We Automatically Navigate The World Around Us
Here's How . . .
The environment we live in is filled with code. We have a system that works in the background to filter out and ignore irrelevant things around us, and produce feelings - positive or negative - about the things that are relevant.
This system lets us navigate our world without having to process everything in it consciously and cognitively. It works with people. It works with things.
When we are with another person, we unconsciously pick up signals from them. These signals include emotional valence code (EVC) that can be instantly read by the amygdala. If the EVC is positive, the amygdala causes us to feel safe. If the EVC is negative, the amygdala causes us to feel unsafe.
The brain assigns an EVC to things we experience. If the experience is positive, the brain assigns it a positive EVC. If the experience is negative, the brain assigns it a negative EVC.
When the person or thing is once again encountered, its EVC code shows up. The amygdala reads the code, and depending on whether the code is positive or negative, the amygdala causes us to feel attracted or repulsed.
This system helps us avoid being repeatedly injured. When we have an experience that turns out to be traumatic, the brain assigns a highly negative EVC to its cause. The brain also assigns highly negative EVC to the context in which the trauma took place. Though the causes of trauma vary, the context in which trauma takes place does not change. In every traumatic experience, the person has no control and no escape.
Each additional trauma, whether mild, moderate, or severe, increases the negativity of the EVCs assigned to no-control and to no-escape. Over time, these EVCs can become so negative that a no-control and no-escape situation - even one known to be safe - can release enough stress hormones to produce hyper-arousal.
Hyper-arousal may cause alarm, fear, the urge to fight, and the urge to flee. If those urges cannot be satisfied by action, the person may freeze or panic.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy may improve a person’s ability to make an accurate risk-reward assessment of flying and allow them to understand - intellectually - that flying is their safest option. Nevertheless, the person's emotional response from the system that protects us automatically may remain unchanged. This is because some - and possibly all - of a person's emotional response when flying (or thinking of flying) is based - not on cognition - but on EVC. Their emotional response may be completely based on the amygdala's reading of negative emotional valence code (EVC) assigned to no-control and to no-escape due to trauma (not necessarily flight trauma) in the past.
Though flying is not absolutely safe, no other way to travel is as safe. Thus, if a person is to travel in the safest way possible, their EVC-driven response to no-control and no-escape situations needs to be changed.
We can change a person’s response to being on an airliner by changing the code attached to this particular no-control and no-escape situation. This is what we accomplish in the SOAR program. Info is at https://www.fearofflying.com
We can also change how a person responds to other places where the amygdala encounters no-control, no-escape code, such as bridges, tunnels, elevators, high places, MRIs, etc. For an introduction to these situations, see my book, Panic Free: The 10-Day Program to End Panic, Anxiety, and Claustrophobia
Audio book at this link.