Emotional Hijacking

“One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

An Understandable Misconception

Do our thoughts create negative feelings? How can we have more control over our thoughts? A common idea is that our thoughts produce our emotions. Something along these lines:

• Something happens in the environment (Cut off in traffic, someone makes a rude comment about you, a friend reads your message but doesn’t reply)
• You think to yourself, “What an a-hole!”
• Then you feel angry

While this seems to make sense research on brain scans tell a somewhat different story.

A Short Lesson in Neuroscience

Our brains are made up of three parts. We have the Reptilian Brain, which regulates our physical functions. Second is the Limbic System, which regulates our emotions. Finally we have the Neocortex, which is the logical thinking and decision-making part of the brain. The connections from the limbic system to the neocortex are way, way more than the connections from the neocortex to the limbic system. Simply put, this means that our ’emotional brain’ can (and often does) hijack our ‘thinking brain.’ Whenever we feel strong emotions (love, anger, fear, worry, etc) those emotions in a sense colour our thoughts, and the thoughts we subsequently feel are influenced by whichever emotional state we are in. The implication is that it is not negative thoughts that create negative emotions, at least not most of the time.

Under normal circumstances the emotional brain and the logical brain work in tandem with each other, with the emotional brain reining the logical brain in from being too ‘cold and calculating’, and the logical brain reining the emotional brain in from being too ‘black-and-white’ in its thinking. A bit Yin and Yang, or Spock and Kirk as it were.

High Emotional Arousal makes us Stupid

Literally. At least for as long as we’re emotionally aroused. There is a part of the emotional brain called the amygdala, and one of its roles is to alert us to any possible danger in our environment – resulting in what we commonly call the fight or flight response.

If you are crossing the street and seemingly out of nowhere a truck comes barreling down the road in your direction, you don’t have time to stop and think, “Should I move out of the way or not? I wonder how fast it’s travelling? Will it hit me?” The amygdala instinctively takes over, alerts you to the threat, and you quickly jump out of the way. Your emotional brain has to be faster than your logical brain in order to quickly avoid danger. And the more intense the threat is, the more the emotional brain locks all mental resources on dealing with it, shutting down the higher functioning neocortex.

When we are highly emotionally aroused we are quite simply, not in our ‘right’ minds. We have kicked Spock off the bridge. This is why trying to appeal to someone’s logic when they are angry is difficult, the neocortex is somewhat offline and they are locked onto whatever they are angry about. The angrier they get the less sense they seem to make.

Someone in the grips of fear can barely think straight, and what little thoughts they can think will be clouded by the emotional brain – resulting in thoughts of impending doom.

Are You in any Real Danger?

Well no, and to some degree yes. No, because most of us aren’t facing real threats to our survival on a daily basis. There are no venomous snakes, spiders and predators lurking around every corner, not unless you live in Australia. But the emotional brain doesn’t make any distinction between a real threat and a perceived one, the fight or flight system responds just the same. Which means the fear, tension, nerves and anxiety one subsequently feels is the same as if one is facing real danger.

We have noted two things about emotional arousal when we are facing a real threat:

• Our attention is ‘locked’ onto the threat – narrowed focus of attention
• Our logical thinking is taken ‘offline’ – everything becomes black-or-white, we can’t see shades of grey

After we’ve successfully faced the threat the emotional arousal is discharged – either through facing it or running away, and everything goes back to normal. The challenge is that the ‘threats’ we face today aren’t life-threatening. They aren’t easy to physically identify and aren’t so easy to act upon either – they are mental threats rather than physical ones. So what are these modern threats? Financial worries, work pressures, strained relationships, fears of not living up to the standards depicted on social media and poor health habits to name a few.

These threats are often subtle and on-going, leading to us being partially, but constantly emotionally aroused. If high arousal makes us stupid, then low to moderate but ongoing arousal makes us constantly partially stupid.

Negative Thinking Patterns

Whenever we are thinking in very binary terms, all or nothing thinking, seeing only what fits our emotional state and not seeing the wider context and nuances, then chances are that our thinking brain has been hijacked by our emotional brain. This manifests itself in ‘black-and-white’ thinking, because the amygdala in the emotional brain looks at things in a very binary way – it either is a threat or not a threat.

Its also possible to have negative thoughts in the absence of emotional arousal. We may have been emotionally aroused at some point, or multiple points in the past. The negative thinking patterns then became a habitual way of thinking, but they can still be dealt with in the same manner.

Destructive thinking is thinking in absolute terms – always, never, complete. Here are some examples of what this sounds like:

• She ignored me when I greeted her, she must be angry at me!
• He’s late and hasn’t answered my text messages, he must be cheating.
• I am a complete failure!
• Why do I always mess everything up?
• I’ll never find a partner, I’ll always be alone.
• My speech was a complete disaster.
• What’s the point of even trying? Things never work out of me.
• She gave me a funny look. She must not like me.

Quick Interventions

Here are some simple but very effective ways to take control of your thinking back right now, and have more flexibility in your thoughts.

1. Relax about Relaxing

A constantly aroused brain is a constantly stressed brain. Attempting to work on negative thoughts, while the thinking part of the brain is being ‘held hostage’, is putting the cart before the horse. One of the easiest ways to negotiate with our emotional brain is to simply relax. When we are calm, the thinking brain is brought back into the fold. We are more able too see clearly and things that may have been seen as a ‘threat’ can now be viewed differently.

Focus on your breath

• Breathe in through your nose into your diaphragm for a count of 7
• Breathe out slowly (through the nose or mouth) for a count of 11
• Repeat the process for a few minutes
• If 7-11 is too much, try 3-5 or whatever feels comfortable. The main thing is to make the out breath longer than the in breath.

Try this now for a few minutes, and the changes you feel will encourage you to incorporate it into your daily routine. When you practice this for 5-10 minutes a couple of times during the day, it will be more easy to apply during emotionally challenging moments, and possibly even help you avoid getting overly aroused in the first place.

The more you are able to relax in a situation, you will feel calmer, and the calmer you are the more different the situation will feel, even if it hasn’t changed outwardly.

2. Challenge Negative Thinking Patterns

Once we’ve relaxed enough to lower the emotional tone we can now look at negative thoughts more objectively. We can start by making an effort to use more of the thinking part of the brain.

See a wider perspective

Just because a negative thought feels strong, that doesn’t make it true, because strong emotions will create a negativity bias. When thoughts are revealed to be irrational they lose their grip over us. Ask yourself:

• How do I know this is true, for a fact? How sure am I from 0 – 100%? What evidence is there?
• Other than that, what else could this mean?
• What positive meaning can I choose to give this?
• How can I use this to become more stronger/calmer/wiser?

Challenging them will help them lose their power altogether.

• I’m not good enough – Given the circumstances I’m doing the best I can.
• She is better than me at everything – She did this better than me today.
• I am a complete failure – Although that didn’t go how I had expected, parts of it were okay. I’ll do better next time.
• Why do I always mess everything up? – Nobody does everything exceptionally well all of the time, and nobody can always mess everything up. I now know better so I can do better.
• I’ll never find a partner, I’ll always be alone – I haven’t found a partner yet, and one way or another I have coped so far.

The more specific you are in challenging the thoughts, the more the analytical brain is activated.

• I’ll never have a relationship that works – I haven’t met the right person yet.
• I’ll never get over this – this is really challenging at the moment.
• There’s no solution – I haven’t found the best way of dealing with this yet.

When you see a situation differently, you think about it more clearly, and you become different in the situation, and the situation becomes different.

Summary

1. When highly aroused, the emotional part of the brain can overpower the logical part of the brain.
2. When this happens, we are rendered ‘stupid’ (less able to think clearly). Our thoughts are ‘painted’ the colour of whatever strong emotion we are feeling.
3. Being able to calm down and thereafter challenge the negative thoughts puts us back in control.

Negative thinking patterns like worrying are a misuse of the imagination. If we’ve been doing this for some time feeling fearful can become a habit. Since it is a habit, we can easily begin to practice a new response and immediately start to feel the powerful benefits – a stronger mindset, clearer thinking and a more balanced emotional life.