ATTENTION! You Could Be Highjacked!

On a recent shopping trip I was witness to a hijacking. Not the kind of typical hijacking we're accustomed to hearing about in the media; this was a hijacking of the brain! Specifically, the amygdala: an area in our brain that stores, encodes and interprets emotions. Unfortunately, whether you know it or not, you have been a victim of amygdala hijacking, and so have I. 

The incident I witnessed took place in a retail store when the supervisor denied a customer an advertised volume discount due to lack of inventory.  The customer  proceeded to approach other clerks to ask for the discount she had been denied by the supervisor. The customer's actions evoked a marked changed in the supervisor's behaviour and professionalism. He began to raise his voice telling her she was rude and to take her business elsewhere. Meanwhile, the customer continued to hurl derogatory comments at the supervisor. As she proceeded to the checkout stand, the emotional intensity increased and the supervisor reacted by throwing the customer out of the store uttering expletives in front of  many gobsmacked customers. The result of this unfortunate exchange? The supervisor was fired. 

So what would drive a supervisor to act in such a way that he would knowingly lose his job? An amygdala hijacking. This term was first coined by Daniel Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. He states that an emotional hijacking is a sudden and intense strong, emotional reaction that causes you to do something or say something irrational. Dopamine and adrenalin are pumped into the blood stream and the dreaded "fight flight" takes over. In other words, we are hijacked by our emotions. Thankfully, for most of us, this doesn't happen on a regular basis because our prefrontal cortex (the rational part of the brain) takes over before we put our foot in our mouth reducing ourselves to child-like behaviour. 

Can we eliminate the dreaded amygdala hijacking experience from our lives once and for all? The good news is yes! Through increased observation and awareness of our emotions and an intentional desire to change, we can achieve our goal. First step? Get to know your hot buttons.

Stay tuned for my next post: What are hot buttons and how can they be tamed?