Why You Feel Unsafe When Nothing Is Wrong

Send us Fan Mail Liz explains how trauma can leave you feeling anxious and unsafe even in objectively safe environments because the nervous system stays conditioned to detect threat based on what it has learned to expect. She describes how post-trauma bias toward threat involves the amygdala becoming more sensitive, the hippocampus mislabeling present situations as past danger (often called being “triggered”), and the prefrontal cortex becoming less effective under stress, alongside neurocept...