brain

When strong emotion threatens to take over...name it to tame it.

Name It to Tame It

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High drama means high emotions. And when your emotions hijack you, they take over your ability to express yourself and make good decisions.

Have you ever been so upset that you feel like you are “losing your mind?” With all that is happening in the world today, many express this in various ways. Fear and uncertainty can lead to “not thinking straight.”

This happens because the part of your brain that controls your ability to communicate your unique experience can shut down, leaving you literally speechless.

The executive part of your brain doesn’t work well with strong emotions, which can frustrate you even more, locking you into the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) . We have all had brilliant insights, after the fact, that we wished we would have thought of in the moment but couldn’t at the time because the language part of our brain was overshadowed by the emotional brain.

After your emotional storm passes you may feel more ashamed and victimized by the torrent of your emotions. Or you may become defensive and strike out, blaming others for the situation that caused your strong emotions and drama.

Emotions are fuel that propels you into action. Positive emotions tell you what you care about and give you energy to create what you want. Heavier, darker emotions inform you about those things to avoid and, thus, can protect you. Emotions are a core aspect of your human experience, as we wrote about last week in “The Reality of Victimization” essay.

But when emotions overwhelm you and prevent you from being the person and leader you want to be, it is important to have simple tools that can help restore your balance.

“Name it to tame it” is a phrase coined by author and psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Siegel. By putting this simple tool to work, your emotions can inform you and not overwhelm you. Here are the basics of how “name it to tame it” works:

  • When you are in high drama and are having an intense emotional response, your limbic brain starts pumping stress hormones to your muscles to tighten and prepare you for action. This fight-flight mechanism is deeply wired inside your nervous system and takes over. This is a good thing if you are alone in a dark alley to help protect yourself—not a good thing if you are running a staff meeting and get angry at a co-worker.
  • Once you notice you are having a strong emotional reaction, the next step is to describe, or name it—whether to yourself or out loud. For example, saying mentally “I am feeling angry” or “I have a tight ball of nerves in my gut.” Choosing words to describe subtle emotions jump-starts your executive brain and calms down your emotional limbic brain.
  • Calmly hover over your emotions, which gives your executive brain time to filter and organize your reactive, drama-filled emotions.

It is important to build your capacity to be with strong emotions. If not, you may become fearful of your emotions, especially anger, and shut them down. The cost of restricting your emotions may lead to shutting down all emotion, including your sources of joy and pleasure.

The key is strengthening your ability to monitor your emotions and body sensations by naming and taming them—not allowing them to hijack your ability to think and make good decisions—and feel the joy!

Freedom starts within yourself (when) you are free from your own inner-tyranny and self-persecution.

Freedom From the Inside Out

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The month of July hosts several Independence Day celebrations around the world. July 1st was Canada’s Independence Day and the “4th of July” is recognized in the US as the day the states became free and independent from the tyranny of a foreign king.

The current global disruption is showing the world that freedom exists, or does not exist, on many levels. To speak without hindrance, to think and live without imprisonment has not been universally experienced and could be the subject of many blogs. But what we write about this week, is your own inner freedom.

Freedom starts within yourself and your relationship with your own thoughts and internal conversations. You will never be truly free unless you are free from your own inner-tyranny and self-persecution.

In our education and training workshops, it surprises participants to learn that the three roles that make up the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT) of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer operate inside of themselves (we call this your inner-DDT), in addition to how they show up in relationships in the outside world.

Many people do not realize their inner Persecutor is running in the background of their consciousness, influencing their beliefs about themselves and the world. If your personal thoughts are self-critical, your peace of mind and emotional well-being will suffer, and you may never experience true personal freedom.

We have coached hundreds of leaders who, by all accounts, are outwardly successful. But when asked about what they say to themselves privately, they often are their worst tyrants.

Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. And, how you relate to yourself will have a big impact on how you relate to others.

Victor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz and the holocaust, wrote in his classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning: “The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances—to choose one’s own way.”

Fully embracing that you are always at choice is where personal freedom lives.

The key to making empowered choices and personal freedom is to understand how your mind works. The more you understand that your inner Persecuting voice is really only one of many voices, it will loosen its grip. Just because a thought pops into your head does not mean you have to believe it, give it any power, or act on it.

We all have self-critical and demeaning thoughts from time to time. The secret is to view them as passing chatter and just one of many thoughts you can focus on. Just a few deep breaths or a short conscious walk can help you quiet the voice. Once you do this, you can calm yourself and ask yourself “How do I choose to respond?”

Personal freedom is choosing what thoughts to give your attention and power to. Just as you have the DDT roles operating within you, you also have the TED* (*Empowerment Dynamic)® roles of Creator, Challenger, and Coach available to consciously relate to yourself, others, and your life experience.

As you become more self-observant and aware, you can choose your response to life’s challenges. Taking responsibility for your choices will reinforce and grow your Creator essence and enable and empower you to act upon the freedom to create your own life.

The Creator in you helps to clear your mind and brings well-being and freedom to your life. You will feel a lot of more positive energy and joy when you see that freedom does lies within. You may still hear your inner-tyrant from time-to-time, you just don’t have to give that voice any power.

You can choose personal freedom by understanding your true essence as a Creator.

Layers of Protection

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Risky and uncertain times can be an excuse to keep your head buried in the sand. On the other hand, as we have heard from many of you, it can be a time to ponder how to be your best self in relating to others and your experience.

Understanding more about how you protect yourself can be a path toward deeper personal insight. The question arises, how do your protection strategies get started in the first place?

As small children, we humans figure out how to survive and deal with scary experiences. As infants and toddlers, we looked up to giant and powerful adults and applied our innate survival instincts to secure food, sleep, warmth, love, and safety the best we knew how.

Psychologist Karen Horney studied human nature and, in the 1940’s, identified 3 different strategies that children can develop to respond to fears. She described these 3 layers of protection as:

  • Moving away from others or the situation to avoid, withdraw, observe, and wait. This is based upon the child’s belief that: “If I isolate, stand back, and avoid engaging, I will be safe.”
  • Moving against others by being aggressive. Here the child concludes: “If I use control and domination and be assertive, I will manage my environment to get what I want and need.”
  • Moving toward people to please, accommodate, and be helpful. From a child’s perspective: “If I please others, I will be loved and cared for.”

In the late 1960’s, Dr. Stephen Karpman developed the Karpman Drama Triangle, with its three roles of Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor, which we refer to as the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT).

These roles align well with Horney’s strategies. The Victim role aligns itself with Korney’s “moving away” and not taking responsibility or believing they have power in the situation. The Persecutor role reflects “moving against” others by taking control and being assertive. And the Rescuer adopts a “moving toward” strategy to use pleasing and accommodating to protect themselves.

Author and research Dr. Brene Brown calls these protective strategies our “human armors.” Brown writes: “I was surprised to discover that we all share a small array of common protective mechanisms. My hope is that a peek inside the armory will help us to look inside ourselves. When and how did we start using these defense mechanisms? What would it take to make us put the armor away?”

Our observation is that all three of these layers of protection are a result of a victim mentality that rests on a belief that life happens “to me.” If you believe that life happens “to you,” it is easy to adopt a primary DDT role to get you through tough times, gradually becoming an exaggerated way of relating to yourself and others.

Many aspects of the roles, if used in moderation, do help you to cope and survive. But if the drama roles are the only strategy to get through life, the roles over time become dysfunctional and limiting. By recognizing these patterns when they arise, naming and acknowledging them with compassion, you can relate to your layers of protection as a normal human response to scary situations.

The discovery of reoccurring drama roles as layers of protection has meaning only if there is a possibility of liberating yourself from “armoring up.” This is where TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic)® makes a valuable contribution with its more constructive roles of Creator, Challenger, and Coach. In order to develop more resourceful and resilient relationships, the TED* roles model positive ways of relating and more useful than simply saying “just stop the drama!”

The protection layers, if observed and acknowledged, can be the window toward greater self-awareness. With awareness, you can be at choice about how you choose to respond in any moment—even in stressful and uncertain times as these.

Embrace Baby Steps Now More Than Ever.

Embrace Baby Steps Now More Than Ever

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One thing is certain—no one knows how this global pandemic is going to turn out. If someone tells you they think they know what life will look like in a few weeks or months, please don’t believe them. No one knows!

The uncomfortableness of not knowing and the uncertainty of it all can trigger many drama-filled thoughts. Here are just a few we have heard come out of our own mouths, as well as what we hear from our clients:

  • “I have to have everything figured out. People are relying on me.”
  • “The whole situation seems too big. I get overwhelmed thinking about what is going to happen.”
  • “Other people seem to be doing okay. Why am I so stressed?”

All these statements are rooted in the Dreaded Drama Triangle (DDT).  In some way or another, the three roles in the DDT show up in those statements: Persecuting yourself for not having it all figured out; feeling like a Victim to the situation so you disengage and do nothing; and looking for a Rescuer to help you sooth your uncomfortable feelings. We’ve even noticed that, personally, inside our own minds, all three DDT roles can happen at the same time!

When things seem too big and complex, we have found embracing the notion of Baby Steps to be crucial.

Baby Steps is a basic concept embedded in the 3rd Vital Question: What actions are you taking? Are you merely reacting to your anxiety in the moment or are you pausing, and taking generative Baby Steps to get you closer to what you care about?

For some, Baby Steps can be translated to simply the “next step.” By whatever name, the magic of simply taking the next step that is yours to do (not someone else’s to do), is a personal empowerment move, especially in extra stressful situations.

There are at least 5 important ways Baby Steps can support you now more than ever. Baby Steps:

  1. Prevent brain overload. Baby Steps allow your brain to focus on one step at a time, which reduces the stress hormones from hijacking your nervous system. (And there is less chance you will lay awake at night worrying about all the details, which causes even more stress!)
  2. Protect you from the fear of making mistakes. Your ego can trick you into thinking you are supposed to have a comprehensive plan, which is pretty ridiculous in such uncertain times. Committing to Baby Steps reduces the risk of making a big mistake.
  3. Leverage the power of the positive feedback loop. Taking a Baby Step, learning and discerning feedback, triggers your innate reward system and can motivate you even more. It’s a law of physics and inertia. Getting into action helps you stay in action, especially when things are scary.
  4. Propel you from Victim to Creator. When you take responsibility for your actions, you shift from the Victim mindset toward being a Creator. Taking just one small step, that is yours to take, strengthens your true Creator essence.
  5. Reinforce your human need for social interaction. Taking a Baby Step most likely (not always) involves working with others, whether it is a walk around the block and waving at a neighbor or texting someone to check in. Social distancing is not social disconnection.

Plus, you never know when a Baby Steps will be a giant leap forward!

Let the magic of Baby Steps support you right now more than ever. All you need to focus on is the one step that is right in front of you and you will increase the likelihood of a good outcome.

Stay safe. Stay Healthy. Stay Outcome Focused — One Baby Step at a Time!

zoomlens

Do You Zoom In or Zoom Out?

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Before Zoom became a popular video conferencing platform, zooming-in or zooming-out referred to focusing your camera lens. If you are like most people today, though, you don’t focus your camera anymore because your phone does it automatically.

Reflecting upon whether you tend to zoom-in or zoom-out is more than a metaphor: it is a useful framework to self-reflect on the lens you are using to view today’s global upheaval.

There are a couple of ways that we have been using this metaphor as we navigate the ups-and-downs (or ins-and-outs) of this unprecedented time.

If you zoom-in, the details of the moment are brought into sharp focus, especially when you or your loved ones are feeling fearful and under stress. Getting stuck in a close-up view, when all you can see is the upheaval of the COVID-19 virus, you can become obsessed with checking details, such as the latest numbers about the pandemic, or checking for breaking news on your news apps much too frequently.

Zooming-out may go in the opposite direction. If you zoom-out too far, you may ignore the facts and new behaviors that need your immediate attention. Zooming-out may include denying or minimizing the details or even “zoning-out” to the reality of your feelings and how others are feeling around you, hoping some great Rescuer will make your suffering go away.

Whether you are zooming-in or zooming-out, we recommend you ask yourself the 1st Vital Question: “What am I focusing on? Am I focusing on all the problems and my anxiety about them? Or, am I focusing on what I most care about right now and how I choose to respond?”

Shifting your focus from a problem-reactive, anxiety-based lens (a Victim Orientation) to an outcome-focus on what and who you care about will make a huge difference in your world, whether you are zooming-in or zooming-out.

If you zoom-in on what you care about and what brings you joy, the worrisome details can fade into the background for a few life-generating moments. Instead of being obsessed with the pandemic numbers, your sharp focus can magnify the beauty of a budding flower. Others are finding comfort by simply waving at a smiling neighbor or reaching out to friends, family, and other important relationships. From this lens, you are zooming-in on kindness and gratitude.

Zooming-out from the lens of what you care about, you may reflect upon what you are learning during this time—what new habits are you forming that you want to continue when things get “back to normal.” As you take a longer-term perspective through this zooming-out lens, you may have more conversations with co-workers and your loved ones about new ideas, innovations, and future dreams that this disruption is making possible.

During this global upheaval, paying attention to what is in front of you (the details) is essential. Without, however, an ability to zoom-out and cultivate a broader and longer perspective, you may be at risk of overwhelm and worry.

As a Creator you have a choice about how you adjust your lens and your focus. Whether your lens is close-up or “far-out”, learning to pause and ask yourself: “What am I focusing on?” can support you through these abnormal times.

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