11/20/2025
Understanding your brain is essential for recognizing how deeply it influences your mental, emotional, and physical health.
For example, the fight, flight, or freeze response is part of the sympathetic nervous system, in which the brainstem plays a vital role.
When we’re in danger, like running from a bear, our brainstem automatically activates this system. We don’t have to consciously tell our heart to beat faster or our muscles to tense up; the brainstem does that for us to help us survive.
However, sometimes the brain activates this same response even when we’re not in real danger. Our heart may start racing, our breathing may quicken, and we may feel anxious or panicked — even though there’s no bear in sight. This happens when the brain misinterprets a situation as a threat, showing just how powerful our brain’s influence is on our body and emotions.
