A few years ago I was at a dinner party, talking politics, when someone said something that landed as racist. I wanted to say so. I could feel the heat come up in my face and the words right there. Nothing came out. I sat there tongue-tied while the moment passed.
I tend to freeze. That's my move. You have one too.
Most of the time you're fine. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you let it go. A colleague hands you hard feedback and you can take it. You've got a window you operate inside, a range where you can still think and choose and act like the person you mean to be.
Then something pushes you past the edge. It might be volume: you were holding a newborn and a deadline and a crisis, and the whiny email is the thing that breaks you. It might be an echo of something old, this moment a carbon copy of one that once flattened you. Whatever it is, you can find yourself reacting before you have considered what to do. I use ‘caveman brain’ as shorthand for that experience, rather than a literal description of a separate brain taking control.
Stress can make it harder to consider a response. Embarrassment, failure or conflict can feel threatening, even when there is no immediate physical danger.
Fight, flee, freeze and appease are four useful descriptions of reactions we may notice. They are not the only possible responses, and we need not have just one. Some people puff up and attack, with a glare or a jab or a raised voice. Some go small and scarce and change the subject. Some go blank, the way I do, the fog coming down. And some appease.
The appease move is the one I want to name, because it's the one that looks like getting along. You keep the peace. You play nice. You laugh at the comment you hate and change the subject, the way I've watched people do at a trade show booth, going along so the powerful men in the room stay comfortable. From the outside it reads as easy. Inside, you're trading a piece of yourself for the safety of not making waves, and if you do it long enough you stop noticing you're doing it. It eats at your confidence from underneath. The more you play nice, the less of you is in the room.
None of these are character flaws. They can be ways of protecting ourselves. The work isn't killing the reaction. It's learning to recognize it early, the way it feels in the body before it fully has you: the heat, the racing, the fog coming down.
Try this: Catch the reaction a little earlier
Choose a recent moment when you reacted more quickly than you wanted to. Start with an ordinary exchange rather than your most difficult memory.
What was the first thing you could feel? Heat in your face, a tightening chest, a blankness, or the urge to agree? You do not need to decide which category you belong to. Find one signal you might recognize again.
If that signal appears in another conversation, see whether you can take a brief pause before answering. Notice what you are about to do and what feels at stake. Are you trying to win, get away, or keep someone pleased?
Consider another response that fits the situation. You might ask for a moment, ask a question, or say you need to return to the conversation later. Where the pressure is to look unruffled or keep everyone comfortable, the performance trap can make it harder to acknowledge what is happening. The practice is to notice enough to have another choice, without requiring yourself to be perfectly calm.
For a fuller practice with the moment between pressure and action, try The Pressure to Perform.
Fifteen minutes with one moment of your own.
TRY THE WRITTEN REFLECTIONI wrote a book about that. I’m Chad Herst, a coach and licensed acupuncturist (LAc) in San Francisco. The first chapter is twenty-eight minutes, read in my own voice. Enter your name and email and I’ll send it to you.
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