Over Powering the Amygdala

 

Over Powering the Amygdala

The Amygdala is known as the part of the brain that drives the fight of flight response. It also plays a role in memory. One of the ways we calm the amygdala is through conscious breathing or 4 square breathing. The nucleus is most strongly effected by dopamine, nor-epinephrine and serotonin. A MRI scan appears to show that after an eight week course in mindfulness the amygdala appears to shrink.

As an adolescent the amygdala is enlarged and the brain is still developing. This is an especially dangerous period for addiction to set in. At this point we are primed for physical, psychological dependency. I believe that this point in time during our lives, empowers a sort of hard wiring or neurons from the pre-frontal cortex to the Amygdala. This pathway leads to more impulsive behaviors and pleasure seeking habits. Society reinforces this behavior through social media and instant, get what you want now, ideologies.

Our drug of choice gets on a certain dopamine pathway and we initially feel euphoric or up, the joy of addiction. This in turn is remembered and is sometimes called euphoric recall or chasing the dragon. Our amygdala helps us remember emotions tied to triggers associated with getting high, faded, or wasted. As a 12 year old I can remember my first high on chewing tobacco, what a rush. I eventually worked my way up to the highest concentrated tobacco, filled with nicotine. I would enjoy the nicotine buzz while watching movies, making my eyesight blurred then throwing out my chew as my hands started to sweat. I ended up chasing the dragon for close to 15 years. After that I never felt the high from nicotine again, I had built a strong tolerance for it at a young age, dependency. With an enlarged amygdala as a teenager, I didn't have a chance.

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to rewire itself, it continues to adapt and change throughout life. Neuroplasticity of the brain provides hope for the recovering addict. By practicing cognitive change and finding balance in our lives, we can develop a brain that is less impulsive and hard-wired for addiction. We try to re-wire our brain by thinking about our thinking and then following a more rational thought process, also known as cognitive re-framing. This is the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. Thinking about your thinking takes practice, and in order to re-frame thoughts it becomes necessary to identify thinking errors. Usually thinking errors come from a more emotional part of the brain and aren't entirely logical. To look at thinking errors we have to notice self-talk and stop to think, is this coming from my rational, emotional or wise mind. The wise mind is a balance of rational and emotional mind, this is where we want to make decisions. When we start checking in on our thoughts and then identify our wise mind, we can rewire the brain to think less impulsively.