The Role of the Amygdala in Anxiety

The amygdala is a really important part of our brain when it comes to anxiety. It regulates emotion or it helps to regulate us but actually the other thing that regulates emotion is that we can't do anything. So what happens when we're feeling very anxious is it's almost like the amygdala takes over. Nothing can get through. And in the same way then when our prefrontal cortex is receiving all these messages that something isn't quite right, it's not able to send a clear and coherent message back because again that door is almost closed. The Chimp Paradox by David Walliams was published last year which talks about why negative experiences are so difficult for people to deal with.