The power of choice in the face of emotional triggers

How do we react at fear and 5 steps to recover from amygdala hijack

Neurologically speaking, a lot happens in your brain when you're afraid.

To mindfully be aware of the fears you have is, of course, the first step.

People have different reactions to fears and this happens as well with team members when they have concerns about a topic.

How do we react to fears?

There are many contextual situations, unsafe psychological environments, and personality different reactions to stress that makes people react to fear in different ways. I will focus here on the natural brain's way of working, from a neuroscience perspective.

You probably have observed different people acting differently on fears, like:

• some people freeze: they are for example afraid of the project's potential failure because there is a specific topic they do not know anything about —> some of them will just stay silent when you ask about their opinion because of how they react in fear. Some of them with going in the direction of lack of motivation and nobody understands the why behind it. Fear can be a reason.

• some people have a flight reaction: they run away from the topic, try to avoid it, do not talk about it, and are too scared to touch it

• some people fight for it: they have anger, and frustration that is based on this fear, increased heart rate, and high energy consumption; they want to talk about it, but sometimes emotions control their way of explaining their opinions

I think it is important for us to recognize these behaviors and before going into the defensive mode or going into a difficult conversation, try to connect with that person first, have a compassionate dialogue and check on the fears behind the scenes.

The above behaviors are based on things happening in our brain when our amygdala is hijacked.

What is the amygdala?

The amygdala is a complex structure adjacent to the hippocampus that is involved in processing emotions and fear learning. It links the areas of the cortex that process "higher" cognitive information with hypothalamic and brainstem systems controlling "lower" metabolic responses, allowing the amygdala to coordinate the physiological responses based on cognitive information - the most well-known example being the fight or flight response.

If you want to check out the Triune Brain theory and the “Elephant and Rider” metaphor that relates to all our conscious or unconscious decisions, check out this post here.

Human brain Amygdala - www.neurosciencenews.com

5 Steps to recover from amygdala hijack

Chade-Meng Tan describes in his book "Search inside yourself" the 5 steps to recover from an amygdala hijack.
 
Let's imagine you are in a team meeting and a colleague did not listen to what you have to say, what is your opinion. You have the impression you are not heard and you are getting nervous about this. It can be even a prioritization meeting where you have some fears and concerns and you want to spell them out. How to deal with this?
 
These are the steps to recover before you answer:
 
🎲 Stop - instead of saying something that you might regret later
🎲 Breath - deep breath to re-empower the prefrontal cortex
🎲 Notice your feeling, label the emotion
🎲 Reflect on the best response
🎲 Respond with conscious choice, being aware of the consequences of your response

 We are talking about a few seconds, in any situation you have 2 seconds before you react.
 
Between stimulus and response, there is a space and that space gives us the power to choose our response. (V. Frankl)
 
It is that space that gives us time to re-empower the prefrontal cortex instead of letting the amygdala talk. And that it will make a difference.

One-phrase summary:

Identifying the behaviors as a reaction to an amygdala hijack and knowing how to control your emotions by yourself makes the difference in any teamwork topic you might have.

Resources:

• https://neurosciencenews.com/amygdala-eye-fear-9722/

• Neuromindfulness Institute - Neuromindfulness Coach Programm

• book: "Search inside yourself" by Chade-Meng Tan