More off the cuff than usual today, friends. It’s been a year so far, with few signs of relief upcoming. Breathing deeply:

Do you speak and act out of fear and a strong desire for control, in situations where you cannot have it?

Signs that this may be happening to you:

1. Your muscles get tense

2. Your chest feels tight

3. You feel your heart thumping

4. Your ears ring

5. Your speech becomes louder, higher pitched, faster

6. You feel ANGRY, especially if it’s sudden and intense rage

7. You interrupt people and start gesturing more

8. You feel self-righteous

9. You feel certain that everybody around you is stupid, ignorant, and/or either out to get you personally or totally corrupt and willing to destroy anything in their path to forward their own interests

10. You feel physically, mentally, and emotionally drained after a brief encounter

What else?

Words spoken and actions taken in the throes of active emotional hijack can wreak lasting damage on our relationships, social function, and collective culture. The emotions themselves, however, are temporary. They serve to call our attention to something we need to address, something important to our safety, security, and well-being.

How we address the somethings is key to our personal and relational success or failure.

Self-awareness and self-regulation are the core skills to train here.

Some tips (from dialectical behavior therapy [DBT] and elsewhere):

–Ride the waves of emotion like an expert surfer—balance atop them as they complete their natural journey to dissipate on shore, delivering you to the beach again and again

–Check the FACTS of the situation–distinguish between what can be observed and described objectively and what you assume/judge/project subjectively–recognize how you may have it wrong

–BREATHE. Deep breaths stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering blood pressure and heart rate, countering the activating effects of fight or flight. Slow, steady breathing grounds us and allows us to see, hear, and think more clearly

–Ask yourself, “How will what I’m about to say/do really make things better in the long run, and at what cost?”

–Slow down. Count to ten. Call a time out. Step away. If it’s worth saying or doing, it can wait this little bit.

More and more I see impulsive behaviors, in reaction to acute on chronic individual and collective stress, destroying relationships and shredding our social fabric. It’s so frustrating, mostly because I see it as so preventable.

Self-awareness and self-regulation:  The concepts are simple. The skills acquisition and execution constitute a lifelong pursuit of wildly imperfect mastery.

YES, things are shitty everywhere. YES, we are justified, if only partially, in our fear, anger, frustration, impatience, and dissatisfaction.

AND we can choose, at any time, to manage these intensely uncomfortable emotions in ways that either connect us in solidarity and cooperation or divide us in mutual denigration and destruction.

Recognize emotional hijack. Breathe through it.   

Let us speak and act from our core values ahead of impulsive, fearful, and self-righteous rage.

And let us thank one another for the effort.

Read more along these lines from one of my heroes, Brene Brown.