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When in Despair
Manage episode 383686851 series 3511774
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The Brain
Is made up of two hemispheres and two essential functions.
- Left Brain
- Right Brain
Right Brain
Responsible for emotional processing.
This is where the amygdala processes fear and other emotions that activate 'fight, flight, or freeze' during stressful or dangerous situations. It's also the part of the brain affected by parent-child attachment (more on that later).
Left Brain
Responsible for logical processing.
The left side of the brain is responsible for logical processing. This is the part of the brain where one's ability to plan and organize takes place.
When our brains are calm, the left brain is able to be its logical self.
When we’re upset, the emotional right brain takes over, and we react based on our emotions.
This is true for anyone who has experienced trauma or has an insecure parent-child attachment.
With a healthy brain, the processing goes back and forth between the emotional right brain and the logical left brain.
We were designed by God with a lot of emotions. We’re created with the ability to pass them over to cognitive processing.
“our emotions are real, but we have the ability to consider them logically and determine whether or not what we feel is actually true.”
Example
if I hear a loud bang followed by the sound of shattering glass, l'm instinctively going to be startled. My heart rate will rise because my fight, flight, or freeze response has been triggered on the right side of my brain. But let's say I stop and look around. I am investigating (logical) and discover that a picture has fallen off the wall. Immediately, I take a deep breath, and my stress begins to subside.
Healthy functioning means we're able to deal with our emotions properly. The problem is when we can't logically process our emotions, something else takes place.
That something is despair.
What Is Despair?
The Bible, a text full of descriptions of authentic and raw emotions, references the word "despair" frequently. (We counted 28 instances.)
Their insults have broken my heart, and I am in despair. If only one person would show some pity; if only one would turn and comfort me (Psalms 69:20 NLT).
Despair is what someone feels when they become hopeless and disconnected from their emotional state. Psychologist Mark Goulston describes despair as a 'dis-pairing, where two halves of the brain begin to separate.' This process is also called emotional detachment.
Experiencing stress causes cortisol —a stress hormone-to flood the brain. A constant drip of cortisol causes this detachment or dis-pairing. Understanding this matters because we need our logical processing to be able to navigate our emotions. When the two sides are detached, we can't navigate the constant flow of emotional signals.
This detachment explains why those in despair often feel numb. Some describe it like they're experiencing their life outside of themself because it's so difficult for them to identify how they really feel. They can become dissociated from their emotions. The risk of this detachment happening increases when something traumatic happens.
Trauma, as well as stresses of life, can cause the amygdala (the part of the brain where fight, flight, or freeze response is located) to become overactivated. This results in all of the emotions building up on the right side of the brain. All the blood flow starts to head that way. The brain essentially goes back to survival mode, and logical processing tends to break...
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