Fear and Memory
One intense experience can create lasting fear, often leading to avoidance behaviors. Unlike positive experiences, negative ones can be learned in just a single trial, resulting in a profound impact on our perceptions and decisions. The fear system is designed to generalize these experiences, shaping our views of relationships and environments based on isolated incidents or accumulated events.In this clip
From this podcast
Huberman Lab
Erasing Fears & Traumas Based on the Modern Neuroscience of Fear | Huberman Lab Podcast #49
Related Questions
If the goal is to diminish the physiological response, then if a person works to change their physiological response immediately after being triggered, would that over time also diminish the physiological response and therefore break the conditioning? Am I right? For example, if a person had a traumatic experience with a spider, and every time the person sees the spider or gets activated through some trigger, and immediately after uses breathwork to calm the body, would that work like retelling a narrative to extinguish the fear? Did I miss something?
When Huberman talks about the insula and how to recalibrate this system when the internal reaction is disproportional to external experiences, and the 5 minutes a day exercise using stress exposure or cyclic sigh, does this relate to using tools to calm the nervous system?
Let's say if I see or remember a memory that was upsetting and caused a reaction in my body, if I immediately calm my body down, over time I will break the condition, right?