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The response to danger is always required to be fast. In contrast, the response to safety after danger
must necessarily be more cautious and
take more time. This assymetry creates certain rules as to how the sensory system deals with information.
Expectation (anticipation) means we have made a prediction about the possible future, often so as to be able to best respond to it when it arrives. However, not all situations are about the need for quick responses in order to survive, and expectation gets in the way of seeing reality. It is not only useful but is also the principle means by which we become de-calibrated. Meaning-making based on expectation may be a self-fulfilling feedback loop. Therefore re-calibration requires that expectation/anticipation is somehow discarded to allow something new to emerge. This can only be done if we feel safe-enough to do so, and we can only feel safe enough if we cease anticipating danger(!) How then does an expectation of danger cease?
This question introduces the way that responses to safety (and good stuff) vs. danger (and not-so-good stuff) are asymmetrical. Danger often requires a quick response – faster than cognitive meaning-making, so survival in danger tends to draw on reactive rather than cognitive meaning-making.
The nervous system is inadequate to control a body in real time because of the energy and adaptive overhead to sustain nerve impulses over a substantial length of time. Therefore the communication system of the body is multiplexed into processes with different timeframes - and chemical signalling (e.g. proteins such as neurotransmitters and peptides, nitrous oxide, etc etc) through blood circulation is one way that mental-emotional-metabolic states are sustained over more than half a second. So another useful guideline is the time it takes to clean and replace sufficient blood so that a new state can be occupied. This clearance time is about 90 seconds, and if an emotion can only last longer than 90 seconds if it is being fed by thoughts or by a reserve of previously stored emotion (or - usually - both).