have a lot of clients who at bedtime their anxiety goes up. There's a lot of reasons for that. Some of it's like your mind's clear, there's nothing to do anymore. It's not distracted.
[00:07:59] Dr. Jodi: So you think [00:08:00] about all the things and sometimes it's a habit like your amygdala's, like this is when we have to protect Jodi and you don't need it all of the time, right? Like we said, 90. 8% of the time when your amygdala releases the adrenaline your sympathetic nervous system releases the adrenaline.
[00:08:20] Dr. Jodi: We don't need it. And we have to decide to turn that off. That's when, so the amygdala, so let me just tell you the biology of it. 'cause I love this. I get geek out about this stuff so much. And if you are on YouTube, you could give me a shout, shout out, gimme a question if I'm not making any sense or you wanna know a little bit deeper.
[00:08:41] Dr. Jodi: But when this trigger happens again, so when you smell the thing or you are in the car, or the wine glasses, clank, these are just examples. It could be anything. It could be a noise or a thought or oh no, what if I get sick right now? Oh no. What if I get anxious right now? There's so many things that could trigger that emotional [00:09:00] memory, and the amygdala is gonna release the adrenaline.
[00:09:03] Dr. Jodi: I always have this, I write this about this in my books, but I always think that if we could, because we hate it, if we're, especially if we know we're safe, we are like, we, the feeling is so awful to feel that anxiety is so awful feeling that we hate it and we'd hate our body or we hate our mind for doing that to us.
[00:09:23] Dr. Jodi: But what if we flip the script in those moments and we were like, thanks, amygdala. Thanks, amygdala. If I needed you right now, that'd be really great, but I don't need you right now. I'm safe., You're gonna hear that again and again in this episode, because that is gonna be the key to what we're doing here.
[00:09:40] Dr. Jodi: But we have to do a couple things first. So let's understand what happens when there's that trigger. The amygdala's sent out adrenaline, right? The emotional memory comes on. We send out before anything else like nanoseconds. It's where our body's there. That's why it feels like it comes outta the blue.
[00:09:58] Dr. Jodi: When we have anxiety, it feels like it comes [00:10:00] totally outta the blue. That's because it's emotional memory and it happens before you're even aware of what's going on. Then the amygdala sends a message to the prefrontal cortex, and it says, okay, something's wrong. Go find out what's wrong and decide what to do.
[00:10:14] Dr. Jodi: So it, it like, hands off, it's the baton gets hand off, handed off to the prefrontal cortex, and the prefrontal cortex looks around to see if there's safety or danger or whatever, and what the problem is and how to fix it. In real, in, in like human biology and evolution, what was supposed to happen is we're supposed to look around and be like, okay, I don't see any danger, but let's, keep our eyes open and see what's going on.
[00:10:43] Dr. Jodi: Or we see the danger, we decide what to do, we run back to the village and we're safe from the saber tooth tiger. And then we get back to the village, we say, oh my gosh, you can't believe it. There was a saber tooth tiger and I ran and I thought it was gonna get me a here safe. And everyone's celebrating that.
[00:10:59] Dr. Jodi: You made it [00:11:00] safely and you're processing out the trauma, you're sharing it with the community, and you regulate again. The body regulates. Of course, you still might have some triggers and the next time you go out in the woods, it might be a little scary. You might wanna go with people that's human, but.
[00:11:16] Dr. Jodi: What's happening now is that message from the amygdala to the prefrontal cortex says, okay, find out what's wrong. And what's happening now is the prefrontal cortex is looking around and is saying, I don't see any danger, but it feels dangerous. So keep pumping those hormones out. And we keep pumping those hormones out, but we don't need it 'cause there's no danger.
[00:11:41] Dr. Jodi: And then if our monkey mind, our prefrontal cortex is looking for a problem, it'll find something. It's gonna spin something. It's gonna find something negative about 'cause. 'cause there's so much in the world and there's so much in our life that's crazy. In the past, present, future, it's gonna find something to [00:12:00] feel threatened by.
[00:12:01] Dr. Jodi: That's human. That's not you because you're crazy or negative. It's human. We have to counteract it all the time. Now, that message, if the prefrontal cortex says it's pretty safe here, but I don't know, we'll, I'll keep awareness. The message going back to the amygdala is not as strong because we don't need it for.
[00:12:21] Dr. Jodi: This is what scientists had discovered. We don't need that for survival, so it's not as developed. That message from the amygdala. Once it's triggered and sends out the adrenaline in our body, sends a message to the prefrontal cortex, like immediately. Very strong, because if it wasn't as strong or when in human history it wasn't as strong, that person didn't survive, right?
[00:12:42] Dr. Jodi: So it had to be stronger and stronger. But going back, we didn't need that to survive. So it never really developed as strong. So that means we have to do the heavy lifting. We have to do the part, the self-talk. Everything's okay. I'm okay, right? Everything's okay. There's no danger [00:13:00] around. We get triggered with our amygdala, even when it's emotional.
[00:13:05] Dr. Jodi: It's, it feels like an emotional danger or the emotional threat. But the system was created, our biological system was created just for a physical threat. But the reason why it goes over like bubbles over to the emotional stuff is because we're social beings and we had to live in a community, and if somebody was mad at you and you got kicked outta the community, you were dead out there.
[00:13:28] Dr. Jodi: You couldn't survive out there. So our brain, that is a danger. Trigger. In this day and age, it's not as much. Sometimes people are abusive, but sometimes those emotional threats or those emotional worries or worry about being embarrassed or those kind of things could definitely set off anxiety. And that doesn't mean something's wrong with you.
[00:13:49] Dr. Jodi: That's just from our evolutionary history that if someone looked at you funny, they could kick you out of the community. Does that make sense? Or when we get really upset if we get excluded. And from [00:14:00] a group now there's a million groups. So we're gonna be okay, but it's still our brain is doing that. So don't blame yourself.
[00:14:09] Dr. Jodi: Don't think, oh my gosh, something's wrong with me. I'm a weak person, or I'm insecure. You are a normal human being and you are so much better than you think you are. So don't worry. That's I just to explain what's going on because sometimes it's a lot easier to understand it. And then we don't beat ourself up so much, and when we stop beating ourself up so much about this, then we have the energy to figure out what we could do to heal.
[00:14:34] Dr. Jodi: So that's why I'm giving you this stuff here. Okay, if you've had some trauma and you've had some experiences that were not safe, some of these triggers are also things that are actually not safe, right?
[00:14:48] Dr. Jodi: So if you were, for example, if you got burned and you saw another flame, you would want to be triggered to be [00:15:00] careful of that flame, right? You wouldn't wanna un-trigger your hand over a flame. I mean that, I'm using an example that is not very common, but it's relatable. We've all burned ourself someplace on the stove, curling iron hot, something, right?
[00:15:17] Dr. Jodi: We've all had a burn maybe, I shouldn't say those universal things because that's not necessarily true. But anyway, if we had burned ourself on a flame, then we'd be cautious next time there was a flame. And some of that's common sense, we'd be cautious. But sometimes if there was a, if we had a really bad burn and we had an overwhelm of emotions because it was so painful or so overwhelming, we thought we lost our hand and we thought.
[00:15:43] Dr. Jodi: It was so gross or something like that, we could have had a big or small T trauma. And I'm saying that because I'm, I wanna give respect to people who've had significant abuse or horrible significant oppression, abuse [00:16:00] that or war. Situation. I wanna separate that out because I don't wanna lump that all in.
[00:16:07] Dr. Jodi: Like it's all the same. It's not like a big T trauma, real trauma on our soul and on our human body and real people go through real hardships and I don't wanna belittle that. So if there's a person that's abused you and when you're around that person you get anxiety. 'cause your amygdala is this is when we have to keep Jodi safe.
[00:16:28] Dr. Jodi: We don't wanna un-trigger that so we could be around this person. We wanna get away from that person, right? Or we don't wanna un-trigger the fire because we wanna stay away from the fire. So didn't get burned again. So we have to determine if it's safe. And like I said, 98% of the time this goes off, we are actually safe.
[00:16:46] Dr. Jodi: So if we had the flu in the car one time, and then it's just a bother to every time we get in the car we have anxiety, or if we had an anxiety attack in the car sometime. We don't wanna always have that anxiety every time we get in the car. And [00:17:00] yes, we could debate like the relative safety of driving in a car because accidents happen, but we are driving in a car all the time.
[00:17:08] Dr. Jodi: And probably most of the people that are listening to me, but maybe not all. Maybe there's some cultures listening to me that don't drive in a car that often, but we're driving in a car all the time. So it's just really a nuisance and a lot of suffering if we have anxiety about the car. So we wanna un-trigger that.
[00:17:24] Dr. Jodi: Okay, now I'm gonna get to the meat and potatos of this video. We're talking about how to un-trigger. Now that you understand what's happening and you're deciding that this is a safe thing that I don't need, my amygdala doesn't need to trigger in this kind of situation because this is not universally dangerous situation.
[00:17:44] Dr. Jodi: Okay? So what you wanna do is with repetition. So every time that something happens, so five o'clock comes and I have anxiety, I would expect it. Because I know it's gonna come. Let me give you [00:18:00] another example. 'cause it, it'd be really nice. So I had somebody who was afraid to go to hair salon because they had a panic attack and a hair salon one time.
[00:18:07] Dr. Jodi: And so they didn't wanna go. They needed to get their hair cut, but they didn't wanna go back. They were so afraid of getting, so you could un trigger that because it's relatively, say everything's relatively safe. It's relatively safe in a hair salon. Very. Very small chance that something bad would happen there.
[00:18:22] Dr. Jodi: And so that's not something you need your amygdala to trigger about going to a hair salon. So if she wants to get over that trigger of going to hair salon and having anxiety there, then she would have to consciously plan and decide she's gonna trigger her amygdala about this thing, and then she would have to plan to go.
[00:18:44] Dr. Jodi: It takes repetition. So every time you expect your amygdala to release the adrenaline and say, okay, amygdala, I'm gonna go into this thing. Usually you try to help me here, I don't need you. I'm okay. So beforehand you have that script, and then when you're there, when you [00:19:00] start there, and you might start to feel.
[00:19:02] Dr. Jodi: A little energy in your body, that's the adrenaline going. And you say, thanks amygdala, if I needed you, this would be really great because it would be great if you were in danger. It'd be really great. You could lift a car off somebody with this adrenaline, right? So it'd be awesome, but when you don't need it and just feel helpless, the anxiety's just suffering.
[00:19:20] Dr. Jodi: So it's thanks amygdala. If I need to do that would be great. But I don't need you right now. I'm okay. And then you wanna observe, you wanna witness and feel like, oh, yep, I feel the adrenaline. Thanks, adrenaline, or Thanks amygdala. I don't need you right now. And then try to engage your mind in something else.
[00:19:35] Dr. Jodi: Obviously, if you're at a hairstylist or something, you're sitting there for a while, so maybe you need to talk to her or him or them or play on your phone or something like that or. Something, plan something in your head. You have to try to engage your brain in something else so you're not just sitting there.
[00:19:54] Dr. Jodi: But but that is gonna help. And then you wanna make sure you're going, if you go to the [00:20:00] hairdresser every, like three months or something, it's pretty far in between, and you might be starting from scratch next time you go, it'd be helpful. If you had a trigger that you wanted to un-trigger it'd be helpful to do it often.
[00:20:14] Dr. Jodi: So say, let me get, let's say, driving the car or driving over a bridge, let's say, because that is a trigger for a lot of people driving over a bridge, and it's something I could totally relate to. I don't like tunnels either. But. I, my, my adrenaline does not go off anymore in there because I've on triggered and I didn't have an event on there.
[00:20:34] Dr. Jodi: I was on a bridge one time when there was a terrible accident. I was stopped and before it, so I was okay. But yeah, that was a bad one. But if you were going over a bridge, you'd want to plan to do it often enough. You would pre tell your amygdala you're okay. Then when you feel the adrenaline, you tell your amygdala you're okay, and after repetition of several times of doing that, your amygdala relearns that it [00:21:00] does not need to be triggered about that thing.
[00:21:03] Dr. Jodi: Does that make sense? Here's another one. When a text comes, so a lot of people, if they have a relationship with someone who's really abusive over text and you hear that noise go off, you're scared, or I had that someone really yelled at me badly on a voicemail when we used to use voicemails, if we still do the US old people.
[00:21:22] Dr. Jodi: But when we used to use voicemails, someone yelled at me really bad and then I, it was so hard. To listen to another, not even just by this person, anybody. It was hard to listen to a voicemail. I just had that. I don't wanna listen to it until, thank goodness our phones now transcribe it out so I don't have to listen to it before I know it's okay.
[00:21:42] Dr. Jodi: So I kinda got lucky there, but if I, if we didn't have that situation, it was always. The if it was always a voicemail or sometimes before we knew who was calling, you didn't know who was calling. Remember? Oh my goodness. Okay, so not all you young people don't remember that anyway, [00:22:00] so I think I covered it all.
[00:22:01] Dr. Jodi: When you have so it is safe. You have to decide it's safe. You don't wanna unt trigger it. Actually, I don't even know if you can, you don't wanna UNT trigger it if it's something that it's dangerous. So if it's with that person that you cannot trust, we're not trying to trust somebody that's not trustable.
[00:22:19] Dr. Jodi: Trusting, trusting. Okay. I do have a couple more minutes, so I'm gonna go deeper into healing from trauma because there's one little more aspect of it that could be helpful that you could think about. You wanna make meaning. So when something is traumatic, it's also nonsensical. It overwhelms our senses, like I said, but it's nonsensical.
[00:22:45] Dr. Jodi: We don't, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't really go along with what we understand of the world, like rightness or. Human kindness, right? That people are kind. When somebody is evil or mean or [00:23:00] awful, it goes against what we understand. And so it's a nonsensical and a chaotic moment. And us as humans, we want order.
[00:23:09] Dr. Jodi: We want order because we don't like chaos. We don't understand it. We feel helpless, hopeless, powerless when there's chaos. And we want order really badly. It's I as fast as we could get it, we're urgent for order in this kind of situation and after that kinda situation. So the fastest way to get order is to make some kind of meeting, to make some kind of sense of what happened.
[00:23:34] Dr. Jodi: Unfortunately, with trauma, because it's nonsensical and chaotic, it's hard to make sense of it right away. But the fastest way to do it is often blame. The fastest way to get order is blame and often. We blame ourselves, especially young people when they're experiencing awfulness of somebody, they blame themselves, but old people do it too.
[00:23:56] Dr. Jodi: All ages of people blame themselves when somebody does something [00:24:00] to them because we were trying to get order, like, how did I let that happen to me? Why did they do that to me? Why me? Why did I, why couldn't I, why didn't I do something else? How did I get myself in this situation? There's this self blame that happens when somebody hurts us.
[00:24:16] Dr. Jodi: And that's regular, that's human, that's normal. But also we also understand that wasn't okay, that person did it. And so what happens is we're trying to get order and we're blaming ourselves 'cause that's like the urgent, the easiest, fastest way. But also we're blaming the other person because it's obvious we didn't even deserve that.
[00:24:37] Dr. Jodi: What happens is we start fighting with ourself. Was it me? Was it them? Was it me? Was it them? And this inner conflict of who is it? We're defending ourself. We're beating ourself up, we're defending ourself, we're beating ourself up. This inner conflict causes so much suffering in almost I don't know, nine tenths of the people that I talk to, friends, clients, siblings, everything.
[00:24:59] Dr. Jodi: [00:25:00] Like this is the major source of our suffering. This like inner blame game that we do because we're trying to make sense of something. We're trying to make meaning, but we keep questioning it because our mind is a questioner. Our mind's gonna keep questioning even if we, if something makes sense. It's but what if.
[00:25:18] Dr. Jodi: It's like this, we're just going to keep questioning until we put that to bed or feel really confident about the meaning that we make. But when you've had trauma, it's really hard to be re really confident about the meaning because you're going back and forth with who's to blame and why did it happen?
[00:25:33] Dr. Jodi: And this doesn't make sense, right? Another aspect of healing from that, and you could do this with a friend, a client, a friend, a counselor, me, somebody you could get reach out to and get some help with this if you don't wanna do it yourself and get my books,Â
[00:25:49] Dr. Jodi: okay. Get a copy of my books because I explained this in there in quite depth, both of them. So this is the adult version, but anyone over 13 could read this [00:26:00] book 'cause there's nothing, there's no swear words or anything in it. And then this is like a teen version, which is a little bit more, has the voice for teenagers.
[00:26:08] Dr. Jodi: But in that I talk about how to make meaning and finally make the decision and put to bed. How to make sense of what happened. And this is a script. Again, my, these are my favorite scripts that I teach people. Thanks, amygdala. If I didn't need you, that'd be great that I love that one. Oh yeah, there's, oh yeah, there's more, but I'll teach it a different class.
[00:26:30] Dr. Jodi: But this one is, it happened. We're questioning it if we've had trauma work quick. Did it really happen? Was this bad as I thought? Am I overreacting? We are guessing at everything and second guessing again. So we have to say it happened. It's not okay because we're questioning did I do it? Is it okay?
[00:26:51] Dr. Jodi: Did I deserve it? No. No, you did not. It happened. It's not okay that it [00:27:00]happened. And it doesn't have to, but it doesn't have to define me. It happened. It's not okay that it happened. But it doesn't have to define me. I do explain in the book too why people do mean things.
[00:27:12] Dr. Jodi: People do mean things all the time. Sometimes they're just, most people are mean because they don't like themselves, and it bubbles over and it gets onto everyone else around them, or they're so miserable or they're defensive, and so they're mean because they're defensive or they feel guilty. Some people are just psychopaths and they're just mean because they like it and they get a kick out of it.
[00:27:33] Dr. Jodi: So it's very common for people to treat other people bad. Sometimes it's not even intentional. And sometimes it's intentional and sometimes it's trying to grab power. There's a, it happens all the time. So at this point in the world, when we see this happening all the time, people being mean to each other.
[00:27:51] Dr. Jodi: We are still questioning why is that person mean to me? Because people are mean. It has nothing to do with you. There's a lot of reasons for them being [00:28:00] mean. So it happened. It's not okay that it happened. But it doesn't have to define me. So once you put to bed what the meaning, and you have to decide consciously to take that as your meaning.
[00:28:14] Dr. Jodi: It happened, it wasn't okay, but it doesn't have to define me. And your mind's gonna be like but what if your mind's gonna do that? Just be like, sided. You have to consciously keep going back and practicing. So once you decide something, this is the meaning. Then when your mind questions, you say, oh, I need to come back.
[00:28:37] Dr. Jodi: Here's another script I thought I wasn't gonna tell you, but I am. Um, the script is, oh, high questioning whatever it is I need to, or high anxiety or high anxious thoughts, I need to come back. Just have a seat. I'm busy right now. We're not gonna attach to them. We're just gonna put them down.
[00:28:55] Dr. Jodi: And the less you attach to them, the more you'll. Stop [00:29:00] questioning, like you'll stop the, that questioning is attachment. 'cause you're trying to figure it out. You'd be like, you don't got it. You have to figure it out. And this is there's an attachment to this urgency of trying to figure it out. And so this process helps you not be attached and you really move on from that situation.
[00:29:17] Dr. Jodi: So both of these things are huge. There's so many things I do with someone when I'm helping them heal from trauma, but these are things that you could start to try yourself. Get help though. You don't have to do this alone. We're social beings. Nobody's supposed to do any of this stuff by themselves.
[00:29:35] Dr. Jodi: So you could get some support. And support could look like so many different things. It could be a group. I have a group. Could be a class that you take. It could be working one-on-one with somebody. It could be so many different awesome things. You could join a knit, sit knit class and just having people see who you are.
[00:29:54] Dr. Jodi: See you for who you truly are could be absolutely healing. In fact, that is [00:30:00] the one thing that really heals. It could come in so many different shapes and forms though, so. I hope this episode really made you see that you are so much more than you might think you are right now. I hope it gives you the tools to reset your amygdala, to understand the amygdala, to reset it un-trigger your amygdala.
[00:30:21] Dr. Jodi: And I am here every Monday at 8:00 PM Eastern. We go live and sometimes I have guests. I have call in guests. Too, and you can sign up to be a call in guest on the show. Just go to jodi aman.com/live, and you could sign up to be live coached right here. I would love, love, love to have you.
[00:30:42] Dr. Jodi: All right I will see you next week and until then, be present and let that you, that you wanna be shine through.