Sublime

We can knock our brains and bodies out of normal physiology just by thinking about an all-too-familiar past or trying to control an unpredictable future.

Christian Keysers, The Empathic Brain

In nature, stress episodes like encountering a predator are temporary, giving the body time to recover. In modern life stressors are mostly psychological, not biological, and can be ongoing (if only in our thoughts), like a horrific boss or trouble with family. Such stressors trigger those same ancient biological reactions. If these stress reaction

having a blunted stress response could also harm emotional well-being in more indirect ways through its negative impact on our ability to absorb emotionally meaningful events from our environments.

Every adaptation our brain makes is an effort to better protect our bodies. Some of these backfire—the deadly result of an overactive stress response. But some might actually be advantageous to our health.

heart rate variability (HRV). HRV had recently been discovered to be a good way to measure the integrity of one of the brain’s arousal systems, the one located in the oldest part of the brain: the brain stem.

When we are emotionally and relationally connected to others, stress levels in the brain diminish.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, factors that lead to greater sensitivity to social exclusion, including low self-esteem, oversensitivity to other people, a tendency to feel socially disconnected as well as being characterised at the anxious end of the attachment scale are all associated with increased activity in the ACC and AI when faced with social