Sometimes you’ve got this. You’re given a container of lemons and you crush it. You get cut off on the way to work and smile like a Happy Buddha. Your colleague comes to you with some pretty harsh feedback and you’re able to welcome it. Your partner is running late for the eight thousandth time, and it’s no big deal.
Other times you can’t tolerate what’s coming at you. It could be a matter of volume—everyone has a limit. You might be able to handle a newborn baby plus an economic crash plus an insane deadline, but a whiny colleague works your last nerve. It could be an echo of a past trauma. That thing this person in front of you did right now feels like a carbon copy, rinse and repeat of something else that kicked your ass. It could be that your personal value system gets triggered. You’re a card carrying bootstrap puller and it drives you bananas whenever you see someone kvetch about problems but fail to take initiative.
There is no dearth of things that can set you off, get your knickers in a twist, wind you up, lay you low, throw you sideways. You have a window of tolerance, a reasonably happy place from which you handle what comes at you. When you’re inside the window, you’re able to think and act like the highly evolved human you are. When you get close to the edge, you get twitchy. And when, for whatever reason, you slip outside the window and your caveman brain takes control.
Caveman Brain
Your caveman brain is lightning fast in reacting to threats, but it’s far from enlightened. It doesn’t think or empathize or create (that happens in the civilized drawing room of the prefrontal cortex). It reacts. Its job is to recognize threats and keep you safe. It is trigger-happy and heavy-handed, great for when you are facing a tiger, but not so great when the threat is your mother-in-law.
We don’t often raise a glass to our caveman brain. It’s not nearly as sexy or companionable as the part of our brain that philosophizes, imagines, woos and invents. It’s a bodyguard, waiting in the shadows, constantly alert, ready to intervene when danger appears. Chances are that it’s saved your bacon more than once. And for that, it deserves celebration.
But your caveman brain gets you into trouble more often than not, because it wasn’t built to address the modern threats that you face every day, which are primarily emotional and social rather than physical. It can’t tell the difference: a threat is a threat is a threat. Embarrassment and humiliation? Caveman brain says, “Nope, can’t have that.” Failure? “Gotta shut that down.” Conflict? “Uh oh.”
The caveman brain isn’t subtle. You’ll know that it’s kicking into gear because it throws a kill switch on non-survival functions and gives you a surge of energy as adrenaline and cortisol get dumped into the blood. Your breath speeds up, your heart races and blood rushes into your heart and limbs. You don’t think clearly and you lose touch with how you feel. In this mode, you’re meant to act fast, not solve existential problems.
Once your inner caveman snaps into action, it has only four moves: to fight, escape, play dead or appease. You probably have a habitual preference for one of the four. Do you tend to lash out? Do you tend to retreat or avoid? Do you tend to go dumb and numb? Do you tend to try to mollify? It’s important to learn to recognize and understand your reactions.
The Four Reactivity Patterns: Do You Channel a Rooster, Mouse, Opossum or Dolphin?
Roosters: Fight Reaction
The spirit animal of a fight reaction is the rooster: the fiercest boss on the farm. Roosters are aggressive and won’t hesitate to take on another rooster, a hawk or a wayward hen. They are in-your-face masters of intimidation. And they don’t just bluff; they use their spurs like switchblades.
When your emotions have gone off the rails into a fight reaction, you’ll puff up and attack—maybe not with an uppercut, but perhaps with a glare, a sniping comment, a raised voice or any number of threatening physical gestures.
If you are a human who tends to have rooster reactions, when you are triggered, you will use your words and body to dominate others. You might cut people off, make sarcastic jokes, raise your voice or repeat yourself. You might notice that you point and jab with your arms, do you clench your jaw or tighten your fists?
Once your brain turns on the rooster switch, you lose access to the prefrontal cortex, a more modern part of the brain where impulse control, social influence and advanced problem solving happen. Your brain suddenly goes primitive. You’ll get flushed with heat and feel superhuman strength as all the blood rushes from your head to your limbs and heart.
What happens next depends on who you are up against and their level of reactivity. Best case scenario, the other person is able to remain calm and defuse the situation (this is the person in the room we all strive to be). More often than not, your fight reaction will trigger an emotional reaction in the people around you (fight, retreat, freeze or appease). You’ll be seen as an enemy and this can have lasting effects on your relationships.
Jonathan, the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, described the environment where he worked as “a dog-eat-dog world.” He did not feel he had the trust of a few of his direct reports and even wondered whether they were after his job. Because of this fear, he was guarded with them, so much so that he intimidated them. They rarely spoke up in meetings, and their primary approach to interacting with him was to tell him only what he wanted to hear. This frustrated him because he couldn’t get a clear picture of what was happening in their areas of responsibility.
The less he trusted them, the more aggressive he became. The more threatened they felt, the more they concealed from him. By viewing and treating them as threats, he missed out on pertinent information, which undermined his ability to make decisions.
Mouse: Flight Reaction
The spirit animal of the flight reaction is the field mouse: a small, hardy survivor that knows how to move. Mice are masters avoiders who scurry away from danger and lie low. They blend in, squeeze into tiny places and burrow out of sight.
When you have gone into a flight reaction, you’ll make yourself small and scarce. You’ll do your best to escape notice and avoid people and situations that trouble you. You’ll hold back from sharing what you’re thinking or feeling.
If you tend to react like a field mouse, you will find ways to escape. How do you do this? Do you become disengaged? Do you altogether steer clear of interactions where you sense there might be conflict? Do you change the subject when others bring up touchy or awkward issues? Do you hold back rather than give yourself entirely to those people that mean the most to you? It’s helpful to recognize your reactions.
While the rooster tends to move toward an angry and aggressive stance when it gets emotionally hijacked, the mouse tends to become anxious, worried and avoidant. This is an intelligent way to survive a fight you cannot win.
Kate was a lead copywriter at a design firm and often collaborated with Mark, the lead graphic designer. In design reviews, Mark would defend his work so aggressively that Kate would avoid critiquing it. She would second guess her perspectives, “Maybe I’m missing something genius here. It’s best to let the client decide.”
Kate tried to focus exclusively on the copywriting part of the projects and give Mark free reign on design and let him take the lead with client interactions. She didn’t like the dismissive way that he spoke with one of their clients, but no amount of feedback changed his tone. When this client fired them, Kate kicked herself for not intervening more forcefully.
Arguing with Mark was exhausting and Kate felt she needed to pick and choose her battles. Standing her ground was so hard that Kate would prepare for confrontations for days-- hashing out what she should say and all the potential ways he might respond.
Opossum: Freeze Reaction
The spirit animal of a freeze reaction is the opossum: the master of extreme de-escalation. As much as everyone loves an underdog and David vs. Goliath story, opossums know that living to see another day is better than dying a hero. When cornered and facing a serious threat, an opossum becomes something that no big bad wolf would be interested in fighting (or eating) because it looks dead already.
By freezing, the opossum says, “Move on, there’s nothing to see here” and there’s a chance that it won’t be noticed at all. It’s important to note that opossums don’t pretend to drop dead. They seize up involuntarily and collapse. Their bodies even stiffen like rigor mortis. No poking, prodding or pawing will awaken an opossum on the faux deep six. But once the danger has passed, they slowly come back to life.
As in the wild, aggressors in the workplace tend not to attack people who are unresponsive. It’s not much fun for a bully to kick someone when they’re down.
If you tend toward opossum reactions, your watchword is “overwhelmed.” When you are triggered, you’ll become immobilized and confused. You’ll shut down, go blank and disconnect from your thoughts and feelings, making it hard to speak up. You may sense a curtain of fog dropping between you and the world. You may feel cold, numb, spacey or paralyzed.
I tend toward opossum reactions. Recently, I was at a dinner party discussing politics when an acquaintance said something that sounded racist. Instead of confronting the bigotry, I found myself completely tongue tied. I could feel heat rising up to my cheeks and the desire to say something, but could not find the words. I totally froze.
Lisa does not know how she feels about her boyfriend, John, and this upsets her because recently he has brought up the subject of marriage. She wants to feel love, gratitude and excitement about the possibility of spending the rest of her life with him, but all she can contact is a vague, numb feeling about him.
Two years ago she was promoted to an SVP role at a multinational tech company. Over the last year, she has been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work that is on her plate, and she feels as if she lacks either direction or support from her boss. By the time she comes home, she has no energy or enthusiasm to bring to her relationship with John.
When asked how she processes her emotions, Lisa says, “I try to distract myself. I have been going outside and smoking a cigarette when I’m particularly angry, or I come home and turn on the television until I fall asleep.”
The longer she ignores the frustration, the more overwhelming it becomes, leaving her numb and emotionally shut down. The more she distracts herself from what she feels, the more she loses the ability to feel at all, including how she feels about John.
Dolphin: Appease Reaction
The spirit animal of an appease reaction is the dolphin: the alliance builder. Dolphins live in highly social, interconnected pods where kin, friends and adversaries all mingle together. Resources that are abundant enough to be shared today can become scarce tomorrow, creating conflict. Dolphins don’t have the sharp teeth of a shark or heft of a whale. They survive by building alliances with each other.
Humans that tend to have dolphin reactions will contort themselves to ally with the people who they perceive to have more power than they do. The key phrase is “play nice.” If you are a dolphin, you will avoid conflict, keep the peace and appease others.
Larry was a VP of Sales who was charismatic and well liked at a software company that held a dominant market position. For years, he had maintained a warm and easy relationship with his CEO, but things began shifting when his team began failing to meet its numbers.
There were good reasons for this. The industry which the company served was declining. Several disruptive competitors had emerged at at time when Larry’s company had cut back on product development. His team was fighting an uphill battle with butter knives against broadswords and they were frustrated. The CEO believed that Larry’s team simply needed to fight harder.
When things were going well, Larry was a motivating leader. In these challenging times, he was overwhelmed trying to avoid and tamp down conflict—with his team, with the CEO and with his peers. In executive meetings, he spoke optimistically about the pipeline and mostly laid low. Whenever the CEO challenged him, he acquiesced. When his team expressed their frustration, he used his sense of humor to jolly them into line.
But the cracks were beginning to show. His CEO was losing faith in his ability to meet the numbers. He lost several team members to competitors. And he was exhausted by the strain of avoiding speaking out about what he really thought needed to happen--the company needed to invest in product development.
When overwhelmed, a dolphin will placate and mollify even when the other person’s behavior is blatantly egregious.
In heightened moments where you have gone into emotional hijack mode, you won’t trust that you can stand on your own or stand up for yourself. You’ll believe that your survival is dependent on your ability to acquiesce, conform, and accommodate. Underneath your reaction you’ll likely find a fear of rejection.
Being friendly in a confrontational situation is a perfectly natural survival reaction, but if you habitually hide your own anger or hurt under a facade, it will eat away at your confidence. The more you “play nice,” the less self-assured you will feel.
Maria was in charge of her company’s booth at a big tech trade show. The night of the opening reception, she was standing with the CEO when a member of the board came up and made a comment about the size of the breasts of a woman working in the neighboring booth. “Who let the acorn knockers in? Didn’t she get the memo that anything less that a Double D isn’t allowed in here?”
The CEO chuckled. The blatantly misogynistic banter completely appalled Maria. But instead of confronting the situation, she laughed and changed the subject. She didn’t want to upset either of the men and risk losing their trust. Instead, she went along with it and tried to forget the comment had ever been made.
Regaining Center
So, we’ve already established that things are going to trip your wires. Be honest with yourself about who you become in these moments. Are you a Rooster, Mouse, Opossum or Dolphin? We all favor one over the others. That’s not to say that you react to all triggers in the same way, but we all have our tendencies.
It’s important to make friends with your reactivity spirit animal, to get to know its likes and dislikes, to know what it eats, where it roams and when it appears. Learn to recognize its presence in your body: how does it feel when a reaction is lurking and when it has sprung. Recognize its behaviors: what you say and do. Recognize its thoughts: what you latch onto. Track it and study it—not to kill it or to tame it—but to learn from it. Getting to know the early warning signs that you are getting triggered can help you to step back and stay present rather than spiral into overwhelm.
Your reactivity spirit animal has been shadowing you for your entire life. It knows you better than anyone: your mother, sibling, partner, dog or cat. If you get to know it, with curiosity and respect, it will show you what you need to stand your ground. It will cut you some slack.
To help get in touch with how your body reacts, think of a moment when you were actually in physical danger. Perhaps you were cut off in traffic, narrowly avoided an accident or were threatened by another person or an animal. What happened in your body? Did your heart race? Did you feel light headed? Did your face flush? Did your breath get shallow?
When you recognize that you’ve been hooked into a fight/flight/freeze/appease reaction, the best thing you can do is to stop, take a breath and say hello to your spirit animal. Just acknowledging its presence can have a calming effect.
If you are in a Rooster or Opossum reaction, you might want to step away. If you are in a Mouse or Dolphin reaction, you might want to hang tight. These aren’t prescriptions, they aren’t even suggestions. There are simply ideas for you to consider and experiment with. Every situation is unique, but if you aren’t in mortal danger, your objective is to stop and calm yourself down.
Stopping from full speed is never instantaneous. It will take up to 20 minutes for your body to settle and your mind to think clearly. Slow, deep breaths are a great place to start and can help you downshift and regain balance. Movement can help you burn off the wild energy of a Rooster or a Mouse and it can bring the Opossum or Dolphin back to center.
Some people find that repeating a mantra can help. Research shows that mental focusing is the number one technique for short-circuiting a reaction. It doesn’t matter whether you focus on a breath, a word, a sound, an image or a bodily activity. Go with whatever comes most easily for you.
Remember, reactivity is a body and mind experience. The more you can feel and soothe your body and the more you can focus your mind, the more easily you’ll be able to regain your center.