Michael ZellerNeurorewired LLC · Neurorewiring Expert

The Influence of Memories on Mental Well-being

13 May 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains how memories are encoded together with the emotions experienced at the time, and how the amygdala stores these emotional tags. The amygdala can dominate other brain regions during fight‑or‑flight responses, effectively overriding rational processing when triggered unconsciously. When the amygdala is overactive, it produces hypervigilance—a state of heightened alertness—commonly observed in individuals suffering from PTSD, severe depression, or similar conditions. The speaker illustrates this with personal anecdotes about his wife’s experience during a depressive episode and references to multiple clients who exhibit hypervigilant behavior, linking the symptom directly to amygdala overactivity.

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I think a lot of times when we're learning some of these psychological elements, if we don't really get the subconscious— and back to the memories, memories encoded according to feelings, right? And then also the amygdala can overrule. Amygdala is where those feelings are stored emotionally, and then it will overrule, right, all the other mental lobes if it's fight or flight or triggered in some unconscious way. And it could be something totally ridiculous. And then if you're hypervigilant, like my wife was in our depression battle, or a lot of my clients are so hypervigilant in their nervous If you're struggling with PTSD or deep depression, you probably have some hypervigilance happening, which is just your amygdala is overactive.