Before any thought comes to our minds, our body has already reacted, either through the sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system. It takes milliseconds for our minds to translate what any emotion or feeling might mean. The translation happens after the feelings have been shunted to the memory files to check if you’ve had a similar feeling in the past, whether it was dangerous, and what you did. It’s not always accurate, because no situation is exactly the same, and your memory is not dependable: it makes things up.

Before any thought comes to our minds, our body has already reacted, either through the sympathetic or the parasympathetic nervous system. It takes milliseconds for our minds to translate what any emotion or feeling might mean. The translation happens after the feelings have been shunted to the memory files to check if you’ve had a similar feeling in the past, whether it was dangerous, and what you did. It’s not always accurate, because no situation is exactly the same, and your memory is not dependable: it makes things up.