Emotional Hijacks
What’s an emotional hijack?
You’re in a meeting and Jason talks over you. Again. For the fourth time in as many minutes. Before you know it, you feel your heart pounding, you feel a heat inside you, your hands are sweaty, your jaw is clenching and then out they come. The words you regret later on. Perhaps with a side order of raised voice.
That’s one version of an emotional hijack and it happens to most if not all of us at some point.
It’s a moment when your emotions override your thinking brain. The amygdala (the brain’s threat detector) has kicked in and your body is preparing for flight, flight or freeze – overriding the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain which is responsible for rational thought and decision-making.
This means, you’re also unlikely to be considering the consequences of anything you say & do or see other perspectives whilst you’re in the grip of one. It’s often only later when you’re mulling it over that you realise and that’s usually when the guilt kicks in.
The challenge for us is that it happens so quickly and can feel intense, almost like you have no control over the situation.
Your hijacks can look and feel different according to the context. Perhaps you get an overwhelming urge to run out the room just ahead of a presentation? That’s flight mode. Or maybe your mind goes blank and you’ve no idea what to do or day next. That’s freeze.
And it’s not just at work either. Arguments at home with partners or teenagers (is it just me, or do they seem to have a knack of ‘pushing buttons’?), a flash of road rage when someone cuts you up …
How do I prevent emotional hijacks?
It really helps to build your emotional intelligence. And the good news is, like many skillsets it’s highly developable.
Know your triggers
Look back at past hijacks, are there any themes? Does it happen with the same people or in similar circumstances? If so, you’ll know where you can start.
As an example, when I realised the majority of my triggers were with a previous colleague, I asked for a coffee catch up when I knew that my frustration levels would be lower. I shared what I’d noticed “I’ve realised that when we both disagree, we seem to stop listening to each other and it gets pretty tense”.
I asked for their perspective. Listened. Then asked what they thought would work for both of us in future, followed by asking for them to take a moment to pause before responding in a way that felt aggressive to me. I shared what they said, how they said it and the impact.
By taking equal accountability, talking through calmly and inviting their perspective, we had a much more productive conversation. Did the arguments stop altogether? No. But they were less frequent and we were both more receptive to feedback as a result of the conversation we’d had.
When we’re aware of our triggers, we can take back some control. We can have conversations with people, or learn techniques to manage emotions more effectively.
Breathe
One of the quickest ways to regulate your emotions is to take deep breaths. When you slow down your breathing and make it rhythmic, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system which allows the body to return to a ‘resting’ state.
Your heart rate will slow, your blood circulation to the muscles will reduce and your pupils constrict.
Think about the fight / flight reaction and how it originated – to protect us from predatory animals. Your body is priming itself to deal with a threat, it needs to be able to respond quickly and physically. The act of slowing your breathing is a physical instruction to the body and brain that the threat has passed.
We may not have sabre-tooth tigers to deal with at work, but our brains are still hard-wired to perceive psychological threats in the same way as physical ones.
Grounding
This is all about actively bringing yourself back to the present moment, rather than getting lost in your feelings. You use your senses to create a sense of calm.
Pause and look around you, notice what you can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. You could:
- Pick up a small object like a coin and focus on it’s texture in your hand
- Press your feet into the ground
- Listen to the sound of birds, the wind, or the traffic outside
It’s equally as effective to change your surroundings. Maybe talk a quick walk, make a cup of coffee.
I found it really helpful to use a technique called ‘anchoring’. I’d create a happy, positive state (like dancing and singing to my favourite music) and do something simple but physical to lock in the feeling.
Repeat this enough times, and when it comes to the crunch, you can replicate it to bring back the positive emotion.
I used to touch together the tips of my thumb and ring finger. Then, in a situation where I felt a hijack was imminent, I’d do the same movement. It works in exactly the same way as when we smell the same brand of sun-lotion that we used on holiday, you instantly get taken back to it.
Healthy habits
We all know the physical benefits of good diet, exercise and sleep. Exactly the same principles apply with managing our mental wellbeing.
I realised that no matter what the situation, my own emotional hijacks increased substantially when I hadn’t had enough sleep. And my ability to be more self-managed increased dramatically when I took daily walks, ate well and slept for 6-8 hours.
- Exercise releases endorphins, natural mood-boosters that reduce anxiety.
- Lack of sleep exacerbates negative emotions and makes it harder to cope with stressful situations
- Food and mood are closely linked. Diets which cut out a lot of food may make it hard for our brains to get the nutrients it needs to work well, or leave us tired, miserable and irritable. More evidence is linking healthy gut microbiome to protecting against anxiety.
Name it to tame it
Bear with me on this one. It just involves silently labelling the emotion you’re feeling: “I’m feeling frustrated”.
Doing this activates the prefrontal cortex (thinking brain) and concurrently dampening down the amygdala (the threat detector). It means you’re more likely to be able to respond more rationally and less emotionally because you’re essentially telling your brain that you’re aware of the feeling.
You also create the time and space needed to decide how to respond, instead of being swept along with the emotion.
Handling emotional hijacks in others
They won’t just happen to you! By knowing what to look for and how to diffuse them, it stops unnecessary tension and conflicts at work and at home.
Signs to watch out for:
- Sudden changes in tone, volume or body language
- Defensive or hostile reactions
- Shutting down or going quiet
- Talking over others repeatedly
Here are 4 ways to handle them, all involving ‘responding’ rather than ‘reacting’:
- Stay calm yourself. Use the techniques above, lower your voice and slow your pace. Calmness is contagious!
- Acknowledge what you see. Saying something like “I can see this has frustrated you” or “This seems really important to you” helps them to feel seen, heard and understood.
- Let them let off steam. Listen. By creating a space for them to reply, as opposed to arguing back, you’ll find that eventually once the grip of the hijack has lessened they’ll be more likely to have a less emotional conversation
- Suggest a pause. Say something like “Let’s take a quick break and come back to it” or “Let’s come back together in ten minutes and figure out the best way forward”. This gives you thinking time and them time to calm.
It’s not easy to control or manage hijacks, but by raising your self-awareness and learning these techniques, you’ll start to see a change. Self-awareness and self-management are cornerstones of Emotional Intelligence.
You might like to think back to the last time you were in the grip of one or with someone else who was. If you were faced with the same situation now, how would you prefer to respond? What specifically could you do instead?
We all have choices in how we respond. The situations and people that may have previously ‘triggered’ our hijacks don’t cause how we react. The choice between subconsciously reacting and consciously responding significantly impacts our wellbeing, our resilience and enables us to build stronger relationships and better lives.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom” – Viktor E Frankl