The world responsibility comes from the french respondir and able, so basically in order to be responsible of something you have to be able to respond to it in such a way to change it or influence it. You are not directly responsible for your thoughts and emotions the same way you are not responsible for how fast your heart is beating or how dilated your blood vessels are.
However there are actions that you can take, that will influence this factors you don't have any direct control over in an indirect way. Like for example you can decide how fast your heart is beating, but you can decide to go for a run which is almost certain to elevate your heart rate. The same is valid for things like thoughts and emotions you can indirectly influence them based on the environment that you choose to live in, the people you allow in your life and even others factors like food and exercise can be decisive factors in how you think or feel.
Unfortunately some of us get trapped into negative momentum where based on your past experience of chronic stress your mind adapts in such a way to protect you from re experiencing any more stress. So no matter what changes you make in your life no matter where you go, and what you experience you can't get out of your negative momentum you accumulate in life. Everywhere you look you see only failure disappointment and rejection, it is a great survival strategy but unfortunately not a great lifestyle.
This problem is a lot more trickier than it might sound because you still don't have direct control over your mind and if the environment is not enough to change it, pretty much everybody is clueless about what to do about it.
My understanding of it is that you become more sensitive to stress so your fight or flight mechanism is being triggered unnecessarily making you act strange or unnecessarily cautious which is reducing the quality of your life.
The fight or flight mechanism is generally speaking triggered and turned off mostly by visual stimulus, like for example if you see a car coming towards you very fast you either run to save yourself or you show the driver your middle finger which is basically fight or flight, when you see the car being far enough from you where it can't hurt you anymore this survival mechanism automatically switches off.
When the fight or flight gets triggered by something from the past from your memory, there is not such a clear visual indicator where does the danger starts and where does it end, or even if this time the there is going to be any danger at all in the same situation. So your fight or flight remains active unnecessarily or for longer than it is necessary.
There is some evidence that you can use the neuroplastic capacity of your brain to turn this sensitivity off. When an area of your mind becomes active if you introduce some new stimulus that uses the same are of that mind is going to literally change how your mind works.
When you are talking about fight or flight the visual cortex is essential at perceiving when the danger starts and when the danger ends. This is why if you are in a state of fight or flight and you visualize something in your mind you are literally turning your stress off for just a couple of seconds. This is more effective than breathing exercises or mindfulness etc. at turning the fight or flight because is stimulating the visual cortex in a very intense way to temporarily change its function.
Sure as soon as you stop visualizing your stress is going to come back, but is the cumulative effect over relatively longer periods of time that is going to change your mind. After all the mind gets changed by itself through experience, so it make sense that introducing new stimuli is going to change it.
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