THREAT: Why You Can’t Think Straight (and Why That’s Not Your Fault)

Have you ever noticed how ridiculously cross you can get sometimes when things don’t go to plan?

Not mildly irritated or a bit grumpy but properly, disproportionately cross?!

When it happens people tell themselves to “calm down”, or someone else chips in and tells you to be “be more professional”, or “get a grip”.

Which is sounds like sage advice…until you realise it is deeply unhelpful. Because at that moment, your brain physically can’tdo what you’re asking it to do. Furthermore, criticising yourself or having other people for you, just keeps you stuck in that unhelpful place.

The Overarching Problem With Threat

Here’s the neuroscience in a nutshell that could change quite a lot in your life (at work and at home) for the better!

And I’m speaking from experience because that’s what it did for me…

When your brain perceives a threat, blood and oxygen are redirected away from the prefrontal cortex — the part of your brain responsible for:

•        rational thinking,

•        decision-making,

•        impulse control,

•        and seeing the bigger picture.

Instead, the blood and oxygen are diverted to the parts of the brain responsible for survival.

It sounds a bit deep, but honestly a quick pick and mix of physiology and evolutionary biology can be transformational for your stress levels and your thinking capability!

Antonio Damasio’s work on emotion and decision-making shows that thinking well and emotion are inseparable — and that when emotions run high and we perceive a threat, our rational processing is compromised (Descartes’ Error).

Daniel Kahneman describes the same phenomenon from a different angle: under threat and cognitive load, we default to fast, automatic thinking and lose access to our ability to engage in deeper and more reflective thought (Thinking, Fast and Slow).

So when you feel threatened:

•        you don’t just think badly,

•        you literally haveless thinking capacity available.

That’s why a ‘threat’ (like something changing at the last minute) makes people irrational and cross. They don’t have enough blood and oxygen in the bit of the brain that helps you to think and behave well.

So it’s not them (or you!) being difficult, stroppy or over-emotional. You are simply seeing theirs (or your) brain doing its job – diverting the blood and oxygen away from your brain so you can get ready to…

Fight, Flight, Freeze… and Appease

When threat kicks in, your nervous system shifts into a Paleolithic response that evolved to keep you alive.

You’ll recognise the patterns in a heartbeat:

•Fight: get angry, argue, snap.

•Flight: avoid, disengage, disappear.

•Freeze: do nothing, procrastinate, feel stuck.

•Appease: say “it’s fine” when it really isn’t.

These responses made sense when threats were physical and immediate, so when our ancestors were facing a bear or a marauding invader into the camp on a horse with a pack of dogs!

The problem is that modern threats, are rarely bears. Or life or death.

They’re emails.

Meetings that get moved.

People saying something unfair.

And uncertainty.

Certainty: The Trigger We All Underestimate

One of the biggest and most underestimated threat triggers is loss of certainty. And I talked about it in my last Tea Break Coach video. If you want to watch it back, it’s here:

Understanding the Threat Response in Leadership

Your brain is a prediction machine. It is constantly scanning for patterns so it can conserve energy and stay safe. When something predictable suddenly becomes unpredictable, your brain flags danger. And your brain isn’t very good in that split second at distinguishing between life and death type danger and irritating news.

This means that when you thought:

•        the meeting was at nine,

•        the plan was agreed,

•        the weather would behave,

•        or someone would act in a way that made sense.

And then they didn’t…that tiny rupture in expectation can be enough to trigger a full on threat response that is out of proportion to the actual ‘thing’

So when afterwards you realise that getting snarky with someone or banging the table or fuming inwardly was a bit of a waste of time and might have made something worse and not better, at least you know why it is!

It’s not a personality flaw.

It’s a biological reaction.

Why “Just Calm Down” Doesn’t Work

Once threat has kicked in, telling yourself to be calm is like asking someone to do repeat the alphabet backwards whilst being chased by that bear…

Until the threat reduces:

•        the prefrontal cortex stays depleted of blood and oxygen and not able to work well,

•        emotional regulation is compromised,

•        perspective is limited.

This is why our insights often comes afterthe event, not during it. We think ‘Why did I say that?’

Or even if we see someone behaving really badly, perhaps behaviour that perhaps slips from banter into bullying we are shocked sure, but only later do we ask ourselves ‘Why didn’t I say anything?’ or ‘Why did I laugh at that, it wasn’t OK…’

It’s normal to rationalise what happened. Putting people into boxes – ‘they are good/bad’ and telling ourselves ‘I didn’t say anything because…’ is an easy way to put it to one side, but often that’s too simplistic to avoid it happening on repeat, because human beings are creatures of habit.

It is our default position to think badly of the person behaving badly. But the unfortunate truth is that whilst someone’s behaviour absolutely might a firm ‘No’, resolving the situation for good and resolving it well, is a bit more complex.

Just take a moment to look at ‘their’ behaviour through this lens too.

When people say “I don’t know what came over me”, they might be telling the truth.

The human threat response came over them.

And then it came over you.

This Is Where SCARF Comes In

Understanding the basic biology behind threat is a great first step to improve almost any human relationship.

Because a more useful thing to do than judging or labelling someone else, or berating yourself for what you did or didn’t do, is to ask yourself a more useful question:

What exactly is triggering this? or

Where is this coming from?

This is where David Rock’s SCARF model becomes so powerful.

Rock’s research shows that the brain responds to social threats — to status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness — using the same neural circuitry as it does for physical threat.

As Rock writes:

“The brain treats social pain as seriously as physical pain.”

— David Rock, Your Brain at Work

Which means that when someone threatens your:

•status,

•certainty,

•autonomy,

•relationships, or

•sense of fairness,

your brain reacts as if your survival is at stake. So whilst knowing about SCARF doesn’t stop someone behaving badly – yourself include it, it can start to explains it.

Putting the Two Together

THREAT explains why you lose access to rational thinking.

SCARF explains what is most likely to trigger that loss in modern life.

Once you understand both, you stop asking:

“What’s wrong with me/them?”

And start asking:

“Which threat just got triggered?”

That shift alone restores a surprising amount of choice.

And choice, based on knowing a bit more about SCARF (that’s next time) – is one of the most powerful antidotes to threat there is.

References (Primary Sources)

•        Damasio, A. (1994).Descartes’ Error. Putnam.

•        Kahneman, D. (2011).Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

•        Rock, D. (2008).SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others. NeuroLeadership Journal.

•        Rock, D. (2009).Your Brain at Work. HarperBusiness.

This blog is part of a set of 3. They can stand alone – but can build on one another:

THREAT: what happens in your brain.

SCARF: what sets it off.

PREFACE: how leaders and organisations reduce it — deliberately.

This build reflects our business philosophy at 100Brix. Each science backed training module stands alone, but it’s even better when you build on one with another, to create a bridge between two teams that don’t get on, or a clear set of steps for a leader to develop their management skills, or a pathway for young people to grasp the basics.

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