The psychology of the shadow.
Each even in our life appears on the radar screen as a blip with a certain shape. Now, your brain has collected millions of blips from your past. In fact, every emotional response you have ever had is permanently stored in a part of your brain known as the amygdala. From here, your brain can retrieve them, even unconsciously. In this way, your radar tracks the most painful blips. In fact, your brain has arranged the painful blips into patterns, or threat-profiles, so that you can recognize them early, in order to avoid them.
Your inner radar operator then compares each new blip on the screen with he data bank of threat-profiles from your life. If a blip on the screen seems to match a threat-profile, then your radar operator is responsible for sounding the alarm, and alerting your defenses. This is how your mind manages risk.
So when you have the experience of becoming extremely defensive in a situation that is, in fact completely harmless, you know your risk management is at work. This inner radar operator saw something which seemed to match a significant threat-profile and alerted your inner ‘fighters’.
It is irrelevant to your brain that it turned out to be a false alarm. The mind is not so discriminating, because it is the part of our minds devoted to protecting us from re-experiencing the painful situations from our past, and warning us if something seems to be risky.
As we grow up, and inevitably suffer the slings and arrows of life, we learn which things help us and which things hurt us. However, these assessments about the realities of life are often made by a child’s mind, and can be startlingly inaccurate.
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