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The brain–mind works like a three-story house: instinct, habit, and reflection.

Trauma histories can keep the emotional “basement” on constant alert.

Simple practices—breath, labeling feelings, and play—help restore balance.

I’ll start with some radical honesty: Coping right now is hard work for me. As tensions rise globally, it can feel as if we’re teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Even after decades of studying emotion, I still wrestle with anxiety—especially in the current climate.

In my last post, I wrote about how neuroscience identified seven core emotional systems embedded deep in the evolutionarily oldest brain. Here, I expand that conversation to the architecture of the whole brain–mind—and how understanding it can help us cope.

We’re living through what I call the Traumademic: the emotional aftermath of overlapping crises—pandemics, political polarization, climate threats, and chronic uncertainty—layered on top of our personal trauma histories. The result? We often feel emotionally hijacked and disconnected. Even as a neuroscientist and therapist, I’m not immune.

When Emotions Take the Wheel

You probably know the feeling: One moment you’re OK, and the next you’re flooded with fear, panic, or rage. That’s emotional hijacking—when the feeling brain temporarily takes over the thinking brain. These ancient emotional circuits evolved to protect us from immediate threats. But today’s “predators”—the nonstop news cycle, social media, economic stress—keep the brain’s alarm system permanently on. We marinate in fight-flight-freeze chemistry that fuels anxiety, burnout, and emotional numbness.

The Three-Story Brain–Mind

I often ask clients to imagine the brain–mind as a three-story house. Each level plays a role in how emotions move through us.

The Basement: Core Emotional Instincts

This is where our seven primal systems live. The defensive emotions, such as fear, rage, and panic, can activate before reason does. A tone of voice, facial expression, or memory can flip the switch. If activation is sufficiently strong, emotional “hijacking” can result. And once fear, rage, or panic gets turned on, we see the world through those goggles. For me, it is my “panic” mind that tends to take over.

Growing up in a chaotic home with a mom suffering from borderline personality disorder trained my fear and panic systems to stay on high alert. Even now, part of me sometimes feels the emotional ground could shift at any moment.

The Mezzanine: Emotional Memory and Habits

The middle layers of the brain, which I call the mezzanine, connect instinct with experience. Much of this level goes into automatic mode. It holds emotional learning—our safety and danger cues. For people with trauma histories, this level gets stuck on “replay.” My own mezzanine mind still runs old programs—urgency, vigilance, self-criticism—that once helped me cope but now can fuel anxiety and exhaustion. In times of mass uncertainty, this middle level hums with tension.

The Top Floor: Reflection and Regulation

At the top sits the prefrontal cortex, the command center for perspective and choice. When it’s online, we can notice what we’re feeling and respond rather than react. But when the lower floors flood the system with alarm signals, the lights upstairs dim. Healing isn’t about shutting down the basement—it’s about restoring communication and balance across all three levels.

The Traumademic’s Emotional Overload

Right now, many collective basements are overheating. The cultural atmosphere feels like a chronic alarm: too much fear, too little safety. Social media and nonstop news amplify panic while muting curiosity, play, and care.

Some mornings, I wake with a pit of dread in my stomach—my panic system lighting up, my body tensing, motivation fading. In neuroscience, this dampening of joy and motivation is called anhedonia: when our seeking and play systems go offline because survival alarms dominate. Here are some tools to deal with these challenges.

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From Awareness to Action

Restoring emotional balance often starts from the bottom up. Here are some practices that help connect the three floors of the brain–mind.

Practice “one-minute breath regulation” to calm the body and the brain’s basement.

Inhale slowly through your nose to a count of four.

Exhale even more slowly to a count of six or eight.

Repeat for one minute when you notice anxiety, anger, or numbness. This slows the heart rate and signals to the nervous system that the threat has passed.

Use simple emotion labels.

Tune into your body sensations and then notice your emotions.

Silently name your state: “This is fear,” “This is sadness,” “This is anger.” Research on affect labeling shows that naming feelings reduces threat activation and strengthens regulation circuits—like dimming the basement lights and brightening the top floor.

When I pause and name what I’m feeling, something shifts. My top brain begins to re-engage. Awareness alone doesn’t erase the feelings, but it restores a degree of calm and choice.

Several times a day, pause and ask: Which mind and I in? Here’s a clue: Start with the basement:

Am I in raw fear, rage, or panic/grief/sadness? Or, alternatively, am I seeking care, play, or lust?

Then take inventory of the other “floors.”

Mezzanine: Am I replaying old stories or bracing for impact? If so, that is a sign of activation.

Top floor: Can I observe my feelings with perspective? That allows reflection.

Add compassionate self-talk.

Offer yourself gentle self-talk: “Of course I feel this way,” or “In this moment, I’m safe enough.” Notice how your body responds; this activates care and safety circuits.

Schedule one small dose of play or connection.

Once a day, deliberately engage your seeking and play systems: walk, listen to music, call a friend, share a laugh. Treat these as nervous-system medicine, not luxuries.

Rewiring the Emotional Brain

The truth is that the nervous system is plastic—it can learn to feel safe again. Each time we breathe through anxiety instead of escalating it, or replace dread with curiosity, we reshape old patterns.

This also applies collectively. Our culture’s chronic outrage resembles a shared neural hijacking—fear and rage circuits fired en masse. Recognizing this helps us respond with empathy instead of reactivity. Healing, for individuals and communities alike, begins with regulation and reconnection.

Every time we pause, breathe, or listen with curiosity, we help calm the emotional field—one nervous system at a time. Reconnecting the brain–mind’s three levels moves us beyond survival into thrival: a state where pleasure, play, and connection aren’t indulgences but signs of a healthy, balanced brain.

The more we notice, name, breathe with, and gently guide our emotional states, the more our brains—and perhaps our world—can move back toward safety, balance, and play.

Wise, N. (2020). Why Good Sex Matters: Understanding the Neuroscience of Pleasure for a Smarter, Happier, and More Purpose-Filled Life. Harvest.

Lieberman, M., Eisenberger, N. I., & Crockett, M. J. (2007). Putting feelings into words: affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. PsycholSci. 18 (5): 421–428.

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