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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
The selection happens deep in the brain, in a fraction of a second, before the part of you that weighs options gets a look in. People spend years asking why they did not shout, run or hit back. The honest answer is usually that there was no moment in which any of that was a choice.
'by the soul and how He formed it' (Quran 91:7). How you are made is treated as worth attending to, and part of how you are made acted for you before you could.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of a hundred and thirteen studies on acute stress and memory found stress helps or harms recall depending on its timing and the stage of memory involved. That fits a familiar experience: the crisis is vivid in places and blank in others. It speaks to memory rather than to the speed of the response itself, so treat it as a related finding rather than proof.
Shields GS, Sazma MA, McCullough AM, Yonelinas AP. (2017). The effects of acute stress on episodic memory: A meta-analysis and integrative review.. Psychological bulletin doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The circuits that pick your survival response run below conscious thought and finish before deliberation starts.
Aim low on purpose. Not the best day of your life. I like my cat. I got here on time.
Body based practices sit alongside medication rather than replacing it. If you take something, you can do both.
Before you close your eyes for anything calming, spend a minute looking round the room. Let your eyes land wherever they want to.