Training Your Amygdala

A Reader writes:

I… am curious if you have any methods for amygdala training that I could do personally to get comfortable with dealing with conflict. I am naturally a conflict avoidant person and would like to get past this issue if it is possible.

The best training is recognizing that what drives you away, and is uncomfortable, is a stimulus which will give you what you want. So train yourself to seek it out consciously and tolerate, if not embrace it.

It is like weightlifting. You load the muscle, and repeat the movement until your muscles burn with pain. If you tied someone down, and simply hit them with that pain, they would freak out and try to get away from it. But when you realize the pain means bigger muscles, you embrace it, and actually push to get a little more each time you lift.

Now you don’t have to embrace the pain of amygdala fully overnight. At first, just try to feel it when it happens. Focus on it.

Then one day, decide intellectually where you want a conflict. Where are you going to say “No!” to somebody who demands something? Where are you going to push someone for fucking with you? Where and how are you going to do asshole game with a girl? Visualize it, plan it intellectually, and then do it lightly while feeling your amygdala try to push you away from doing it.

That feeling is your amygdala burning, and beginning to grow like a muscle. Embrace it however you can, even if at first it is just to run up, touch it, and then back off. Over time, push it more, touch it more, feel it longer, focus on the fact it isn’t killing you to touch it, and then try to make it worse just up until the point you can tolerate it. Push that boundary, and watch as it moves.

Do other things which you might not normally do. Stop by an MMA gym, and start training. If public speaking bothers you, give it a whirl, and re-imagine that feeling as your amygdala making you stronger and more resilient. get to the point you welcome it, because you know it will make you more fearless. If approaching strange women terrifies you, learn game, and begin doing approaches of the hottest girls around, embracing the strain of potentially being rejected and embarassed.

There are other things you can do too. Wim Hof’s breathing exercises probably help (hyper-oxygenating your blood with thirty deep fast breaths, and then exhaling fully and holding it until you almost pass out, taking one deep breath, and holding that as long as you can), as probably do the cold showers he recommends. The physical pain turns the amygdala on, allowing you to examine it, focus on it, and push your boundaries right up until your point of tolerance.

The key is, there are two phases to what I call amygdala. The first is aversion/shock, which is the sensation which attracts your attention, focuses it, and drives you either away or toward, fight or flight. I suspect it is innate, and will not affect amygdala development significantly. My guess would be it is hardwired similarly in everyone, though tolerance of it can adapt.

The second phase is processing, which makes that decision, to run or fight. In processing, my read indicates the amygdala does one of two things. It may recognize the stimulus or something similar, and immediately shift the brain to a memory of the stimulus and its resolution, activating an almost “replay” of the prior experience and it successful outcome. If it does not recognize the stimulus, that will probably feed the shock factor, as the brain either activates its interconnections to other areas of the brain which may contain memories of anything relevant in search of a resolution, or amps up the shock until it turns to horror.

The shock level, and the degree of the raw fear sensation probably decides whether to flee or fight/analyze. I suspect as the amygdala operates without encountering either a previous encounter or some knowledge regarding the stimulus, each failure to resolve the issue cognitively with some form of solution or previous experience amps up that initial fear/shock factor.

An example. You are standing in your living room, when you are pushed from behind. You turn around, and nothing is there. Then you get kicked in the shin, but again, nobody is there. That will tend to push the fight/flight decision towards flight. You do not know anything about the sensations you are feeling. You have no action to take. Your amygdala has nothing to consider and focus upon but the initial stimulus of the push, and that will amp the fear response until you flee – and it is a wise decision as from a survival perspective you have no other option.

Now suppose you heard of what has been referred to as the Chameleo program, a reputed program in the government which generates “invisible midgets,” small-statured, athletic people who are recruited by the government to utilize an active, adaptive camouflage system. The active camouflage system projects a hyper-resolved LED image of what is behind them in front of them, on a flexible cloth-like LED screen, so anyone in front of them, looking at the invisible midget, sees a perfect image of what is behind them, and it is so resolved it will appear from mere feet away as if they were completely see-through and invisible.

Now you know something about the sensations, and that knowledge draws away your amygdala’s focus upon the initial shock, and begins to divert its focus toward an analysis of it, which is less cognitively painful. Your shock factor is diminishing, and your amygdala-focus is shifting away from the amygdala-amping threat, and to an amygdala-resolving solution.

Now your amygdala is calling up memories of your readings on the project and your understanding of the technology. Suppose your amygdala processed all the information in its memory systems, and remembered you had a can of spray paint in your back pocket, and spraying the LED systems would prevent the LEDs from camouflaging the midget. Now your amygdala is seeing an uncamouflaged midget, and the shock factor is beginning to abate as your amygdala-focus is shifted from the shock to the solution. Now you are in fight mode, because the uncamouflaged midget is a manageable threat you can deal with, and your amygdala, spinning down, has shifted from driving terrified flight to driving focused action.

But if you have none of that knowledge, that push to your back is going to be a fearful experience, in large part because the unknown aspect gives your amygdala nothing to focus on but the threat, and your amygdala is going to amp up with each turn of its cognitive cycle that fails to result in a resolution to distract it. It will return to the threat, focus more, amp up more, return more, focus more, amp up more, until you are forced by your amygdala to flee.

Now part of what can be adjusted is your perception of the sensation of the initial shock. If it is overwhelming to you, such as if you have spent your life in complete comfort and ease and you are not accustomed to the shock of an amygdala-trigger, then that will affect your ability to think, your willingness to persist in the face of the threat, and your ultimate ability to overcome the challenge.

If however, you have conditioned yourself to be inured to the sensation of amygdala, you will not respond as strongly to the initial shock, and that will buy you time to analyze before the amygdala amps up to unbearable levels. It will bestow upon you a clear-headed aspect to your thought processes, more prone to touch on a solution and resolve the threat.

So there is something to be said to consciously driving yourself into the face of the discomfort of amygdala, and never letting yourself get too comfortable. Push the envelope of your tolerance, and whenever you encounter those little stresses, be it confronting a coworker over some office shitbaggery, or approaching the pretty girl who most mere mortals are afraid to look at, jump in, and embrace the amydgala-burn.

You brain, and your rules, but only if you take the reins.

Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because the amygdala is the seat of your power