top of page

FOLLOW US

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Threads
  • LinkedIn

Hijacked: When Emotion Overtakes the Rational Mind

  • Writer: Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
    Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
  • 2 days ago

In moments of stress or perceived threat, emotion overtakes the rational mind, pushing us to react before we’ve had time to think. When that happens, our responses are driven by urgency rather than intention, often leaving us wishing we had paused.

The Moody Melon Show

Got 5 minutes? Join countless listeners who are exploring this powerful topic — listen here.

Hijacked: When Emotion Overtakes the Rational Mind

It happens in seconds. A comment lands the wrong way. An email feels loaded with criticism. A partner’s tone shifts just slightly. Suddenly your body is on high alert. Your heart pounds, your stomach tightens, and your thoughts accelerate. Before you can slow yourself down, you’ve said something cutting, withdrawn completely, or pressed “send” on a message you instantly regret.


Later, when calm returns, you replay the moment in disbelief. Why did I react like that? That’s not who I am. But it is you — just a version of you whose emotional brain took control before your rational mind had a chance to respond.


The Brain’s Power Struggle


Inside your brain, two systems are constantly interacting. The amygdala acts as an emotional alarm system, scanning your environment for danger. The prefrontal cortex, located just behind your forehead, handles reasoning, impulse control, and thoughtful decision-making. When you feel safe and steady, these systems collaborate. Emotion informs you, and reason guides you.


But when something feels threatening — whether it’s rejection, embarrassment, criticism, or uncertainty — the amygdala can override the prefrontal cortex in milliseconds. Psychologist Daniel Goleman described this phenomenon as an “amygdala hijack.” In those moments, survival instincts outrun logic, and emotion temporarily takes the wheel.



Why the Brain Chooses Emotion First


From an evolutionary perspective, this system makes perfect sense. Early humans did not survive by carefully analyzing danger. They survived by reacting quickly. If a predator appeared, there was no time for thoughtful debate — the body had to move immediately.


Although modern life rarely involves physical predators, the brain still reacts intensely to social and psychological threats. A tense conversation, a critical remark, or the fear of being excluded can trigger the same biological alarm system. To your nervous system, social rejection can register as a serious threat. The brain does not always distinguish between a wounded ego and a life-threatening event. It simply responds to perceived danger.


What Emotional Hijacking Feels Like


An emotional hijack is not just a mental experience — it is deeply physical. Your breathing becomes shallow. Your pulse quickens. Your muscles tighten. Your focus narrows, often to the point where alternative perspectives seem invisible.


In that state, you might become defensive, sarcastic, withdrawn, or impulsive. Words spill out faster than reflection. Or you might shut down completely, unable to access what you want to say. Only after the nervous system settles does your rational mind fully re-engage. That’s when clarity — and often regret — sets in.


This pattern can feel confusing. You know you are capable of responding differently. And you are. But only when your brain feels safe enough to think clearly.


The Cost of Living in Reaction Mode


When emotional hijacks become frequent, they can strain relationships and erode self-trust. Partners may begin to anticipate conflict. Colleagues may experience you as reactive. Internally, you may start to label yourself as “too emotional” or “bad under pressure.”


Yet emotion itself is not the problem. Emotion carries valuable information. It signals what matters to you, what feels unjust, what triggers fear, and where your boundaries lie. The issue arises when emotion moves faster than awareness, leaving no room for thoughtful response.


Without intervention, repeated reactivity can create cycles of shame and self-criticism, which ironically increase emotional vulnerability rather than reduce it.


Reclaiming the Rational Brain


Research on emotion regulation, including work by James Gross, suggests that small pauses can dramatically shift outcomes. Slowing your breathing, stepping away briefly, or labeling the emotion you’re experiencing can reduce amygdala activation and bring the prefrontal cortex back online.



Even something as simple as saying to yourself, “I’m feeling embarrassed,” or “I’m feeling threatened,” creates psychological distance. That distance interrupts the automatic reaction. And in that pause, choice becomes possible.


The goal is not to suppress emotion. Suppression often intensifies it beneath the surface. The goal is integration — allowing emotion to inform you without overpowering you.


Emotion as Information, Not Instruction


Emotion is data. It is your brain’s first draft, not the final decision. Anger may signal that a boundary feels crossed. Anxiety may indicate uncertainty or fear of loss. Sadness may reveal something deeply valued.


But feelings are not commands. Just because you feel anger does not mean you must attack. Just because you feel fear does not mean you must retreat. When emotion and reason work together, responses become aligned with your values rather than driven by urgency.


This integration is not about perfection. It is about awareness and practice.



The Question That Changes Everything


If your strongest reactions are your brain’s attempt to protect you, what might shift in your relationships, your work, and your sense of self if you learned to pause long enough for your rational mind to sit beside your emotions — instead of being overtaken by them?


💬 Ready to start your own healing journey?


Book a session with one of our compassionate therapists at Moody Melon Counseling. We’re here when you’re ready. 🍉


More Related Articles:


Life After Cancer: Navigating the Mental Health Challenges Survivors Often Face

  • Writer: Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
    Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
  • Feb 19

When treatment ends, everyone claps. There are hugs, photos, and sometimes a ceremonial bell rung in the hospital hallway. Words like “strong,” “brave,” and “survivor” echo in the room. And then… everyone goes home. For many people who have completed cancer treatment, this is when the real emotional challenge begins.


Got 5 minutes? Join countless listeners who are exploring this powerful topic — listen here.

Life After Cancer: Navigating the Mental Health Challenges Survivors Often Face

We often think of cancer like a battle with a clear endpoint: treatment equals action, action equals hope, and completion equals relief. But survivorship is not a clean emotional landing. During treatment, life has structure—appointments, lab results, scans, a team constantly monitoring your body. There is fear, yes—but also focus.


When treatment stops, so does the scaffolding. The calls slow down, the care team steps back, friends assume you’re “back to normal,” and the world expects celebration. Yet many survivors experience something very different: anxiety before every follow-up scan, hypervigilance to every ache, a sense of abandonment, guilt for not feeling grateful enough, and grief for the person they were before diagnosis. This experience even has a name: “scanxiety.”


The Invisible Emotional Aftermath


Cancer doesn’t just alter cells; it can alter identity. Survivors often describe a fractured sense of safety in their own body, difficulty making long-term plans, strained relationships, career disruptions, changes in intimacy, and persistent fatigue that others don’t see.


There can also be survivor’s guilt, especially for those who met others during treatment who did not make it. Many survivors wrestle with a quiet, often unspoken question: If I’m done with treatment, why don’t I feel okay?



When the World Moves On — But You Can’t


Family members may expect life to “go back to normal.” Employers may assume resilience equals readiness. Even healthcare systems often focus heavily on treatment, with far less structured attention to psychological aftercare.


Yet research consistently shows elevated rates of anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and health-related obsessive thinking among survivors. The trauma of cancer is not always processed during treatment because survival often requires emotional suppression. Once the crisis ends, the nervous system finally has space to react—and it does.


What After Cancer Care Should Include


True survivorship care goes beyond bloodwork and scans. It should include routine mental health screening, access to trauma-informed therapy, peer survivorship groups, psychoeducation about post-treatment anxiety, support for family systems adjusting to a new normal, and space to grieve—even in survival.


One helpful resource is joining structured support groups such as Life After Breast Cancer: A 12-Week Guided Transition Support Group. Programs like this provide safe spaces to share experiences, connect with others who understand, and learn coping strategies. More information is available at here.


Healing is not just about living; it’s about rebuilding identity, meaning, and trust in your own body. It’s about being able to say, “I’m grateful to be alive—and this is still really hard.”


Click to Learn About Fighting Fear: Nina's Journey of Surviving Cancer


Redefining Strength After Cancer


Strength is not smiling through fear. Strength is admitting you feel untethered after treatment. Strength is asking for psychological support. Strength is acknowledging that cancer changed you—and exploring who you are now.


We celebrate remission. We track survival rates. We ring bells. But we rarely prepare people for the emotional quiet that follows. So here’s the question we must start asking—in clinics, in families, and in mental health spaces:


When treatment ends, who is helping survivors rebuild their sense of safety, identity, and emotional stability—and why do we still treat that as optional?


💬 Ready to start your own healing journey?


Book a session with one of our compassionate therapists at Moody Melon Counseling. We’re here when you’re ready. 🍉


More Related Articles:


No One Is Perfect, But Peace Matters: The Freedom of Letting Go

  • Writer: Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
    Julie Barris | Crisis Counselor | Therapist-in-Training
  • Jan 27

Peace matters more than potential, promises, or the version of someone you keep hoping they’ll become. Choosing peace isn’t giving up on love—it’s refusing to abandon yourself.

No One Is Perfect, But Peace Matters: The Freedom of Letting Go

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from long hours or sleepless nights. It comes from loving someone who slowly shrinks you. From explaining yourself one more time. From hoping this time will be different. From staying long after your body, intuition, and friends have quietly begged you to leave.


Letting go of a bad partner you’ve been attached to for a long time isn’t dramatic or cinematic. It’s not always a single bold decision followed by instant relief. More often, it’s a series of small, trembling realizations that add up to one undeniable truth: this is costing me my life energy.


And yet, even when we know that, we stay.


Why it’s so hard to let go


People don’t stay in harmful relationships because they’re weak. They stay because of hope, history, and attachment. Because at some point, this person mattered. Because there were good days. Because leaving feels like admitting failure, or worse — admitting that love didn’t save you.



There’s also the quiet fear: Who am I without them?When a relationship has lasted a long time, it can fuse with your identity. Your routines, your future plans, even your sense of self become entangled. Letting go doesn’t just mean losing a person — it means dismantling a version of your life you once believed in.


So you negotiate with yourself. You minimize the pain. You remember the highlights. You tell yourself it’s “not that bad.” Until one day, something shifts.


The moment freedom begins


Freedom doesn’t always arrive the day you leave. Sometimes it begins earlier — the first time you tell the truth to yourself. The first time you stop defending their behavior. The first time you imagine a life that feels lighter, quieter, more yours.


When you finally let go, the silence can feel terrifying. No more chaos. No more adrenaline. No more emotional whiplash. At first, it can feel like withdrawal. Your nervous system has been trained to survive unpredictability, so peace feels unfamiliar.


But then something extraordinary happens.


What you gain when you let go


You gain space. Real space — in your mind, your body, your calendar. You start to notice how tense you were, how much emotional labor you were doing, how often you were bracing for the next disappointment.


You gain clarity. Without constantly managing someone else’s moods, needs, or apologies, your own thoughts come into focus. You remember what you like. What you need. What you will no longer tolerate.



You gain self-trust. Each day you don’t go back is a quiet vote for yourself. Each boundary you hold rewires the belief that love must hurt to be real.


And perhaps most unexpectedly, you gain grief — but the honest kind. Not the confusing grief of staying, but the clean grief of release. The grief that moves, that changes shape, that eventually makes room for relief.


The freedom no one talks about


The greatest freedom isn’t dating again or proving you’re “better off.” It’s waking up without dread. It’s not rehearsing conversations in your head. It’s no longer shrinking your needs to keep someone comfortable.


It’s realizing that love does not require self-abandonment.


Many people are shocked by how much energy returns once they let go. Creativity resurfaces. Laughter comes more easily. Rest feels deeper. You begin to meet yourself again — the version of you that existed before everything revolved around managing a relationship that was draining you.


A quiet kind of courage


Letting go of a bad partner you loved for a long time is an act of profound courage. Not because it’s loud or dramatic, but because it’s honest. Because it requires you to sit with loneliness rather than familiar pain. Because it asks you to believe — without guarantees — that peace is better than chaos, even if chaos once felt like love.


And it teaches you something that changes everything:


You can survive endings.


You can rebuild.


You can choose yourself — and still have a soft heart.


So here’s the question worth sitting with, the one that gently refuses to go away:


If staying has cost you your peace for years, what kind of freedom might be waiting for you on the other side of letting go?


💬 Ready to start your own healing journey?


Book a session with one of our compassionate therapists at Moody Melon Counseling. We’re here when you’re ready. 🍉


More Related Articles:


bottom of page