Curse the Amygdala!!!
Pursuing and accepting leadership is a crash course in exposing my triggers. (so is being married and having a child). When I arrive late for an appointment, or make a scheduling mistake on a complicated work-week, or if I am questioned about….anything – my chest tightens, my breath shortens, and my body puts on an itchy sweater…on the inside. It’s unbearable.
Itchy Sweater Syndrome
These things are triggers for me. These external circumstances set off an instantaneous chain of reactions in my nervous system. The almond-shaped reptilian brain, the amygdala is the first stop. The amygdala processes emotions, especially fear and threat detection. It uses templates (implicit memories & trauma responses) that have been stored through life experiences (like being hazed in the military for being late), to determine how to perceive and react to my situation in a way that keeps me safe. Notice I said react, not respond. The (re)action of my amygdala is automatic and involuntary. So when I am running late, my amygdala perceives I am in danger. It plays the template of my military experiences like a movie reel from The Man in The High Castle. It then sends signals like a telegraph (beep, beep, dot, dot, beep) that activate my sympathetic nervous system (SNS) – that’s the bad one, the one that does the fight or flight response, as opposed to the parasympathetic nervous system that calms the body down. (why are they named the same and why can’t it just activate the calm one?)
When this happens, the internal discomfort is almost unbearable for me. I HATE it. I get away from it by any means possible – which typically means running away from the situation or doing something to numb it (like a mid-day IPA). If I can do neither of those things, I am likely to project that internal discomfort onto the situation I have deemed responsible for making me “feel” this way. In the case of running late, it could easily be my family. Those people move like molasses in winter. The external situation is rarely compatible with the internal discomfort I am feeling. So I am frequently guilty of giving a $100 reaction to a .50 cent problem.
Nuerogenesis & The Renweing of The Mind
In Leadersmithing, Eve Poole suggests that leaders need to create new ‘templates’ to store in the amygdala to replace the ones that are still young and afraid and unhelpful. She gives the example of involuntarily needing to pee at age 30 when being yelled at by a male colleague. The template she was working with was still 3 years old responding to being yelled at by her dad, knowing that if she wet herself, he would go away. So how do we create these templates? What Poole calls replacing the templates I would call healing the nervous system. Neuroscientists would call it neuroplasticity or neurogenesis (rerouting and creating new neurocircuitry) and the apostle Paul would call it the renewing of the mind.
This sounds great, let’s troubleshoot this amygdala error and get on with our lives as leaders (spouses and parents) that people actually want to be around. So how do we do it? The truth is we can know the problem informationally all day long, but as my story suggests above – that information does not change these automatic neurobiological reactions that sometimes rule our lives. This is a neural issue, not a cognitive issue. A hardware problem, not a software problem. So information is not going to change your wiring. As Poole states “Cognitive psychologists and moral philosophers all think that right thought leads to right action.” Raise your hand if Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) worked for you. (Anyone…? Me neither). Poole offers something akin to a vaccine. She suggests that we intentionally put ourselves in the situation that will cause the trigger, but in a safe way, on a small scale. She uses the metaphor of an apprentice or craftsman who, before entrusted with a large project would need to prove themselves by practicing on and perfecting a miniature version of it first. In short, setting up mini experiments to bring your fears to you on purpose and face them.
You May Need More Help Than You Think
While I agree up to this point with Poole that the problem is the templates (implicit memories and trauma responses) and the solution to the problem is healing/transforming the templates (in her words replacing them), it’s the means by which this is achieved (the process) that I disagree with her on. Poole suggests a cumbersome list of 17 “critical incidents” that I, as a “leader in training” should set up to strengthen my weaknesses. (Que the anxiety response in me, seeing that list of 17 things I must do to fix my anxiety and become a master leader.)
In her Ted talk she makes the connection about her needing to pee at 30 to her incident as a child. I am doubtful that revelation and connection came from facing her fears in a corporate setting over and over. If I had to guess, I would say that was through a self-discovery process with a professional therapist, spiritual director, or at a minimum journaling/meditation and thinking deeply about her pain.
I am ok with the facing of fears in public, over and over again. This is good advice. But you don’t need a system more complicated than Zettelkasten to do it. The opportunities to face your fears as a leader, whether they be imposter syndrome, fear of public speaking, fear of failure – or like me, fear of rejection, and fear of being wrong – these opportunities abound. The worldview of facing them is enough to see these natural opportunities in everyday situations, become aware of what is triggering you, and then work with someone who can help you be honest about what is happening inside. Right now, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Spiritual Direction, and Shadow Work hold the most promise for facing what is really going on inside for me.
Truly healing and transforming the implicit templates controlling our reactions, not just replacing them, is the goal here.
About the Author
Christian Swails
Christian is the founder of CoCreation - a Startup Hub for social entrepreneurs in Savannah, Ga. He serves as the Spiritual Director for Wesley Gardens Retreat Center and Wesley Monumental United Methodist Church.2 responses to “Curse the Amygdala!!!”
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I very much agree with you that inner work needs to be done to truly grow through the automatic hardware responses. Exposing ourself to situations that trigger us does have some merit (it is how I got over my panic attacks every time I got in a closed off space like an elevator) but going deep into what really has us behave the way we do goes beyond exposure and CBT.4
I experience the anxiety you do at being late as well has when I lead meetings. I have also experienced feeling the need to pee if I’m being yelled at by a superior. I usually land on the confrontational side, but find myself wanting a way out of being trapped in situations like that. I think I need to do more work on the inner things behind these reactions. The thing that sucks is how much exhausting work it takes to do the deeper things.
I love this Christian! Thank you for your honesty. I also arrive early for everything, and the thought of being late makes me feel very agitated and tearful! Maybe, you and Jess and I should be late for something together and debrief together, too!
Poole seems to be suggesting ‘flooding’ as a recovery method with little evidence base. I have never heard that it works and it is an extremely old theory. There are many new ways to process trauma, and despite our UK National Health System and all mental health guidelines in our country- CBT, verbal therapy, basic creative therapy, and short-term EMDR without weeks before and after can de-stabilise or harm people who have experienced trauma. Those models rarely work long-term at all and can do more harm than good. but are still offered as the best practice, because there are few longitudinal studies.
Trauma therapy has to stimulate both hemispheres of the brain in order to integrate the thoughts, feelings, sensory memories and body memories together. DBR works, although it also needs time before and after… I could go on! It is slow as each memory has to be processed slowly. I have a psychological model which is one of the only trauma recovery models currently in the world…Evidence suggests it works!
I do get tired of Christians oversimplifying recovery and thinking that our trauma reactions are all due to needing to ‘take every thought captive.’ If only it were that simple, and we were a mind without relationships and attachment, a body, a nervous system, emotions and feelings.
Looking forward to a longer chat soon about this! Thanks again for your honesty.