In the face of extreme anxiety, I literally become stupid. In a stressful situation your brain disengages the frontal cortex and falls back to an instinctual m

In the face of extreme anxiety, I literally become stupid. In a stressful situation your brain disengages the frontal cortex and falls back to an instinctual mode of operation. This mode is generally unaware of the modern world. In my own field of expertise sometimes divers with plenty of gas in their cylinder will tear their regulator out of their mouth. What’s happening? They are having difficulty breathing normally, panicked and the hind brain has said “there’s something in my mouth, take it out!”. Similarly pilots who fly aircraft into the ground, they have panicked and the hind brain has said “get to low ground ASAP”. And after the fact everyone wonders “what we’re they thinking?” But the answer is, they weren’t thinking at all, they couldn’t.