Personal Hot Buttons Research Paper

People always say that the team is only as strong as its weakest player. Meaning that I had to help my teammates do the best that they could do. Therefore the weakest player was still a strong player compared to others. I could not have made it all about me because I can not play all nine positions at one time. Something very important about that comes with team work is getting along with the teammates. For a while I did not get along with one of my team members. I am not going to lie all we wanted for each other was to see each other down. Again my coach was not having that on her team. She pulled me aside one day and talked to me and said “The only way that our team is going to get somewhere was if you and you know who get it together.”. In these few words I knew that if i wanted my team to succeed I was going to have to but my feelings about my teammate to the side and focus on the bigger picture. I had to work with the team to put aside our differences and do what was best for my

Brain- Multiple research has found that certain abnormalities in the brains anatomy that regulate impulses and emotions may not be functioning normally and could be root of the cause.

“Hot-to-cold” empathy gap: People who are in “hot” states tend to underappreciate the extent to which their preferences and behavioral inclinations are influenced by their affective state; they typically believe they are behaving more dispassionately than they actually

People who are associated with PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, suffer from what is known as disrupted context processing. Disrupted context processing is an important part in the brain that tells you how to react to a certain stimulus. If you are in a harmful, scary, exciting, or upsetting setting, this part in the brain tells you how to react differently depending on what kind of situation you are in. Areas in the brain that are disrupted from this disorder are the Hippocampus, Prefrontal Cortex, and the Amygdala. The new theory of PTSD being connected with disrupted context processing are being studied by the University of Michigan Health System. This is all a new study, although they have been looking into this for a long time, this

Chapter 4: Understanding why you React the Way You Do and How to Change It

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can also be associated with emotionally dysregulated or disproportionate responding. In PTSD, hyper-arousal often occurs related to minor stimuli, exhibited as exaggerated startle responses, vivid intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks and nightmares related to past traumatic events.

This is a brief synoposis of how the brain process trauma. The “DOING” brain called the amygdala, is located in the limbic system, where response to threat, and intense emotion happens (Ferencik, 2010). This is intended to act as a “smoke alarm” that triggers when our brain thinks we are in danger. It is designed to help us respond to possible danger and react accordingly. The “THINKING” brain called the prefrontal cortex helps us plan, solve problems, and organize the world around us. It helps us analyse situations realistically and make logical decisions (Ferencik,

Two structures in the brain work independently and with each other to impact memory and emotions: the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala is linked to fear-conditioning, while the hippocampus is linked to episodic memories, which are those memories that a person can recall whenever wanted [1]. An experiment was performed to demonstrate the independence of the two structures from each other which involved patients with lesions in the amygdala and patients with lesions in the hippocampus. Researchers designed a fear-condition wherein a blue patch applied to the wrist initiated a shock. They found that patients with lesions in the amygdala had no physiological response to the conditioned stimulus (the blue patch) [2], whereas patients with lesions in the hippocampus demonstrated appropriate

____________ frequently does not listen closely to others. As a result, he/she is often unable to

In experiment 1 with the recall test for all trials, subjects remembered more negative words. Recall of positive words increased after each trial, but less than recall of negative words. The recall of neutral words did not improve at all. These results indicate that emotional memory recall is greater than for neutral memory recall, and that people tend to remember more negative things. An emotionally arousing word or experience enhanced the brain to recall events better than for neutral words because the amygdala was stimulated by emotions, mainly negative feelings. The amygdala enhanced the consolidation and encoding of memory for emotionally arousing situations; therefore, influencing performance (Buchanan 2007). Subjects recalled arousing events with greater accuracy than those without an emotional stimuli. This experiment could be improved by having more subjects to get a better representation. Also if wanting to test how current mood affects memory, subjects could be asked to take a survey about how they are feeling and seeing if a person feeling positive remembers more positive words or if a person feeling negative recalls more negative

For those who experienced a traumatic event this can mean reacting to events that are unthreatening as if it is the past trauma. Consequently, the individual will have uncomfortable bodily sensations and have a difficult time understanding their meaning. Implicit memory in trauma is made when the hippocampus and cortex is deactivated, allowing only the amygdala and other emotional, visual, and somatic areas of the brain to process the information (Swenson, 2012). This results in memories that are visual, sensory, emotional, and somatic in nature without a connection to narrative memory or explicit memory (Swenson, 2012). For those who experience trauma, implicit memories can mean reacting to unthreatening evens as if it is the past trauma, or having uncontrollable bodily sensations and being unable to understand their meaning (Swenson,

Dependable-arriving to work and appointments on time, keeping track of and control of equipment, meeting deadlines, being in the right place

Individuals who suffer from PTSD have hyperactivity in the amygdala, which connects to their traumatic experiences. “They exhibit anxiety, panic, and extreme stress when they are shown photographs or presented with narratives of trauma victims whose experiences match theirs; or made to listen to sounds or words related to their traumatic encounters.” (Wlassoff, Viatcheslav). The severity of a person’s posttraumatic stress disorder is determined by the amount of hyperactivity in the brain. The more hyperactive the amygdala is, the more severe of a case it becomes.

A physical indicator of this type of symptom is nightmares in which the individual relives the event. Re-experiencing symptoms are often triggered by a sound, sight, or event that causes the individual to relive the initial trauma. For example, triggers might include a seemingly trivial occurrence such as hearing a car backfire which could resurface memories of gunfire for a combat war Veteran, or seeing a car accident which can remind a crash survivor of their own accident (Friedman, 2007). The second type of symptom frequently occurring in individuals with PTSD is avoiding situations that serve as a reminder of the initial event. Individuals with this symptom may choose to purposely avoid situations or people that trigger memories of the initial traumatic event (Friedman, 2007). For example, a person who underwent a devastating earthquake may avoid watching television shows or movies involving earthquakes. Also these individuals may simply attempt to stay extremely busy to avoid having to think or to talk about the traumatic event that occurred. The third type of symptom most often experienced by individuals is emotional numbness (Friedman, 2007). Often victims of PTSD find it difficult to accurately express their feelings. Consequently, not only is it easier for these individuals to avoid expressing their feelings, but it also allows them to avoid memories of the catalytic event. Individuals

During a tragic moment, or remembering something from the past we experience trauma, and our minds starts to think about the mistakes, or the faults we