Our fear reactions are stored in our body memory with the help of somatic markers
Particularly during anxiety reactions, people often experience powerful physical sensations so that they feel unable to do anything about them.
Observations show that the learning of fear is accompanied by the acquisition of a (new) somatic marker. In this process, a form of threat or potential danger is imputed to the startling experience in the amygdala and stored in body memory with the help of a somatic marker.
Henceforth, similar situations or supposedly related events serve as triggers for our fear and a fear response. And the amygdala is not selective in recognizing and choosing potential dangers, which tends to classify even harmless situations as dangerous. This can be seen, among other things, in the fact that especially frightened people become increasingly anxious and extend their fears to new constellations. Anxiety becomes noticeable through the matching somatic marker that we perceive physically.
The strength of the body’s reaction (fear) depends on the state of arousal we once had to go through during the incisive experience. While a slight tingling sensation in the neck may still seem bearable, the sinking sensation in the abdominal area can already be very unpleasant. More severe symptoms of an anxiety reaction, however, are unfortunately not uncommon and can cause us a great deal of distress.
This is because it determines whether we are able to resist reflex actions during a fear reaction. Because only in this way can we try out and learn new behavioral strategies in the situation. However, we are often unable to do so because we are flooded with our sense of fear.
The amygdala and somatic markers create our fears to protect us
We are literally “speechless with horror,” which suggests that cognitive processing of the stressful sensory impressions has not yet occurred. Thus, among other things, the linguistic resources are only available to a limited extent or not at all for what has been experienced. The learning of new strategies remains absent. Reflexively, our body memory tries to protect us from similar things from then on. In such moments we usually feel a great emotional and physical strain.
The extent to which such reactions of fear are functional or not must be decided on a case-by-case basis. Often they are not these days. Fear basically has the task of protecting us from danger. And sometimes only the reflexive flight can bring us to safety: If we hesitate because we want to think about it again, it could already be over.
The mechanisms at work here are based on our neural system. Our brain has come a long evolutionary way. In this process, the limbic system, which we still have in common with the lizard, determines our reflexive reactions and our fear behavior. Part of the limbic brain is the amygdala, which has been identified as an influential center in the development of anxiety and in the control of fearful behavior. The amygdala makes use of our emotional experience memory and somatic markers, among other things.
While prehistoric man was still threatened by wild animals 2 million years ago, but at the same time was confronted with relatively few new sensory impressions during the day, modern man finds himself in an opposite world. Direct threats to life and limb have become few, although an approaching car may pose a danger. In contrast, today we are bombarded by hundreds of sensory stimuli every minute. Which of these emotionally carry us away and leave lasting traces varies from person to person.
However, numerous different fears show that even today we learn new fears with the help of our limbic brain and especially the amygdala. These fit our modern world. For example, millions of people fear flying, the dentist, an exam, or a performance.
Thanks to the EMDR method and especially with the help of EMDR self-coaching, we are able to get a grip on learned fears again, to reduce them to a tolerable functional level and sometimes downright unlearn them.
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