Amygdala Hijack Explained
Barbara Heffernan • February 19, 2025
Have you ever experienced an emotional reaction so intense that it completely overtakes your thoughts and feelings?
Understanding the Amygdala Hijack
These overwhelming moments—when you say or do things you later regret, or fail to speak or act when you should—are examples of what psychologists call an "amygdala hijack." This term describes when the fear center of your brain, responsible for your fight-flight-freeze response, commandeers your entire thought process, emotions, and behaviors.
This universal experience affects everyone at some point. Understanding the process can significantly help reduce your emotional reactivity.
In this article, I'll explain what an amygdala hijack is, why it happens, and how recognizing it can benefit you. Check in next week for a blog that will cover specific management techniques to help calm the amygdala hijack.
The Evolutionary Origins of Amygdala Response
From an evolutionary perspective, the amygdala is among the most ancient structures in our brain—one we share with most living creatures. Its primary function is triggering rapid responses to potential physical dangers, often before our conscious mind even processes the threat.
Consider this relatable scenario: you're walking along a path when something catches your peripheral vision that resembles a snake. Before you consciously identify the object, you've already jumped away—your autonomic nervous system responding instantaneously. Even after realizing it was merely a stick, residual activation keeps you on edge for several minutes. This quick response mechanism evolved to keep us safe from genuine threats where split-second reactions determined survival.
The sequence illustrates a fundamental aspect of our neurobiology: when we detect potential danger, our body reacts before the information reaches our frontal lobe for higher-level processing. In situations involving actual threats (like venomous snakes), this rapid response system is invaluable. The problem arises when this same system activates in modern contexts where immediate physical danger isn't present.
Here's where things get complicated for us modern humans: our amygdala cannot distinguish between physical threats (like predators) and psychological or social threats like criticism, rejection, or public speaking. Your brain processes a harsh comment from your boss, an argument with your spouse, or a challenging presentation with almost the same urgency as a tiger attack.
This evolutionary mismatch means our amygdala activates our emergency response system for situations that, while uncomfortable, don't actually endanger our physical survival. The amygdala's is designed to have this impact:
- Narrowing your focus to the perceived threat
- Flooding your system with adrenaline and stress hormones
- Directing blood flow toward large muscle groups
- Preparing you to fight, flee, or freeze
These responses, while lifesaving in true emergencies, can be counterproductive in everyday social interactions where thoughtful, measured responses would serve us better.
Recognizing Amygdala Hijack in Daily Life
Consider a workplace scenario: during a team meeting, a colleague criticizes your project. Although this situation requires careful listening and constructive engagement, your amygdala might interpret it as a threat. Suddenly, you find yourself flooded with stress hormones, your heart is racing and your thoughts are scattered. Instead of responding thoughtfully, you might:
> Lash out defensively (fight)
> Withdraw and avoid engaging (flight)
> Become paralyzed, unable to formulate a response (freeze)
Similarly, in a fight with a loved one, defensive or angry reactions can escalate the situation. The amygdala can hijack the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning, risk assessment, and logical decision-making. In this state, even if you sound rational, your words may be cutting and unproductive. The amygdala can also shut down the part of the brain responsible for compassion and connection, leading to a lack of empathy. Once hijacked, rational communication becomes nearly impossible. If you're prone to freezing, you might become silent and unresponsive. If fighting is your default, you might make hurtful statements you'll regret later. If fleeing is your pattern, you might leave the discussion entirely, potentially worsening the situation if your partner is sensitive to abandonment.
The Neural Mechanics: How Hijack Affects Your Brain
During an amygdala hijack, your prefrontal cortex—responsible for planning, risk assessment, future thinking, and logical decision-making—becomes subordinated to your threat response system. Your cognitive abilities often remain active but serve only the amygdala's protective agenda rather than your long-term interests.
This explains why highly articulate individuals can sound remarkably rational during emotional arguments while actually making relationship-damaging statements. The prefrontal cortex provides the linguistic capabilities and logical structure, but the content and emotional tone derive from the amygdala's defensive positioning.
Importantly, amygdala hijack also suppresses brain regions associated with empathy and interpersonal connection. This explains why we lose our sense of relationship during heated conflicts—the neural circuitry for compassion becomes temporarily inaccessible. I often compare this state to reptilian responses: focused entirely on survival without the mammalian capacity for connection and nurturing. This loss of compassoin explains why amygdala hijacks can so severely damage our closest relationships.
Beyond "Fight": Hijacks Can include Freeze and Flight Responses
While discussions of amygdala hijacks often focus on aggressive outbursts (the fight response), it's crucial to recognize that freeze and flight responses also occur. Whether you become verbally aggressive, mentally check out of a conversation, or physically leave a difficult situation, the underlying mechanism is identical: your amygdala has taken control.
Understanding your typical pattern—fight, flight or freeze—provides valuable self-knowledge for managing emotional reactivity. Each pattern creates different relational challenges and requires specific interventions to address effectively.
The Role of Personal History in Amygdala Triggers
Through my twenty years as a psychotherapist and my personal journey, I've observed that most people develop very specific triggers based on their life experiences, particularly early childhood events. These triggers create emotional templates that get activated in seemingly unrelated situations.
For example, if you grew up with unpredictable or harsh authority figures, you might experience disproportionate anxiety or defensiveness with bosses, teachers, or other authority figures. Your emotional brain recognizes a pattern similarity
"authority figure = danger"
without accounting for the vast differences between your childhood circumstances and your current reality.
What makes these triggers so powerful is that emotional memory doesn't incorporate a sense of time or context. The emotional brain operates on pattern recognition, not logical analysis. It essentially says, "I've seen this pattern before, and it ended badly. I need to protect myself NOW!"
Relationships and Survival Response
Humans are fundamentally social creatures, wired to prioritize connection. Throughout our evolutionary history, belonging to a group significantly improved survival chances. Consequently, our brains process threats to important relationships as survival threats, even though they don't threaten immediate physical harm.
This explains why relationship conflicts can trigger such extreme reactions. When we perceive our connection with a loved one as threatened, our brain categorizes this as a survival emergency. The resulting amygdala hijack can make reasonable communication nearly impossible, creating a destructive cycle where both partners experience heightened threat responses.
This dynamic often intensifies with commitment level. Many couples notice that conflicts become more emotionally charged after marriage or similar commitment milestones. What previously might have been a manageable disagreement now feels catastrophic because the relationship itself represents security and survival.
Understanding and Managing Amygdala Hijacks
The term "amygdala hijack" was coined by Daniel Goleman in his influential book "Emotional Intelligence" to describe this universal human experience. The concept helps explain why smart, well-intentioned people sometimes behave in ways that undermine their relationships and objectives.
Learning to manage these responses—by recognizing triggers, calming physiological reactions, and developing self-regulation skills—forms a cornerstone of emotional intelligence. Understanding that our brains evolved with a negativity bias and automatic survival responses helps reduce self-judgment while motivating us to develop more adaptive patterns.
Our individual neurological wiring significantly reflects early conditioning experiences, but thanks to neuroplasticity, we can reshape these patterns. Through consistent practice with evidence-based techniques, we can actually rewire our emotional responses and reduce the frequency and intensity of amygdala hijacks. This capacity for neurological change underlies all effective emotional regulation approaches.
My free webinar,
Rewire Your Brain for Joy and Confidence , explains how our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions are wired together through repetition and provides hope and practical tools for how to re-wire our brains through altering our thoughts and behaviors.
Moving Forward: Increasing Awareness and Control
Recognizing when an amygdala hijack occurs marks an essential first step toward managing this response. In my next article, I'll explore specific techniques for:
1. Identifying personal triggers before they activate
2. Reducing physiological arousal during emotional reactions
3. Reconnecting with the rational brain during stressful situations
4. Rewiring emotional responses through consistent practice
5. Building resilience to prevent future hijacks
The goal isn't eliminating emotional responses—they provide valuable information and motivation. Rather, the objective is developing sufficient awareness and self-regulation skills to prevent automatic reactions from overtaking rational choices and damaging important relationships.
Conclusion: The Path to Emotional Regulation
The amygdala hijack represents a normal neural process that evolved to protect us from physical dangers. In contemporary life, however, this same response often creates more problems than it solves. By understanding the neurobiological basis of emotional reactivity, we can approach our triggered moments with greater compassion and implement effective strategies for regaining control.
Remember that emotional regulation is a skill developed through practice. With consistent effort and appropriate techniques, you can significantly reduce the frequency and intensity of amygdala hijacks, leading to improved relationships, better decision-making, and greater overall well-being.
Blog Author: Barbara Heffernan, LCSW, MBA. Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in anxiety, trauma, and healthy boundaries. She had a private practice in Connecticut for twenty years before starting her popular YouTube channel designed to help people around the world live a more joyful life. Barbara has a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Columbia University and an MSW from SCSU. More info on Barbara can be found on her bio page.
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Scientifically proven, simple technique to calm an amygdala hijack. This blog describes this simple technique, provides the scientifically proven benefits of using this technique and shares 7 steps to implement this technique in the most effective way! Based on Lieberman's scientific research on affect labeling.
The Technique: Affect Labeling
Affect labeling is putting into words what emotion you are feeling.
Understanding the Fawn Response The Fawn response is a behavior developed in childhood, often connected to complex trauma. It could even be little "t" traumas on an ongoing basis, where as a child, you learned to subjugate yourself to the caregiver in order to stay in relationship and survive. This becomes a deeply ingrained survival behavior which can become habitual. As you grow up, it gets applied to all situations. This blog will go through nine components required for healing. - The first three focus on internal work - The next three are more practical, action-oriented techniques - The last three address deeper psychological work Internal Work (Components 1-3) # 1. Recognize that fawning developed because it was necessary at the time Understand that fawning was a survival strategy, and it might have been the very best choice available to you. It may also have been, in many ways, the only choice. Even today as adults, there are situations where choosing a fawning-type behavior might actually be the best choice. This is important to understand because we don't want to eliminate this response entirely—we want to get to the point where it's not an automatic go-to reaction. Instead, we want to reach a place where you can consciously think, "I'm choosing to do this right now." Acknowledging that this developed as a survival strategy helps prepare you for the next two components. [ For more information on what the fawn response is and why it developed, read this blog] # 2. Begin to acknowledge and validate your own feelings If you grew up in an environment where you learned to fawn, my guess is that not only were your caregivers not paying attention to your feelings, but you also had to subjugate your own feelings to the point where you weren't aware of what you were feeling. As an adult, it's necessary to begin recognizing and identifying your emotions: "I'm feeling angry" or "sad" or "frustrated" or "irritated." Begin to acknowledge and even verbalize what you're feeling. The simple act of labeling your emotion calms down your fight-flight-freeze response and increases activity in the areas of the brain that help you solve problems. There is research that shows this happening via fMRIs! # 3. Practice self-compassion Understanding why this behavior developed can help you practice self-compassion. Changing these behaviors is hard and takes time. If you find yourself automatically fawning and later yelling at yourself, try not to do that—you're basically re-traumatizing yourself for a behavior you learned for survival. Instead, try noting it with self-compassion: "Interesting, I fell into that pattern again." And then connect this to the next step by adding, "I fell into that pattern again because of this situation." Observe with compassion rather than judgment. Practical Tools (Components 4-6) # 4. Identify situations that trigger fawning behavior Notice which situations trigger your fawning behavior. As you review these situations, see if there are patterns similar to those you experienced as a child. They may reflect situations that were emotionally or physically dangerous, or that created a rift between you and your caregivers. Identifying these situations helps you understand what patterns became embedded in your emotional brain. As you observe these patterns, bring in self-compassion and that observer mindset. This approach is much more productive than criticizing yourself. As you identify these patterns, you can connect them to current situations: "This situation at work with a difficult authority figure is recreating this childhood pattern for me." You are bringing in your frontal lobe to analyze the emotional reaction, which helps you realize, "That was threatening to my very existence when I was a child, but it is not threatening to my existence right now." This recognition is crucial because automatic fawning behaviors come from a need to survive immediate danger. The uncertainty of longer-term consequences (like losing a job) might be problematic, but it's not an immediate survival threat. Differentiating between then and now helps calm your fawn response. # 5. Keep a journal to track people-pleasing behaviors Keep a journal for 30 days. Journal on this question: "Did I say or do something today to please someone else that was at my own expense?" As you review the events of each day, you might realize, "I didn't do it this situation, but I did do it in those five situations." Again, maintain self-compassion with no judgment—just observe and be aware this will take time. This question gets at the heart of the issue: What did you do today that ignored your own values or needs in order to stay in relationship with someone else, avoid criticism, or prevent rejection? Verbalizing this through an audio journal or writing it down utilizes different parts of your brain that help you comprehensively understand what's happening. # 6. Practice emotional regulation tools daily Implement diaphragmatic breathing, grounding exercises, or any techniques that calm your physiology. Practice these regularly, not just in the middle of triggering events. You can weave these practices throughout your day. Set an alarm for three different times during the day, and when it goes off, simply take three deep diaphragmatic breaths. No one needs to know you're doing it—you can do it anywhere, and it's free. While it might not feel immediately helpful, you're stimulating a different part of your nervous system that helps you realize, "In this situation, it would not be life-threatening if the relationship were severed. I'm not in a situation where my immediate survival is at stake." When you feel safe enough, your normal breathing pattern will naturally be diaphragmatic. It's all a feedback loop—a body-based technique that communicates to the rest of your brain. The fawn response is differentiated from the fight-flight-freeze response. Sometimes they're grouped together, but I think it's more useful to separate them (I'll cover this topic in the future if you're interested—let me know in the comments). The fawn response uses different parts of the nervous system and brain because it's largely about staying in connection with others. That said, knowing whether your underlying response is fight, flight, or freeze beneath the fawn behavior can be helpful. People who fawn typically have either a flight response (wanting to run away) or a freeze response. Fighters rarely develop the fawn response. I recently created videos and blogs about calming the fight-flight-freeze response that might be useful for you. Deeper Work (Components 7-9) # 7. Recognize your negative core beliefs Identify what beliefs developed when you were young that led you to fawn, and what beliefs developed as a result of fawning. A common belief for people who fawn is "my needs don't matter," or even " I don't matter." Other common beliefs include "I'm not good enough," or "I'm powerless." A general feeling of being in danger is also common. Identifying these negative core beliefs and beginning to use tools to rewire them is extremely helpful. [I have a free PDF that helps you identify these beliefs and learn tools to rewire them. You can find it by clicking here ]. # 8. Learn to recognize and separate from limiting thoughts Notice when your behavior is driven by your negative core beliefs, whether you're fawning or not. You might operate from these beliefs almost all the time, even when not actively people-pleasing. Begin to separate yourself from these thoughts. Not all of our thoughts are true. Not all of our beliefs are true. We can "diffuse" from our thoughts by using our observer mind: "Interesting, I'm thinking that again, but I know it isn't necessarily true." A helpful technique is to "practice as if." If you feel like your needs don't matter, pretend that they do matter. Ask yourself, "What would I do right now if my needs mattered?" You can practice this approach in small ways. Your behavior, even if it is coming from a place of pretense, will actually begin to rewire these beliefs. # 9. Establish healthy boundaries I've placed this component last because establishing healthy boundaries isn't simply about saying "no." (Sometimes saying no is a healthy boundary, but sometimes it's not—and boundaries encompass much more than that). Healthy boundaries require a deep understanding of yourself and your values, and an understanding of where you end and others begin. To truly understand healthy boundaries requires deep inner work. The other components we've discussed, particularly emotional regulation, are prerequisites for establishing boundaries. Until you develop a certain level of emotional regulation, it's nearly impossible to implement healthy boundaries. When your amygdala is firing with the fight-flight-freeze response, your response is automatic and happening too quickly for your rational brain to intervene. Your rational mind might know "I should be saying no right now" or "I should leave this conversation," but the panic response has already set in, and your brain is focused solely on keeping the relationship intact and staying safe by avoiding conflict. This is why healthy boundaries aren't just about learning more information. You've probably read extensively about boundaries and have cognitive awareness of what healthy boundaries might look like. Then you get frustrated when you can't implement them because no one talks about the fact that boundary-setting starts with emotional regulation. Healthy boundaries also require healing negative core beliefs and knowing (even if you don't yet feel it ) that you can be safe without maintaining a toxic relationship, you can be safe even when there's conflict. A Structured Approach to Healing In my boundary program , I've designed an approach which walks you through the CORE components of healing and establishing helthy boundaries. The program helps you: develop the emotional regulation you need to begin to set boundaries identify and heal the negative core beliefs that are driving unhealthy boundaries learn assertive communication (as opposed to passive or aggressive) understand how to set boundaries and consequences and begin to do so! (For more info on the boundary program, click here) Learning assertive communication is essential because people with fawn patterns often use passive communication. Assertive communication represents the middle ground between passive and aggressive communication. It embodies the principle "I'm okay, you're okay." Many people who fawn misinterpret assertive communication as aggressive, and since they don't want to be like their aggressive abuser, they default to passive communication. But there is a healthy middle ground. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions—please comment below. I truly hope this is helpful, and I'll see you next week.
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