Tag: Amygdala flood

What is the impact, of my beliefs on my reality?

He does not believe, who does not live according to his belief.  

 Thomas Fuller

How do your beliefs impact the  perception you hold about reality?

  • Little or not at all?
  • They have some effect?
  • High?
  • Total. My beliefs absolutely define how the reality of my life is, the good aspects, the not quite so good and the most challenging?

Think again about the journey of you becoming you.

We are Born

We begin to learn and form beliefs about  reality, from direct experience and from what the big people around us teach us to believe. We are very trusting of the big people😯😀

We learn to believe in our beliefs as they help us build a representation of reality.

We learn to trust that representation of reality, because it “works”. We look through the lenses of our beliefs and “see that it is so” and then learn of course, “I am right” and now defend our representation of reality, as if our very life is threatened.

 

 

 

What we ‘see’, becomes true for us, our truth.

We form Points of View, views from a Point!

We sense threat when others disagree with our view on reality (because our representation is, you know, actually real-‘Duh’ 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️)

Our Amygdala floods the body with cortisol and adrenaline, and we are in ‘fight-flight-freeze acting as if our very life is in real danger  with our mature thinking, Prefrontal Cortex  shut down! 😖

As this happens over and over again, we are learning that if people disagree with us, we need to win the ‘battle’, otherwise the emotion, the feelings we get in our body, will not be good🤯. The brain learns by repetition and this reinforces the belief ‘I am right.’

So it is, that we become defined, not by the reality that is ‘out there’, rather we are defined by what we believe, what our lenses, perceive…

It is that perception and our consequent representation, which becomes true for us.

Thus we become what we believe, e.g. Needing to be perfect, not good enough, better than everybody else, confident, not confident, able to listen, not able to listen, bullied, bullying, nervous, certain, over-analysing, taking everything personally, etc etc.

  • Unless?
  • Unless what?

We change our mindset about changing beliefs?

Change your beliefs – Change your life

A question to ask yourself

Is your mind your master? Or Are you the master of your mind?  

 

Feel the Fear – Do it anyway.

 

What is the purpose of fear?

What outcome is that e-motion focused on?

Primarily Safety – to keep us safe, is one of the main reasons we become afraid, see fight, flight, freeze.

Let’s look at the SCARF model again

As David says, fundamental drivers of the brain are perceived threat and reward. In his SCARF paper he talks of an underlying principle that the brain operates on, Minimise Threat – Maximise Reward (Avoid  – Approach) with a huge bias toward Minimise Threat (keep us safe).

Collaborating & Influencing using SCARF

So how does fear stop us?  We hold beliefs about ourselves, often learned early in life, about what we can or can’t do, oh and we are right about those beliefs being ‘true’  🙂

Looking at the picture above, familiar  thinking / behaviour has the potential to trigger reward (dopamine) and it does. There is Certainty (one of the SCARF domains) about the familiar – we know what is going to happen. As the slide says even if the familiar thing is ‘bad’ for us we get a reward from the brain, see addiction. 

New thinking / behaviour on the other hand triggers a perceived threat state, we are uncertain, not sure about what may happen, if we think in this new way, believe this new thing, act in this new way, we then trigger an amygdala flood.

How old do you think we are when we first perceive threat and reward?

As a child, we build patterns based on what our brain ‘learns’in terms of avoiding threat. The brain then uses these learned ways of thinking and behaving and they become familiar, laid down as patterns (which take no conscious effort to evoke when required).  When we follow these familiar ways, we don’t get nasty threat feelings.  Of course  we are right when we justify those ways 🙂

What is happening?

One of the things that happens, is that we learn we do not like the effect of the threat response and the feelings it evokes within us.  We then become afraid of feeling that feeling. 🙂 The brain being the brain, learns “ah ok if we don’t go to that threat state then we won’t get that horrible feeling” and we’ll feel ‘safe’! Oh and being the brain I know  I am right about that 🙂

So that’s what we’ll do, we’ll just not go there and that’s a habit formed 🙂

What to do?

We need to go there 🙂 feel the fear and do it anyway. We think it / do it and nobody dies 🙂 We ride through the feelings of sick in the stomach (because blood moves to our muscles to get ready to fight or flight) of the rising heart rate, shallow breathing, dry mouth etc. We ride it out and in so doing our brain learns that actually,  we can do it or think it 🙂 🙂

It may be useful to use the name it, claim it, tame it method here also. E.g. if you are feeling uncertain, just say “there goes my certainty trigger”

As you triumph over the fear / threat response doing the ‘new way’ will become easier and end up as the preferred way.

What about adrenaline junkies?

I’m not one 🙂  It would appear that they relish and look for the rush generated by the Fear/ Stress reaction in the mind and body

  • What will you now feel the fear about and then do anyway?

The Red Mist; what’s that all about?

Quite a lot to take on board in this Post, revisit it, give it some time 🙂

In the post about Points of View,  I said we were invested in our view being right 🙂  It is the ‘Red Mist ’ that descends when we are challenged.

What is happening in our beautiful Brain then?

I have mentioned before, that the Brain is a Meaning-Seeking, Pattern-Making Prediction Organ, created around one fundamental principle:-

Minimise Threat————  Maximise Reward

The huge bias inbuilt towards minimise threat is, to keep us Safe.

See also A way of thinking about the Brain.

In this post, I am introducing  some more distinctions.

The founder of The Neuroleadership Institute,  Dr David Rock,   created a model  SCARF that enables us to talk about what is going on when ‘the red mist descends’ or ‘we lose the plot’.

In my Points of View entry I introduced the concept of the triune brain. The ancient reptilian part of the brain was the first to develop and its job is to keep us from danger. Historically, in the development of our species, this part was really useful.  Its Fight – Flight – Freeze mechanism driven by the Amygdala kept us alive 🙂   A thing to note here, is that this ‘process’, (referred to as the amygdala flood), will fire on a perceived threat as well as a real threat and therein lies an issue for us in today’s world.

Back to David’s Model

As you can see in the model, we perceive threat and reward in the five domains, Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness

How can we use this model then to help us?  Well it is David’s view that we scan the SCARF domains five times per second , so we have about a fifth of a second (enough) to catch what triggered. 🙂

SCARF PRE Model

In my experience, the above is very helpful, Name it, Claim it, Tame it

An example:-  I am driving down the M40 towards London and wish to join the M25. There is a queue!

I have a couple of options and I do both 🙂 :- join the end of the queue or go further along and ‘cut in’.

If I join the end of the queue and somebody else ‘cuts in’ guess what? Yep ‘Red Mist’, my wife Gill can testify to this 🙂

(Do you think this is a real or perceived threat by the way? )

Anyway, using Name it, Claim it, Tame it, I have my 1/5th of a second to name what just triggered me. Status/ Fairness, in this scenario.

Internally then, I say to myself, “There goes my Status trigger” and do you know, its like my brain says “Ah, you know about this, its not a threat then” 🙂 It works. Again, Gill notices 🙂 🙂

The really hard bit, is remembering to do it, see Gill again 🙂

If you ever wondered about ‘Road Rage’, this is what is at the beginnings of that.

Back to the slide above,  SCARF PRE Model.  We can use this to practice, to learn how to ‘catch the triggers’

Before a meeting / an interaction you know might be tricky in ‘Red Mist’ terms, think about which of the domains might trigger e.g. Autonomy, Status and Fairness.

  1. Predictive:- Before the interaction, think through in your ‘mind’s eye’, how you may respond rather than react to those stimuli.
  2. Regulatory:- During the actual interaction, notice which stimuli are triggering and as above Name it, Claim it, Tame it.
  3. Explanatory:- After the event, replay it in your mind’s eye and explain what what happened in terms of the stimuli, what they triggered in you, and whether you reacted or responded

Remember, Who makes you angry?

You make yourself angry, stuff happens then you make yourself angry 🙂

What triggers that, is what this post has been about 🙂

  • What order would you put the SCARF triggers in, for you in general?  (They will vary by context)
  • What triggered you most today?
  • What triggers your partner the most?
  • If you have children, what triggered them today?
  • What triggers your Boss?