Six Seconds to Freedom: How Your Amygdala Hijacks You—and How to Break Free

This episode explains how your amygdala—the brain's alarm system—hijacks your rational mind in milliseconds and how the chemical surge from an emotional trigger lasts only about six seconds. If you replay the trigger or react immediately, you keep the emotion alive; if you catch those six seconds, you can interrupt the pattern.

Using three lenses—ancient Buddhist wisdom (the five aggregates), cutting-edge neuroscience (amygdala, prefrontal cortex, neuroplasticity), and humanistic psychology—the episode shows why emotions keep returning and how reactive patterns form (the dark wolf: aggressive, submissive, disconnected).

Part two offers a practical Six-Second Equanimity practice that aligns with this neuroscience window and gives step-by-step tools to build new neural pathways and break free from repeating emotional reactions.