Don't Panic! How to Stop Emotional Hijacking & Successfully Manage Stress

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of being told to panic. While major crisis situations call for caution and reasonable action - the constant demand by external sources to keep people in an elevated sense of alarm is exhausting. What's even more annoying is that I'm feeling anxious ... and I don't even know why!

It probably comes as no surprise to you that disruption causes stress. Anxiety over volatile future events is also expected. People do not perform well in VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) simply because there often aren't any real answers. Humans like to have answers, to know what is next and to be able to make an action plan to deal with it.

In times of massive disruption, when the future is uncertain - that creates tension. The tension of 'not knowing' can be exhausting to most people. You might also feel unusually stressed and anxious. The reason is due to something called 'emotional contagion'. Emotional contagion is a term psychologists use to explain how people catch one another's emotional states - without even consciously realizing it.

Basically, you are being emotionally hijacked by other people unconsciously. It's a very fast process and the closer (or more respected) the person or persons are - the faster it happens. Mass panic can create emotional exhaustion just because you are constantly being 'triggered' and picking up on other people's emotional states (even if you are not personally affected or concerned). The danger of this can be:

• Emotional withdrawal (when you run out of energy to care)
• Steady-state anxiety (when stress becomes a fixed response)
• Impaired decision-making capabilities (because you don't have the energy)

Interestingly, most of us feel that our environments drive our emotions. In reality, your emotions are derived from your thoughts which may or may not be accurate. Rarely do we fact-check our internal atmosphere and that tends to build up bias in the way we think about our environment.

There are four ways to manage emotions of which only two that actually work well. You can avoid all negative events – which is impractical. You can suppress your emotions – which comes at a cost. You can assess your emotions to ensure accuracy. Additionally, you can manage your emotions through intentional mindset practices.

Emotional assessment to stop emotional hijacking

When you develop the habit of regularly ‘fact-checking’ your emotional responses, you can actually create significant positive changes in your basic emotional response. In other words, if you tend to respond to disruption with anger or anxiety, you can reduce your reactions significantly by developing a daily habit of emotional appraisal.

1.     Capture the emotional state. What happened and how did it make you feel. It’s best if your memory is fresh. I encourage you to make this a daily habit.

2.     Jot down your immediate raw emotional thoughts exactly as you felt during the event. We tend to adjust quickly or filter them - and it's best to capture the unadjusted thoughts. Do not judge yourself on your reaction!

3.     Analyze your raw emotional thoughts for distortion or cognitive bias. Are those thoughts representative of fact or are they distorted?

4.     Remove bias or emotional drift from your thoughts and rewrite them without distortion based on facts that represent what you actually know.

Common distortion include exaggeration, catastrophizing, labeling, mind-reading, discounting positive attributes, jumping to conclusions, predicting the future, and personalization.

For example: if someone cut you off in traffic, you might think: “What a complete jerk – they tried to kill me!” You have decided that this person is a jerk (labeling) who intended to cut you off (mind-reading), which may or may not be the case. You are also jumping to the conclusion that they are out to get you. You might even take this one step further and think: “No one in this town can drive”- which is a huge exaggeration.

If you were to rewrite this, you might say that you have no idea what type of personality the person has or if they intended to cut you off. You might also adjust these thoughts by including that some people can drive just fine and you don’t know about the entire town. The point is to stick to what you actually know and the facts you have.

Repeated practice of emotional assessment will allow you to become more mentally agile in stressful situations. You can also use this method to prepare for potentially stressful situations by theorizing how you might respond and adjusting your emotional thought process to remove obvious distortions. This allows you to free your mind from external influence, situational stress, and improve your reactions.

Managing emotions during disruption

Under extreme stress, we can experience what is commonly referred to as ‘fight or flight’. The problem with this is, repeated exposure can cause physiological damage. The ability to lower your stress response is essential for your overall health and well-being. When you are faced with a crisis situation, I encourage you to:

1.     Remind yourself of what you can control. It’s important to limit your emotional attachment to situations beyond your control and conserve your energy.

2.     Focus on a plan. It's likely that you will have to create a plan by which to manage the disruption and its effect on your lifestyle and work productivity. As a positive by-product, you will also be spending less attention on the crisis itself and more energy on doing something about it, which is empowering.

3.     Involve your immediate network. As you create the plan, involve your close family and friends in the planning process. Not only are you engaging them as co-decision makers where appropriate and removing the feeling of isolation - you are also giving them a healthy outlet to refocus their energies as well.

4.     Discuss the ‘elephant in the room’. It's important to clear the air and discuss the obvious problem or most serious repercussion of the current circumstances with those closest to you. This is often ignored. Discuss your fears and make it a safe space by which to share without judgment.

5.     Clear your mind. You can reset and clear your mind through meditation, mindfulness, or exercise. If you have a hobby you can spend time on during stressful times - do so! Give your brain something else to focus on. What is important is to clear your mind, calm your body, and reduce your stress response.

Even if you are not in a crisis situation, I recommend developing a daily habit of emotional assessment, mindfulness, or journaling to encourage clear cogitative function that is uninterrupted by emotional noise.

I have personally found that the practice of daily reflection and repeated meditation (or exercise) is helpful to clear my mind. I always feel better and think more clearly. As a bonus - my best ideas come after reflection and mental restoration.

Being aware that emotional hijacking does occur and we can catch other people's emotions will help you be prepared to conserve your own mental and emotional energy. If you are a more empathetic person like me - I find mass panic extraordinarily exhausting. I'm almost envious of those who are less in tune with other people's emotional states (like my husband - nothing bothers him).

Take time for you, clear your mind, assess your emotional state and do what you need to do to restore and rejuvenate yourself!

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