Several posts ago we explored the difference between productive fear and destructive fear.
This post let’s look at fear itself. Specifically, our emotional fire alarm.
We all know when the alarm goes off. An emotional flash. A physical response. Say you’re at a bar. Burly guy insults you. Heartbeat quickens. Skin temperature rises. Perspiration. You’re alert. High energy. You feel anger or fear. You’re intensely focused and ready to act.
Or say you’re in the grocery store and shady character walks too close. Heart-rate spikes again. Thoughts of groceries evaporate. The only goal is “get away from creeper guy.”
Neuroscientists tell us the alarm triggers deep in our brain (in the amygdala and hypothalamus) to ready ourselves for fight, flight, or freeze. If we perceive some threat and we feel we can do something about it, we fight. If we don’t feel we can do anything, we flight. And if we’re not sure, we freeze.
My own fire alarm doesn’t go off that much. But when it does, I recognize it. A couple years ago I got a series of emails from an aggressive critic. The emails were demeaning and undeserved, not worth reading at all. And they continued for several months. But I read them anyway, like a freeway crash onlooker. Every time I read, my alarm went off. I couldn’t help it. Just the sight of his name in my inbox and spike goes the heart-rate. Here we go again.
So I started monitoring my own situation, watching myself react and seeing how long it took to calm back down. I discovered that no matter the circumstances, it took several minutes for the fire alarm to go off and all the symptoms to die down. It’s much like the schoolyard fire drill. Someone pulls the alarm and all the emotions stream out of the classrooms and mill in the yard. After a few minutes, the authorities tell everyone it’s time to get back to class and back to work, and things settle back into business as usual. We just can’t immediately settle. We’ve got to give ourselves time and space to settle back down.
Now that I understand this, I give myself space to calm down. I participate in the drill like a good schoolboy. I tell my wife, kids, co-workers and so on, graciously if possible, that I need a few minutes to get my head resettled. Then I’m much better in the discussion. I’ve never once made a decision or said something in the fire drill that helped my cause. Fire drills are terrible times for conflict resolution or discussion of any kind.
