Why other people can trigger strong emotional reactions

“Our nervous system is reacting to something from our past...it doesn’t know the difference in time.”

Psychologist Jeffrey Rutstein adds in this video:

“So if someone harmed you as a child and then someone on the street years later looks a lot like that person, you’re going to have an immediate reaction to seeing them...your nervous system will see enough similarity to determine it’s not safe and it will give you three options.

“You’re either going to get angry, you’re going to run away, or you’re going to shut down. Or some combination of all the three in different order.

“This is what we do as humans. This is our biology...what we’ve encountered from surviving this many hundreds of thousands of years.”