Triggered

Emotion is an instinctive or intuitive feeling thought to have evolved as a way for humans to communicate before the development of modern language. Your basic emotions — fear, sorrow, disgust, anger and joy — link with social emotions such as shame, guilt and pride to shape your behaviour and provide a record of the way in which your experiences, culture, personality, community and peers “teach” you how to respond to specific situations. Emotion is entwined with mood, temperament, disposition and motivation and can be defined as either positive or negative, depending on the behaviour it elicits.

In neuropsychological terms, it’s the limbic system — of which the amygdala is a part — that controls your emotional responses and the behaviours that stem from these emotions. Consisting of two almond-sized nuclei located behind the eyes and optic nerves, the amygdala operates beyond conscious awareness, tapping into emotional memory at a very high speed. This quick processing means your emotional responses cause other more rational parts of the brain to freeze so that you react, rather than respond, to whatever is happening around you. This reactive, rather than responsive, process generates words and behaviours that can and do lead to