Triggers
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
-Victor Frankl
All human beings have emotional hot buttons. They come from childhood experiences, cultural norms, and temperament. When we are triggered, we lose control. Sometimes we lose control to a degree very out of proportion to the triggering event. And usually to the detriment of our ability to manage relationships.
When triggered, our capacity to think clearly and to act wisely is impaired.
But, the ability to master our emotional reactivity, to “handle when triggered,” is a core competency for leaders. It is learnable, available, and simple (not always easy)
Example: Imagine someone with authority making a dismissive comment regarding your work. Some of us may not have a problem with this kind of remark (we know how we are showing up, we know that the comment will not have an impact, and we can manage any fallout, whatever it is, either through a later communication or, sometimes very wisely, by simply letting it slide).
But others of us will get triggered. We respond either with “fight” – get defensive, begin to argue, or get angry – or we head towards “flight” and get quiet, withdraw, steam inside.
And the person who triggered us can see it. They will quickly form their own set of internal responses, possibly based on a triggered reaction of their own. And off we go into mutual unconscious distancing and assumptions.
The intensity of our reaction is not about this person’s behavior. The only thing we can control is our reaction to the world. The focus, therefore, needs primarily to be on our ability to handle these stresses--not trying to persuade others that hey should change.
Triggers may seem minor and harmless to those who don’t carry the same set of experiences.
“It is easy to fly into a passion-anybody can do that- but to be angry with the right person, to the right extent and at the right time and with the right object and in the right way– that is not easy, and it is not everyone who can do it.”
Aristotle; Nicomachean Ethics
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation, and 5 minutes to ruin it”–Warren Buffett
So What Do You Do?
First:
On your own time, map your triggers. It helps to know what gets you. You can tell when you:
Freeze
Fight
Flee
Get tense
Obsess about it later (redo the script over and over-- “I can’t believe he said that! I wish I had said...”)
On your own time, excavate and begin to understand the deeper feelings that are being triggered and where they come from. Why do certain things cause me to react so strongly? And what from my past is being reactivated?
For example, you might be triggered when a colleague asks a question in what might seem a provocative or unskillful way, with an undisciplined tone of voice. “Why did you do that?” A host of reactions might emerge:
Who are you to tell me how to do things?
My way was good.
You would have done worse.
I wish I had done that differently.
But I am not going to admit that now.
This should be a private conversation, not in front of others.
And you freeze, or you go into “explain, rationalize, defend.” Your voice goes up, everyone hears that, and we are underwater, quickly, together, swimming in a sea of emotions and reactivity.
What if, instead, you said: “Let me think about that. Let’s talk later.”
When triggered:
Stop. Triggering happens too quickly for our rational mind to intercept. With awareness, we begin to have the possibility of making different choices about what we do when triggered. If you start arguing with someone, know that the only way is down (not up or out). So stop.
Stopping might be easy once you have a script. “I am realizing that I am not at my best right now. Can we pause and pick this up later? I will think more carefully about what I want to say…”
Breathe and move on. We underestimate the vale of simply dropping it. If there is no good way to handle that moment, just drop it.
Afterwards
Calibrate if it is worth pursuing. Here is how you do that.