Brain states 101

Negative emotions like anger, fear, blame, anxiety, guilt, depression, regret, stress and shame shut down the brain regions that handle rational thinking. Decision making, memory, creative thinking, problem solving, positive perception, they all go offline while we’re in negative states. In fact blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex, the thinking brain, is reduced by up to 80%, we get primal and reactionary. Because the body reflects the mind neurotransmitters will create a feedback loop that only reinforces the mental state. We will go from thinking about guilt etc to experiencing it as a physical reality, we can dig very deep holes here if we don’t understand this mechanism that lies outside of our usual learning and education. Personality’s and behaviors can actually form around this undirected thinking, medication can follow. 

How to get out these negative feedback loop? Simple, state change.
We can interrupt a feedback loop we don’t like at any time by placing our minds on what we do want. Consciously chosen, outcome driven statements that we repeat to ourselves combined with deep belly breathing and visualising what we want will break the chain. It’s the same, where as before we went along with our thinking unconsciously and got ourselves into all sorts sticky situations we now, as mature adults, CHOOSE where we want our thoughts to take us. Thoughts become things, what we focus on we strengthen. No one is ordering us roll for hours or days in negative states, we choose to. We can reduce their effects to feedback, information, data, that’s telling us something is off, and we can adjust as, when and how we need to in the flow of the moment.
The choice is ours, the power is ours and the ability is already hardwired, it’s just awakening to what’s already going on unconsciously and making it a conscious process. This is called liberation in some circles, no more enslavement to the mind.