Ted Dekker Quotes

I think that was a moment of cool panic there.

It's amazing how much of a bodily experience being scared is. It doesn't take very long of hyperventilating to feel like you're going to pass out. It's one of those things where being scared is more of a physiological response that you can pretty easily manipulate. So in those types of scenes, it just takes a lot of energy.

The amygdala is like a point guard in the emotional part of your middle brain. When it is overwhelmed, it hijacks you away from being able to access your upper rational brain and think and assess what to do. It essentially disables your ability to think.

Fear is excitement without the breath.

When people get into that fight-or-flight place, then they move away from the creative centers of their brain.

When you experience the emotion of sadness, there will be changes in facial expression, and your body will be closed in, withdrawn. There are also changes in your heart, your guts: they slow down. And there are hormonal changes.

When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions.

Few things focus the mind like fear.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise.

I got interested in the emotions after studying patients who had lost the ability to emote and feel under certain circumstances. Many of those patients also had major impairments in their ability to make decisions.

You cannot think when you're ecstatic.

Sometimes when people are under stress, they hate to think, and it's the time when they most need to think.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

Adrenaline is so strong that none of us understand it.

You think you would react one way when a situation develops and, and when the sharp shells are flying, you don't quite stand up like you think you might.

My wife says I have a frontal lobe issue. Your frontal lobe controls your danger response, like, 'Whoa, I shouldn't be doing this.'

Closer to a fight, I can really feel my heartbeat in my chest. I can hear it beat through my mouth, this 'gunk, gunk, gunk' rhythm.

I get anxiety and distressed from external stimuli quite easily, so if I'm in a constant state of self-protection, it's exhausting.

Our brains are very, very good at self-delusion. What happens is, it releases the stress hormone cortisol in the brain, which leads to foggy thinking, so you're not even able to judge well whether you're working well or not.

When my blood pressure goes up, my Spanish stuff kicks in.

I'm overemotional.

Studies show when people yell, they get themselves even angrier. Interesting factoid: If you and/or your partner's heartbeat becomes higher than 100 beats per minute during an argument, you will not be able to fully understand/process what the other is saying.

For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.

Don’t panic, I thought. But already my breathing was faster, shallower. “You mean you can feel happy or sad or—” “Desire.” A barely-there smile.