Gemma Speck

Your rational thinking disappears because you are still in that shocked survival state.

I'm sorry, I keep using the cheating example.

I feel like it's just the easiest one.

But say you found out that like your partner has cheated on you.

You might later be like, oh my God, why did I not say what I wanted to say?

Like, why did I react that way?

Why wasn't I angry?

Why didn't I say something?

Why didn't I scream at them?

your brain didn't think to do it.

The rational part of your brain that prioritized closure or that catharsis was just like prioritizing protection, not analysis.

After this fades, this first wave after that fades, the first like true shock of the explosion hits you.

This is when you really start to regain some like cognitive clarity.

This is when you start talking to witnesses or people around you who are like, hey, no, that was fucked.

Like that shouldn't happen.

That person was not nice to you.

The pain centers of our brain now light up.

Research has shown that emotional betrayal activates the same neural pathways as physical pain.

There was a series of experiments done in 2009 showing that even when participants imagined unacceptable, non-consensual, terrible acts, their brains, even though it was an imagined thing, still experienced this as a real threat and it still lit up the same pain regions

as when you are punched in the gut or when you break a limb.