Cortisol:

"Disappointment triggers cortisol, which makes you feel like your survival is threatened."

"Neurons connect when cortisol flows, which wires you to scan constantly for whatever made you feel bad in the past. Your threatened feelings are hard for your verbal brain to make sense of. You don’t know how you produce them internally, so you see them as evidence of a real external threat."

"Cortisol creates a full-body sense of alarm that’s designed to get your attention."

"It seems like others are putting you down intentionally because you don’t see your own urge to be one-up."