Episode 30: Chapter 5 - When the Room Feels Dangerous: How Anxiety Distorts Perception

🎙️ Episode 30 – When the Room Feels Dangerous: How Anxiety Distorts Perception

📘 Episode Summary

In this powerful, narrative-driven episode, Professor Jeff Hastings guides listeners through a first-person experience of walking into a classroom — a seemingly ordinary moment that suddenly feels threatening. Why? Because your brain doesn’t just see the room — it interprets it through memory, emotion, and expectation.

We explore how anxiety, trauma, and emotional memory can distort perception, creating a reality that feels unsafe even when there’s no real danger. Using the lens of psychological science, this episode unpacks the difference between sensation and perception, the mechanics of bottom-up vs. top-down processing, and how past experiences can trigger an amygdala hijack — short-circuiting the rational brain.

Along the way, you'll learn:

• How perception is filtered through emotion, memory, and belief
• What happens in the brain during moments of panic
• Why trauma can cause you to misinterpret neutral environments as dangerous
• Practical tools for grounding, reframing, and restoring emotional clarity

This episode is part one of a two-part series on Chapter 5: Sensation and Perception from Psychology in Your Life (4th ed.). It focuses on the emotional and cognitive filters that shape what we perceive. In Episode 31, we’ll explore how the sensory systems actually work — from sight and sound to touch, taste, and balance.

🔍 Key Topics Covered

• Sensation vs. Perception
• Bottom-up and Top-down Processing
• Amygdala hijack and emotional memory
• Cognitive distortions and anxiety
• Grounding techniques (5-4-3-2-1, reframing, CBT)
• The neuroscience of trauma and self-image

🎯 Who This Episode Is For

• Psychology students learning about perception and cognition
• Anyone who struggles with anxiety or emotional overreaction in social settings
• Listeners curious about how the brain builds reality
• Educators looking for ways to explain complex psychological concepts through lived experience

⏱️ Runtime: ~30 minutes

🎧 Next Episode: Episode 31 – Seeing, Hearing, and Sensing the World: How Your Brain Builds Reality