In this snippet from a recent webinar series about the neuroscience of psychotherapy and hypnotherapy, I make the point that our more cognitive type of approaches may not be effective and may even cause our client problems if the amygdala is activated and therefore the required logical, rational thinking parts of the upper brain are less accessible.
When the amygdala activates, it sends strong signals to the upper areas of the brain, to actually shut them down. The amygdala hijacks the brain. We will want to help regulate the amygdala before we start working on the more cerebral type of therapeutic approaches.