March 29, 2024

Mental Health and Blame

A big part of the mental health space is emotive language and vocabulary. Therefore, it’s long overdue that we talk about “Blame Culture” and how much of a large part self-criticalness is at the core of the most common mental health issues. Blame is often a means of attempting to hold ourselves accountable. However, it often is excessive and leads to self-gaslighting that involves nitpicking, fault-finding, complaining, exonerating the role that mental health plays.
March 29, 2024

Shame and Amygdala

The amygdala is a collection of nuclei near the base of the brain – the limbic system - where emotions are given meaning, remembered, and attached to associations, as well as responses to them (emotional memories). The amygdala is also known for its role in the processing of fear. In infants, a distress cry helps signal to caretakers to come “save” them. It toddlers, this same response may show up, or they may attempt to “flee” the danger by crawling away. Later in life, a “fight” back response might show up in anger or conflict.