50: Taming the Amygdala (Part 1)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 50. We are continuing our series on joy. Today we are looking at our emotions.

Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be back together always.

[00:32] Stephanie: And can you believe this is episode 50? Fifty, that’s wild.

[00:38] Marcus: It is. Sounds like we’ve been doing this for about a year.

[00:41] Stephanie: Yeah, almost. We dropped our first episodes in July last year.

[00:48] Marcus: Okay.

[00:48] Stephanie: And we did like five at once or something. I can’t remember exactly how many. Yeah, we’re almost to our one year anniversary.

[00:55] Marcus: That’s pretty cool. I think we even got congratulations, didn’t we? From somebody like, hey, your podcast made it past ten.

[01:02] Stephanie: Oh, yes. The behind the scenes trackers like to say, “Oh, congratulations on this achievement. 10, yay, 25, yay, 50, excellent.”

[01:13] Marcus: So here we are, we made it to 50 .

[01:16] Stephanie: Well, hey, last episode we talked about building resilience. You introduced your new acrostic, CASA, which reminds us of the importance of calming, appreciating, storytelling, and attacking toxic thinking. We’re going to continue talking about those habits and today we’re coming at them from the angle of our emotions. So we’ve talked about calming and appreciating a lot on the podcast through various means. And you’re going to have more to say about each letter of the acrostic in the podcast series that will come out soon with Chris Coursey. We will let you know more about that when that’s available.

Today I want to emphasize storytelling a little bit more. So much of telling a joy story is being aware of emotions and either handling them appropriately or gleaning a lesson for how to handle them better in the future. And in order to do this, it would be good for us to have a better understanding of emotions.

So before jumping into each specific emotion, let’s set up the context with some helpful brain science. When we were plotting out our episodes you called this one taming the amygdala, how very “sciency” of you. So what do you want to tell us about the amygdala and our emotions?

[02:32] Marcus: I remember watching Dr. Wilder doing a conference from the 1990s I think, and it was on joy bonds versus fear bonds. And he had so much brain science in there and I never heard any of it before. And so it was like, listen for two minutes, pause, take notes, think, listen for three minutes, pause. And he’s throwing around terms like amygdala and cortex.

And I’m like, I don’t know my cortex from my nucleus accumbens. I don’t know what’s going on with all these words. So that’s kind of where the whole journey started. Everything I know about the brain honestly has come just from studying Jim’s stuff.

And so what he’s told me is that the amygdala is basically level two of the joy elevator. So if you think about the joy elevator as having a first floor which would be attachment. I think of the first floor like a light bulb in the brain. It lights up when I feel like being with somebody or lights up when somebody or something becomes personal to me.

For example, you are walking through a crowded city and most people are just sort of background until all of a sudden, somebody starts walking towards you. And now all of a sudden they become personal to you. And so once they become personal to you it goes to level two which is the amygdala. That is what we tend to think of as our fight or flight center.

But the amygdala’s job is to give you a quick kind of triage on this thing that just became personal to you. And it can only do one of three assessments. This is either good, this is bad, or this is scary. And it will quickly make that assessment. It does it faster than you can think about it and then it sends it on up. And so it gets up to level three of this joy elevator and that’s where you’re reading people.

So let’s say that somebody’s walking towards you and it lights up as this is bad. Okay, it’s gonna send that signal up and now you’re going to start reading this person’s body language. And bad triggers low energy emotions in us like shame, disgust, sadness, or despair. So I might feel any of those emotions based on how I read this person coming at me. I could see someone coming and feel shame like, oh no, I can’t believe they saw me,  I’m not dressed right or whatever it is.

I could have the shame reaction at somebody coming. I could have a disgust reaction like, oh, I hope that person doesn’t get around here or I could have a sadness reaction. Maybe they remind me of somebody or maybe they trigger a memory that I’m not even conscious of what memory is getting triggered. I just know something about them coming is making me sad.

And so when you look at it that way it could also send a high energy emotion trigger which would be fear and anger. And so now my higher level brain functions have to deal with that based on what the amygdala is doing. And based on how well I can handle the signals from my amygdala depends on how well I’m going to stay myself. Acting like myself, remaining relational, and operating from those higher level brain functions. So there you go, there’s my brain science summary for the day.

[05:54] Stephanie: Okay, awesome. Well, and so what you just described are what you call the SAD, SAD emotions. Sometimes people say the six big negative emotions or the protector emotions. Do you want to explain where that comes from?

[06:09] Marcus: Yeah. So they are directly related to the amygdala. So we sometimes talk about the brain having an on/ off switch. Chris Coursey calls it the joy switch. And when this switch is on it means the amygdala is sending a good signal, everything is okay. It can also be on even if the amygdala is sending a bad or scary signal, if I have enough capacity to keep it on and it doesn’t overwhelm me. That can be because I’m getting a very mild signal or it can be that I just have the capacity to deal with the signal that’s being sent.

Now, the question was, where does SAD, SAD come from? They come from the amygdala that when the amygdala triggers something as bad ( It can trigger good, bad, or scary. ) it gives us the four low energy emotions of these big six. If it triggers something as scary, that’s what gives us the two high energy emotions. So just to help myself remember those I came up with SAD, SAD.

Like, what are these big six again? And I start with the “S” is sadness, that’s low energy. “A” is anger, that’s high energy.  Disgust, that’s low energy. Shame, low energy. Then fear, afraid or anxiety, whatever word you want to use there. Then despair, which is low energy. And that spells SAD, SAD, and that’s how I remember them. That’s where it comes from.

[07:37] Stephanie: And if it triggers good, then that’s joy.

[07:40] Marcus: Yeah, it doesn’t create joy that’s more neutral, the brain can keep functioning without interruption. .

[07:49] Stephanie: It passes up to the next level.

[07:50] Marcus: Passes up to the next level and it gives me an opportunity to get to my joy center. And so if I have a well developed joy center it’ll be a natural reaction to stay there.

[08:00] Stephanie: So I’ve heard you and Jim talk about the amygdala and once you get an impression it is just always there. And I always struggled with that a little bit. Like, wait, you can change your story or have a new first impression on something? So can you explain that a little bit?

[08:18] Marcus: So, that’s true. Once the amygdala learns something it’s permanent. What can change is my narrative about it and my capacity to deal with it. So for example, when I was a little kid our next door neighbor had a big dog. And I remember it got in my face and snarled and scared me. So to this day my initial internal reaction at a dog coming toward me is not good.

But if it isn’t triggering too much I can handle it and my capacity can handle it. Then I can go to my narrative part of it and give myself a narrative that says, this is going to be fine, this is okay. I can read the dog and see if it’s really scary or not. All that happens really fast and it takes me much longer to explain it than it actually happens. You know Jim had the same thing with dogs because he grew up in Colombia and their dogs could be deadly. I mean, they ran the streets. They were not pets for homes. So once your amygdala learns that it never forgets it and will trigger it. So what keeps it from being hopeless is that we can overcome that by growing our capacity and changing our narrative.

[09:34] Stephanie: Okay, good to know. And so how would this factor in with the art of storytelling?

[09:42] Marcus: So, let me first of all explain why storytelling is one of these things. I wrote the book with Chris Coursey who is president of THRIVEtoday. THRIVEtoday’s origins were taking the brain science that Jim was learning and working together to develop exercises, to see if you could train somebody who had missed out on what they needed as an infant or a toddler? Could you as an adult now train them in such a way that they could still learn that skill and have that capacity, and not be trapped because of their childhood?

And so they began developing these exercises and developed the Thrive training out of this. When you get to level two of thrive training it’s mostly storytelling. And so that was what prompted me to say,”Hey, I think storytelling needs to be one of these four habits” because that’s the primary tool you guys are using to do this. So storytelling does a couple of things.

Number one, storytelling builds relational connection, it engages. So if you tell me a story it gets my right brain engaged with your right brain. It helps grow and expand my capacity to share a mutual mind with you as I’m in the story with you. I’m building a world in my mind as you’re creating a world for me with your words.

And so we are sharing this as we’re both having this connection, there’s a relational connection part of it. Then there’s the narrative itself which has to do with my belief system. And what I’m trying to do is create a library in my head because the library in my head will pull up not only memories, but what those memories mean to me. And so changing our narrative, changing the way we tell stories could be hugely important to managing our emotions.

[11:53] Stephanie: So it’s the stories you tell yourself and it’s the stories you tell other people.

[11:56] Marcus: It’s both. It’s the stories we tell ourselves and it’s how we talk about our emotions to people. I actually did an experiment with this not too long ago when I was doing a corporate training event. It was a small, small group and I had them go around in a circle, gave them a few basic instructions, and said, “Tell us an emotion story.” And what I realized (and I hadn’t really expected this) was every one of them followed the same pattern. And the pattern was this bad thing happened to me, that made me feel this bad emotion, and that’s why I am the way I am.

And so what people were doing with their story was reinforcing why they were messed up. The story is this bad thing happened, it made me feel these negative emotions, and to this day that’s why I can’t handle this emotion. Well, if that’s what you’re telling yourself over and over and over again, that’s not good self-talk, that’s going to keep you stuck.

And two, when I am telling that story to other people it’s just reinforcing that this is my identity, I am a person who cannot handle this emotion. What we want to do is actually grow our capacity to handle those emotions. So part of that is going to be changing our stories and changing our narrative. So here in a minute, we’ll tell them how to do that.

[13:12] Stephanie: Yeah, and I also think it’s been a while since we talked specifically about joy pathways which is key as we go through each of our emotions. One of the reasons why it’s important to have stories collected for each of the emotions is it helps build our joy pathways.

[13:27] Marcus: Yes, it’s connected.  The joy pathway idea is that pathways form in our brain as neurons connect with each other. The first and most fundamental way that those things connect is not our stories, it is our mirror neurons. The first way that it is connected is our mirror neurons watching other people handle emotions and go, oh, that’s what that looks like. So, I don’t have to blow up just because somebody gets angry at me or I don’t have to shut down just because someone gets angry at me, that’s what that looks like.

But the second way, (if my mirror neurons can’t watch somebody do it) I learn is by storytelling. I listen to someone tell me a story of how they handled it and my mind can imagine that. And so it functions at a slightly lower level but in a similar fashion it helps me to imagine what that would look like.

And then my brain learns, well, I think I could do that. As that happens neural pathways begin to form in the brain and it starts as this weak chain, then it gradually gets stronger as we do it more often. And then the more often we do it, it gets stronger and then finally it starts to develop white matter and becomes a habit.

[14:41] Stephanie: Yeah. So we want to start collecting stories about each of our emotions. And if we don’t have stories from our own experience that we can lean on right away, we can talk to other people and get their stories and that is also helpful.

[14:55] Marcus: Yes. For example, if I don’t handle shame well, but you do, telling me a story of a time you experienced shame and you didn’t have to deflect it and you didn’t have to put it on somebody else. You were actually able to remain yourself, that story is going to sound amazing to me. My mind’s going to think, you can do that? I mean, that’s not how I would have responded. And so listening to you tell stories of how you handled emotions well is not only good for you, but it’s good for other people.

[15:23] Stephanie: And then you can add it to your library to pull up when you need to practice and meditate on those kinds of stories. So we are going to talk about the high and low level emotions in this episode. And we’re going to talk about the high level or the high energy emotions and those are anger and fear. Now, first in SAD-SAD, the “A” is anxiety. And you talk about how fear and anxiety are a little bit different. Do you want to start off with explaining that?

[15:52] Marcus: When I did SAD-SAD, with “A” as anxiety, Jim corrected me. He goes, technically, anxiety and fear are not the same thing. So I’m like, duly noted, but it’s already in print so we’re going to go with this. And what he said was actually quite helpful in that anxiety is always rooted in my beliefs. So what happens is that the right side of my brain and the left side of my brain mirror each other.

So the thalamus is on the base of both sides, there’s an amygdala on both sides and there’s a cortex on both sides. All these things mirror each other. And so what happens is that some of our emotions are triggered because of what’s coming up through the right hemisphere of the brain.

We can have other emotions that are triggered by what’s coming down on the belief side, the left side, where my narratives and beliefs are. And so both can trigger my amygdala but on different sides of the brain. So when my right brain is triggering the amygdala that’s fear. When my left brain is triggering the amygdala because of what I believe, that’s anxiety. Jim was like, it’s helpful to clarify those and keep those separate.

I get that because as he says, “Anxiety is always anchored in imagination.” I can imagine a bad thing happening and I’m reacting in fear to what might happen. And so it’s always anchored in a “what if” kind of scenario. And then related to that he said, “The only thing we truly fear is an emotion we can’t handle.”

[17:27] Stephanie: That’s fascinating.

[17:28] Marcus: Yeah. Because I tend to think we fear pain. But he was like, no actually we fear the emotions that the pain’s going to make us feel. There’s plenty of people who actually look forward to a little bit of pain in a workout or something like that. And so I’m going to like that feeling afterwards because it means I’m making progress,  I’m not traumatized by it. There’s other kind of pain we feel and we’re like, I don’t think I ever want to experience that again. The emotional thing that happened with the pain was too great.

[17:57] Stephanie: That’s fascinating. So do you want to talk a little bit more about fear?  Since we also call these not just the big six negative emotions we call them the protector emotions. What’s protective about fear?

[18:10] Marcus: These things are meant to protect us from pain to a certain extent and to protect us from harm. And so if I see a snake and I have no fear that might not be good because I’ll just keep right on going. So I need a little shot of adrenaline to say to myself, hey you better get out of here. But that fear is not meant to last for more than like, 90 seconds.

And so our problem comes when I don’t have that joy pathway in my brain and I don’t have those neural pathways formed. Once that fear gets triggered I can’t get out of it. And that’s when it becomes a problem because now cortisol starts pumping through my brain. It starts eating brain cells and everything positive that it’s been trying to get built through joy gets shoved into reverse as fear takes over.

[19:04] Stephanie: Yeah and it reminds me that when we talk about needing to tame the amygdala so often once you are in a negative emotion it’s even easier to just snowball into other emotions. Like, oh, I’m feeling fear, or anger, and now I’m feeling shame for feeling that and now it just snowballs.

[19:27] Marcus: Part of what’s going on there is that once you’re already in the back of your brain and if you stay in the back of your brain, you’re in the neighborhood with all those other negative emotions. And so getting out of the back of your brain and back to the front of your brain, where your joy center is, is the whole point of joy pathways. How do we get out of here in 90 seconds or less like the way it’s supposed to be? But the reality is if I don’t have a big joy center and I don’t have those joy pathways, forget 90 seconds. It could be 90 days for some people where they just can’t get out of the back of their brain.

[19:59] Stephanie: All right let’s talk about the other high level emotion, anger. Anger is on the protector level. It’s that I want this injustice or this pain to stop. It can be a very positive thing.

[20:13] Marcus: So God gets angry.

[20:17] Stephanie: Exactly.

[20:18] Marcus: God gets angry. And one of the reasons that he gets angry is that people are doing wrong things. They’re being unjust and they are hurting people and they are doing things that are wrong. And so anger is meant to give us that motivation that we need to make something stop. And that’s why there is such a thing as righteous indignation. But when anger gets triggered for a lot of us the problem is that we don’t always have a value system underneath for what we’re trying to make stop. That’s why God says, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.”  In other words it’s not meant to last that long, you’re not supposed to live there.

[21:04] Stephanie: Yeah. So can you remind us of your STEP acrostic for how to tell a joy story.

[21:12] Marcus: Yeah, have we told this before? I’m trying to remember.

[21:15] Stephanie: We did touch on it last episode, I think.

[21:17] Marcus: Okay, so again, going back to the Thrive training and they had what they call four plus stories for those people who are familiar with Thrive. That’s what they’re talking about. And so I was working with Chris and asking if we can turn this into something that’s easy to remember? And STEP stands for “S” as setting. So when I tell the story what’s the setting?

So you say, I was in an airport one night, I was at a grocery store, I was at home in bed, or whatever it is. But you give the setting of where this story starts. And then you tell the “T” which is the trigger. What was the triggering event that created an emotional reaction for you, because this is how to tell an emotion story. So I have a setting, and then I have the trigger. And then “E” is I that want to explain the emotion. And when I explain the emotion I want to show that emotion on my face and with my body. I want to give a name and words to that emotion and I want to describe the impact it had on my body.

So there’s really kind of three things connected to emotion and they’re all about explaining it. And that is, how did my body react when I felt that emotion? It’s very important to say for example, not just I got scared, but I got scared, my face got hot,and my ears got hot. My hair was standing up and I could feel my stomach going into a knot.

It’s like what was going on in your body when you felt the fear. That completes the picture for people of that emotion. And then you go to, what is the point of the story?  Again, the way the folks at this event were telling it was… “and that’s why I messed up.” Well, that’s not the point we want to make.

So the point of this story is one of three things generally. How I acted like myself anyway and didn’t let this turn me into a different person. Or this is how I bounced back and recovered from that emotion. Maybe somebody helped me and somebody gave me another perspective but I wasn’t left alone here, and I found my way back.

Or thirdly, it’s that I totally messed this up and got completely taken out by that emotion. But here’s what I wish I would have done. And so I bring it back around to turn it into kind of a teaching lesson. So it’s the setting, the trigger, the emotion, and an explanation of the emotion and then the point of the story.

[23:29] Stephanie: Awesome. Well, hey, we’re coming up to the end of the episode and we are going to continue this discussion, especially looking at the low level emotions next week. But for now, any final thoughts?

[23:40] Marcus: Yeah, it’s a lot of material, right?  I realized as I was going through and learning this over the years that what amazed me is how completely my paradigm has flipped. From thinking that all I needed to do was think the right thoughts to realizing that there’s a whole other part of my brain that plays a huge role in my emotions and that I need to kind of do both.

I need to tame the amygdala on the right side of my brain as well as the amygdala on the left. And part of that is reclaiming control of my body through calming, building my capacity through appreciation, and then strengthening all that through storytelling. So that’s where these things come from. And hopefully this is helpful and giving some people further insight into why we feel the way we do.

[24:27] Stephanie: Yes, indeed. Well, thank you. And thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a nonprofit organization and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do. Some are on the trail with us as official Trailblazers who commit to donating $25 or more per month. We invite you to consider becoming a Trailblazer. You can do this very simply by visiting our website, https://deeperwalk.com/trailblazers/. If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.