PTSD – A Way Out.com A mindful way to heal

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This chapter follows the lead of the most recent scientific discoveries, taking the view that our emotions are unparalleled mechanisms of human connection: they fuel the affections that bond us deeply to other people and reveal the vulnerabilities that are part of our common humanity.
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Emotions fuel the vitality that makes us feel fully alive and “juicy” and are themselves powerful catalysts of brain change.
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Our emotions, from the most basic — mad, sad, bad, glad — to the most complex — resentment, jealousy, pride — are motivational systems in and of themselves.
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Affects — the neurobiological roots of what we call feelings or emotions — are simply waves of body sensations that signal us, from the bottom up,
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“Pay attention! Something important is happening here!”
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These sensations are filtered through the primitive emotional processing center of the amygdala.
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This, with its inherent negativity bias, can lay a bad rap on the meaning of these sensations as they pass through the insula to the more complex discernment of the prefrontal cortex, which can consciously perceive, process, and respond to them resiliently, perhaps with a different, more favorable interpretation.
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