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We get caught in fears and don't have to.

Neuroscience reveals how fear affects the brain and body.

Understanding these automatic responses can help us make better choices in the future.

Neuroscience helps us understand how fear works and how we can work with it. A fear-arousing experience that hearkens back to a trauma from long ago will feel to us as though it is happening right now. All emotions, especially fear, include a physiological component. In fear, our amygdala, an organ deep in our primitive brain, instantly signals our autonomic nervous system to go on full alert. We then feel an amplified ability to fight or flee.

Sometimes, a freeze response to fear is safer than fighting or fleeing. This is generated by our parasympathetic system. In all of these reactions, blood flows to our outer organs, away from our brain. We thereby lose full access to our reasoning mind. But if our nervous system has learned a program........

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