Your everyday reactions explained by neuroscience
If your sense of worth goes up when things go well and drops when they don’t, you already know something is off. Not in the moments when it drops — in those moments it feels completely reasonable. But in the quieter moments, you can see it: the feeling of being okay is attached to somethingRead the Post
Some people cry at commercials, feel a criticism for days after someone said it, and walk into a tense room and immediately sense the tension in their chest before anyone has said a word. And then there are people who watch all of this from the outside and genuinely do not understand it — whoRead the Post
Most people think of anxiety as something obvious — a panic attack, a racing heart, a full-blown episode of fear. But for a lot of people, anxiety does not look like that at all. Instead, it runs low and quiet, underneath everything, in a way that is easy to miss or explain away. Background anxietyRead the Post
Most people think anxiety is a thought problem. Something you are doing with your mind — worrying too much, catastrophizing, overthinking. So the advice tends to be: think differently, challenge your thoughts, focus on something else. That advice is not wrong. But it is missing something important. Anxiety does not start in the mind. ItRead the Post
Most people can identify shame after it is over. The conversation ended, everyone has gone home, and now lying in bed, it becomes clear what that feeling was. But catching it while it is still happening — while the body is still reacting and the behavior is still running — is a different skill entirely.Read the Post
Shame does not always announce itself. Most of the time, it does not feel like shame at all. It feels like anxiety. Like being hard on yourself. Like just being a certain kind of person — careful, self-aware, maybe a little sensitive. You might live with the signs of hidden shame for years without everRead the Post
