Anxiety Repeated SNS/HPAA activity makes the amygdala more reactive to apparent threats, which in turn increases SNS/HPAA activation, which sensitizes the amygdala further. The mental correlate of this physical process is an increasingly rapid arousal of state anxiety (anxiety based on specific situations). Additionally, the amygdala helps form implicit memories (traces of past experiences that exist beneath conscious awareness); as it becomes more sensitized, it increasingly shades those residues with fear, thus intensifying trait anxiety (ongoing anxiety regardless of the situation).
Anxiety Repeated SNS/HPAA activity makes the amygdala more reactive to apparent threats, which in turn increases SNS/HPAA activation, which sensitizes the amygdala further. The mental correlate of this physical process is an increasingly rapid arousal of state anxiety (anxiety based on specific situations). Additionally, the amygdala helps form implicit memories (traces of past experiences that exist beneath conscious awareness); as it becomes more sensitized, it increasingly shades those residues with fear, thus intensifying trait anxiety (ongoing anxiety regardless of the situation). Meanwhile, frequent SNS/HPAA activation wears down the hippocampus, which is vital for forming explicit memories—clear records of what actually happened. Cortisol and related glucocorticoid hormones both weaken existing synaptic connections in the hippocampus and inhibit the formation of new ones. Further, the hippocampus is one of the few regions in the human brain that can actually grow new neurons—yet glucocorticoids prevent the birth of neurons in the hippocampus, impairing its ability to produce new memories. It’s a bad combination for the amygdala to be oversensitized while the hippocampus is compromised: painful experiences can then be recorded in implicit memory—with all the distortions and turbo-charging of an amygdala on overdrive—without an accurate explicit memory of them. This might feel like: Something happened, I’m not sure what, but I’m really upset. This may help explain why...
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