How to Stop The Emotional Hijack

Emotional hijacking is ruining your performance.

What is an emotional hijack?

It is when you get emotionally triggered and lose the ability to think and act rationally.

If you lash out in a conversation and later think, “I shouldn’t have acted that way,” you have been hijacked.

Our emotions are powerful. But our best performance comes when we are feeling excited and positive. NOT when we feel angry or resentful.

In this article, we will talk about emotional hijacks, how they work, and how to change your perspective to change your performance.

Being able to harness your emotions is a superpower.

Emotional instability is often our kryptonite.

The Emotional Hijack

As I have referenced before, we are emotional animals who can think, not thinking animals who have emotions.

As mammals, we have a large limbic system in the brain which helps us feel emotions when we sense danger or opportunity.

There is a particular structure in the brain which is responsible for our emotional reactions: the amygdala.

They amygdala is an almond shaped structure in the brain which has a lot of functions… to many to cover here.

Generally speaking, the amygdala helps mediate the “four f’s”: fight, flight, feeding, and fornication.

The specific functions we care about are emotional processing and initiating the fear response.

Emotional Processing: The amygdala is responsible for detecting and interpreting emotional cues in the environment. It helps individuals recognize and respond to emotional stimuli, such as facial expressions, vocal tone, and body language.

Fear Response: The amygdala is closely associated with the generation and regulation of the fear response. It helps trigger the "fight or flight" response when a potentially threatening situation is detected. This includes the release of stress hormones like adrenaline.

The amygdala is ALWAYS on the lookout, checking the environment and social situations for emotional stimuli, threats, and opportunities for survival.

When we detect a threat, or when we get emotionally triggered, our amygdala triggers a stress response to keep us safe.

There is no time to think… just take action!

Sometimes we run away, and sometimes we fight… with words, or worse.

The point is, this system is AUTOMATIC.

We REACT, and our logic is thrown out. We fall to instinct.

We defend ourselves.

It looks like this:

Unfortunately this defense is often unneeded.

Triggers often come from misunderstanding.

When this happens, our reactions can risk damaging relationships and limits our ability to leverage our rational minds.

Also, once we are in this stressed state, it takes us a long time to come down and return to our rational selves.

Leaders who yell at employees can count on their team being distracted anywhere from 20 minutes to 4 hours.

Same goes for parents, spouses, and any other social relationship.

So what can we do about it?

Well, we can lean into a dichotomy of control.

Control 1 - You are in control of our reactions.

Control 2 - Take responsibility for other people’s reactions.

Let’s start with control #1.

Controlling Our Own Reactions

Our emotions are ours to own.

We are ultimately responsible for how we feel.

When someone talks down to us, or speaks belligerently, we do not have to react.

But wait, isn’t the amygdala on autopilot just waiting to react?

Well, yes. BUT, if we change our frame of reference we change our perspective and therefore change the input we feed our amygdala.

Our rational brain can act as a filter of data.

If you remove the filter, we are left to ONLY reacting.

What kind of filter can we add? Our perspective.

Our perspective influences our perceptions.

If a 3rd grader were to call you names, how would you react?

If your boss were to call you names, how would you react?

The difference is your perspective.

You can change your perspective by remembering one thing: someone’s emotional reactions are not because of you, but because of THEM.

When we acknowledge that other people have their own emotional world going on, we can extract ourselves from their reactions to keep a level head.

This can be challenging because our mirror neurons will detect emotion reactions and force us to feel them as well.

However, maintaining this perspective will ensure that you are YOU and they are dealing with their own feelings.

This leads to the second part of the dichotomy of control.

We should control our own emotions, but we should not expect that others should do the same.

We should expect that our actions WILL create an emotional reaction in others.

Take Responsibility For Other’s Reactions

While we are intentional about owning our emotions, we should acknowledge that our words and actions have an impact on others.

We cannot say triggering things to other people and expect them to NOT get triggered.

There is a conundrum here as when other people react it is often not our intention.

When this happens, we should own our role in their reaction and seek to clarify any misunderstanding.

While we can seek clarity after a reaction, we can do something preemptively to help: set an intention.

When entering a conversation, set an intention.

How do you want to show up?

How do you want the other person to feel?

How do you need to listen and speak to convey that intention?

When you set an intention, you are more likely to show up with patience and openness to the conversation.

Another thing that helps: create time.

Many frustrating conversations happen when we are not ready to have them.

Set aside time to talk with an intention to show up as your best self.

When we create time, we create a space for clarity and understanding. These two things can help avoid miscommunication and therefore an emotional hijack.

The Wrap Up

There is no getting around it… we are emotional beings.

When we are not intentional with our presence and when our perspectives are flawed, we contribute to an environment of reactivity.

Emotions are powerful.

Check your perspective.

Set your intention.

Create time and space for conversation.

Don’t get hijacked.

Thanks for reading. And keep crushing it.

Clark