Your Emotion Brain - The Scream
As I sit down to write this, the Associated Press have just reported: “Two men were charged with murder Thursday [10.11.07] for a road-rage crash that killed a 5-year-old boy and critically injured the child's mother and his [2-month-old] infant sister, authorities said.”
Los Angeles Police Department officers reported that the two drivers—one in his forties and the other a teenager—got into a disagreement and began "cutting each other off,” until the older man slammed on his brakes and forced the teen to swerve into the back of a parked car. Tragically, as the parked car slammed into a second parked car, Syeda Arifa Arif and her two children were crushed between them.
Mother and children were rushed to a local hospital. where Syeda’s son died and one of her crushed legs was amputated. Despite being in critical condition, Syeda’s 2 month old infant survived her head injuries. Both drivers face one count of murder, vehicular manslaughter and three counts of reckless driving causing specified injury.
The Scream Of Your Emotion Brain
I’ve never met either of the murder suspects. Nonetheless, I can tell you that—at the time of the tragedy—both drivers were in the chokehold of a primitive reaction (triggered by their Emotion Brain) which fueled the fury that led to heartbreak.
You won’t ever successfully manage any of your overly emotional states (such as anxiety, anger and guilt) if you underestimate the raw power of your Emotion Brain. (Here’s a clue: Your Emotion Brain and Think Brain can hold opposing points of view at the same time—When this happens, your Emotional Brain nearly always wins.)
Your Emotion Brain is a super-sensitive early warning system which, in response to a perceived threat, will cattle-prod you into freaking out or wimping out. This is, of course, the “fight-or-flight response” you learned about in school. What your teachers didn’t point out is that the fight-or-flight response is largely maladaptive in your modern world. A mismatch between the demands of your distant ancestral past and your complex present.
Pay attention to this next bit, it’s really important: Thinking about your Emotion Brain in terms of the well-known fight-or-flight response illuminates a crucial (and largely overlooked) point. An emotional overreaction can also be to take flight—to flee the scene.
In other words, suppressing your natural expression of anger can be equally crippling to your success. If you wimp out, over rationalize and make excuses for other people’s bad behavior, you’re keeping yourself calm at the expense of personal growth. The very moment your primary goal becomes not creating a scene or being disliked, you become less effective.
Your Emotion Brain…
…Is Super-Sensitive
Your Emotion Brain never sleeps. It displays a low level of unremitting electrical activity. A relentless electrical momentum which stands ready to spark—cobra-quick—into a raging firestorm. And so (as you would expect from a mechanism designed to ensure your distant ancestors’ survival in their violent world) your Emotion Brain is always ready to rumble. It’s twitchy, teetering on a knife-edge, poised to sound the red alert at the first sign of a perceived threat.
…Is An Early Warning System
Sensory input from the eyes and ears splits at the thalamus (the brain’s relay station). While the majority is leisurely transmitted to the Think Brain, a smaller amount races (via a short, super-fast route) to the Emotion Brain. Your Emotion Brain detects input from your senses “light years” ahead of your Think Brain.
This hardwiring gives your Emotion Brain immense power. It can highjack the rest of your body, tense your muscles for battle and flood your bloodstream with a surge of heart-pounding adrenaline before your Think Brain gets a clue. Even so, your Emotion Brain generally allows your Think Brain to do its job—provide a nuanced point of view on what’s happening around you and respond in a measured way. Unless, that is, your Emotion Brain perceives a threat…
…Responds To Perceived Threats
Your primitive Emotion Brain is responsible for answering the question: Is this a threat? (Incidentally, your Emotion Brain answers the question at an unconscious level. In other words, without the involvement of your Think Brain.)
What does the Emotion Brain perceive as threatening? Answer: Any impending assault—physically dangerous or otherwise—to your person, psyche (self esteem, values), property or progress.
Key point: Threats that aren’t actually dangerous (such as the abrupt blocking of one of your business objectives) can also awaken the primal, twitchy beast and provoke a primitive survival response.
Your Emotion Brain also stores emotional memories—including memories of the unpleasant situations you’ve experienced during your lifetime and all the emotionally vivid stuff you’ve made up about those situations. And so, any new situations you encounter that have something in common (even one related element) with a negative experience in your Emotion Brain’s database will also be perceived as a threat.
For example, if you had a bad experience last time you gave a business presentation, expect your Emotion Brain to remind you of this emotion–laden memory just before you give your next business presentation…And fill your head with mental static, your stomach with butterflies and turn your legs to jelly! And it all happened according to emotional memories laid down years before that have—rightly or wrongly—conditioned you to respond.
When your Emotion Brain perceives a situation as—in any way—threatening, it commandeers your Think Brain and the rest of your body in a fraction of a heartbeat (five milliseconds to be precise) and gives you a simple choice…
Freak Out Or Wimp Out!
Like a bully, your Emotion Brain understands nothing but raw power. And so, here’s the other question it answers: Is this a fight I can win? Yes…Let’s rumble! No…Let’s get the hell out of here!
Make no mistake, your primary emotions are triggered by a part of your brain designed to prod you into taking a swing or taking off. Both these “rough and ready” primary emotional responses were honed in a far more violent time and place. For our ancestors (and for us on those rare occasions we’re in true physical danger) this brain circuitry was (and is) a good thing. When facing down a saber-toothed tiger, it’s time to fight or run…not ponder your plans for the world’s first zoo!
However, for the most part, your modern day “peril” is not a true physical danger. And so your Emotion Brain’s response drives you towards ineffective default behaviors.
Key point: A big part of success is being able to respectfully and appropriately stand your ground—neither over- nor under reacting to the situation…And that requires a high level of emotional intelligence.
As you read about the adult tantrum please keep one thing top of mind: Emotional Intelligence isn’t just for people who are one step away from a killing spree. By far the largest group of people who need emotional control techniques aren’t prone to flying off the handle and have never shouted at anyone in public. It’s not called the “fight or flight” response for nothing.
Let’s take a new look at the old fight-or-flight response.
