Stop Overreacting Read online

  To truly understand the difference between an appropriate feeling and an emotional overreaction, it is necessary to consider the steps that take place in our minds and bodies as we make connections between thinking and feeling. Some of us make rapid assessments and are suddenly overcome by extreme emotions. An exploder will just let it out and take a strong stance without making sure that his perceptions are accurate. An imploder will find the emotions that have been stimulated to be unbearable and will shut down as if the worst possibility has actually happened. In an overreaction, something about the situation has stimulated intense emotions, which are guided through a narrow interpretation and emerge as a rapid and poorly thought-out response.

  In the next chapter, I will help you understand the important difference between intense emotions and intense feelings. Although you may not be aware of it, different parts of the brain work together to help us make sense of the world around us. When the thinking and feeling parts are working in harmony, we can use all of the information in a thoughtful way. However, some situations stimulate a knee-jerk emotional response that is caused by a neurological short circuit. At that moment, the thinking and emotional parts of our brain are disconnected, and we are unable to access all of our memories and working knowledge. I call these kinds of reactions unprocessed, as they are “raw” and emerge without reflection or self-awareness.

  Unprocessed emotions are well-known to all of us, as they originate in childhood when we have fewer coping mechanisms. Usually just experiencing this emotional intensity creates anxiety, which complicates and exacerbates the experience. Even if we’ve learned more appropriate responses to certain emotions, the logical part of our brain isn’t available to help us at that moment.

  The answer to identifying overreaction has more to do with the process of the experience than with the intensity of the experience. There may be a straight line between the trigger and the response, but the one thing that has been left out is the most important aspect—thoughtful reflection.

  Three Ingredients of Overreactions

  All overreactions contain three ingredients: the event that triggers a sense of danger, an immediate response that involves our emotions as well as our physical state, and an interpretation of unfolding events that may be colored by defenses and emotional memories. Although researchers around the world debate the exact sequence and contribution of each aspect (Lewis 2005b), all agree that these components influence each other almost simultaneously. The way we view a situation has a profound effect upon our physical and emotional response; but our physical and psychological well-being at that point in time, as well as our acquired beliefs, also have a profound effect upon the way we view a situation. In the past decade, hundreds of published research studies have shed light on the different components that are involved in attaching factual and emotional meaning to events. The way that people comprehend and regulate their emotional responses has also become an important topic to psychotherapists from many different backgrounds. All of this new information about emotional regulation has led to cutting-edge strategies that can help you understand and change overreactions.

  Consequences of Overreacting

  How often have you lost your temper and lashed out with words or physical aggression? How many times have you felt so overwhelmed that you froze or felt like you were going to faint? Have you ever had a reaction that led you to feel paralyzed by deep despair and hopelessness? If we don’t take the time to calm down enough to approach situations in a more thoughtful way, our responses usually create additional problems. Emotional overreactions often cause us as much pain as they cause for the people around us. Problems may seem impossible to solve, and relationships may seem worthless. Miserable moments may spread into days before somehow something inside us shifts and we are released from the spell.

  Whether your style is to explode, implode, or do a little of both, there are always consequences. Feelings provide us with information that is vital to our well-being. Each time we become aware of a problem in our life, we have an opportunity to solve it. By understanding our feelings, we can learn a great deal about ourselves and the other people involved in any given situation. In contrast, a reaction that excludes thoughtful awareness makes it impossible to use the information that we could otherwise have learned from. By succumbing to our overreaction, we suffer the worst part of the event but compromise our ability to take hold of the feature that might actually be useful. We end up repeating rather then learning from our experience.

  In each of the following examples, you’ll meet people who experience an emotional response with little awareness of what’s happening. They respond in different ways but are all filled with remorse later. The ways that they attempt to appease their guilt only reinforce the patterns that led them to be overwhelmed in the first place.

  Paula’s Story

  Paula was dismayed when she read her latest bank statement. On the one hand, she knew that she had been using her debit card a lot lately, but she had made a real effort to cut down on spending as much as she could. Instead of enjoying her morning cappuccino at the gourmet coffee house near her office, she was buying coffee from the office vending machine. She had replaced her expensive face cream with one from the drugstore and taken two pairs of shoes to be repaired so she wouldn’t need to replace them. When her daughter, Carla, casually told her that she needed $80 to contribute to the limo for junior prom and that she had seen a cool dress for only $200, Paula snapped. She screamed at Carla that $200 was a great deal of money and that if $200 was not that big a deal, she should pay for it herself.

  Andy’s Story

  Andy had three files to clean up and at least twenty phone calls to return. Business had been tough recently. Just yesterday, the project he had been pitching for the past month had been rejected. When he tried to think about what he could have done differently to win the deal, he found himself second-guessing his pricing and doubting that he would have been able to do the work. The sight of the unanswered messages on his phone was too much to take. Wishing he could just take the rest of the week off, he sighed and looked at his computer screen. Then, glancing at the phone by his left hand and the bulging folders beside the mouse pad, he clicked on his solitaire game and just zoned out for the rest of the morning.

  Consequences

  Paula and Andy had little awareness of the triggers that caused them to overreact. After she exploded at her daughter, Paula was filled with remorse. Carla had been so helpful to her this past year, and Paula had fully intended to make her prom a special reward. Paula had always resented the fact that her own parents were absorbed by the special needs of her hyperactive younger brother and had little energy left over for her. They seemed to take her good behavior and excellent grades for granted and were stingy with presents or praise. From the time she entered high school, Paula had worked hard to be able to supply herself with small things that helped make her feel special. After Carla was born, she vowed that she would always do her best to make her daughter know how much she was valued. Paula juggled all her responsibilities in order to be an available and supportive parent and had done her best to reward Carla with the kinds of treats she had yearned for when she was a teenager. If her daughter now took those things for granted, then the fault was Paula’s own.

  After she snapped at her daughter, Paula was flooded with guilt. In the middle of offering an apology, she impulsively offered to buy Carla a new pair of shoes so that the prom outfit would be perfect. Paula’s attempts to appease her guilt in this manner would only lead to more financial pressure and ultimately force her to sacrifice the few luxuries in her own life that helped her ward off the unbearable feeling of being deprived.

  In a similar way, Andy regretted that he had wasted precious time by zoning out while on his computer. He couldn’t explain to himself why he hadn’t been able to focus on the work that needed to be done that day and felt even more discouraged and overwhelmed when he left the office. Andy couldn’t remember the last time h
e had felt this tired and disorganized. He was used to winning deals and getting complimented for his creative and dynamic presentations. These days, he felt old and passed over. He resisted giving in to his sense of defeat, as it made him feel too much like his father. His father had moved across the country after divorcing Andy’s mother, and although he called occasionally, Andy rarely saw him. His father had drifted from job to job and eventually developed a chronic health problem that left him unemployed and almost destitute. By not allowing himself to process the fear of failure that had been stimulated after one day of disappointment, Andy had awakened a dread of incompetence. His coping method of escape only took him closer to realizing his worst fears.

  After the Overreaction

  Without awareness, the problems that cause us to overreact lead to cycles of overreaction, remorse, compensation, and renewed angst. If we become loaded with feelings of guilt and regret for overreacting, we make it even worse for ourselves. How different it might have been if Paula and Andy could have connected their first emotional responses with the triggering circumstances. If only they could have recognized their feeling states and figured out that old emotional memories were fueling discomfort. To do that, they would first need to develop skills to help them process emotions.

  End-of-Chapter Exercise: Do You Know Your Style?

  To manage your reactions, it is important to begin by learning what kind of style you have. In this section, I’ll help you become more aware of the way you tend to react. Consider the following questions:

  When someone gets very angry at you, do you tend to withdraw?

  Would people who know you describe you as someone who is mainly logical?

  When the stress in your life builds up, are you likely to feel fatigued or ill?

  When someone asks you how you are feeling, do you give them information about events instead of a description of your emotional experience?

  Do you often zone out or have escape fantasies?

  If you said yes to most of these questions, then chances are that you fall into the imploder style.

  Now think about these questions:

  Do you frequently lose your temper or fight about an issue that seems important in the moment but that you barely remember a few weeks later?

  Do you speak your mind if you think someone has acted inappropriately?

  When someone challenges you, do you get annoyed and stand up to them?

  When another car cuts you off in traffic, do you try to catch up to them or start swearing?

  Do people tell you that you are too emotional?

  If you answered yes to most of these questions, then you probably are an exploder.

  I don’t know anyone who is always calm and fully aware of the things that might be troubling her at any given moment. But if you unleash your emotions before you can digest them, or if you avoid them in ways that preclude understanding, you may find yourself handling situations in ways you later regret.

  Chapter 2

  Processing Emotions

  The past decade has produced extensive research on how the brain works. For years, mental health professionals have puzzled over the question of nature versus nurture in the study of personality and coping styles. Today, we have a clearer understanding of the ways in which heredity and upbringing influence the way you handle your emotions (Cozolino 2002; Kandel 1998, 1999). To learn how to get a handle on your responses, you should take the time to understand what is going on inside your brain that leads you to overreact.

  How the Brain Operates

  With the help of sophisticated research equipment, social scientists and neuroscientists have a much better understanding of how different parts of the brain contribute to the processing of emotions (Lewis 2005a; Phelps and LeDoux 2005). If you were in a lab during an outburst or a shutdown, the technician could show you brain images that reveal exactly what is going on in your brain before and during your overreaction. You would be able to see the parts of your brain that are activated and, of equal importance, the neural pathways (or circuits) that connect the different parts of your brain. While a brain scan might look like a piece of art to your untrained eye, these technological advances have created a major shift in the way therapists understand emotional disorders.

  Left Brain and Right Brain

  Dr. Alan Schore (2003a), a leader in this field, has summarized the different parts of the brain that are responsible for feeling and thinking. The left brain is primarily responsible for the thinking skills we need. The right brain, especially the right frontal system, houses emotional states and affective experiences. Many episodes of overreaction are created when the amygdala, located in the right brain, is overstimulated (Rauch, Shin, and Wright 2003). When the amygdala is activated, it sets off a chain of events. Most important is the production of noradrenaline and neurohormones that contribute to a state of heightened arousal. This happens in a split second, and you may not even notice the changes in your body that this creates.

  In this state of heightened arousal, you are stimulated to respond in ways that have been genetically hardwired into the human species. Drs. Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius (2009) explain that we process information in different parts of the brain. The amygdala primes our bodies to rev up so that all of our available energy can help us fight or run away if we need to. Many parts of the brain then work together to glean information that will help us determine the best plan of action. However, this requires that the different parts of the brain be able to communicate quickly and efficiently to help quiet things down if all that extra energy isn’t needed. Unfortunately, it takes longer for the brain to access acquired knowledge in order to make the best decision possible, and the pathways that coordinate acquired wisdom with perceived danger cannot always interact in a way that works toward thoughtful appraisal (LaBar and Cabeza 2006). Under certain circumstances, the parts of the left brain that regulate higher levels of reasoning are bypassed. When this happens, we are primed to fight or flee but are unable to draw on the information that would help us reach the most useful conclusions.

  Thinking and Feeling

  By studying how different people respond to similar traumas, psychiatrists have recognized the importance of the neural circuitry and, in particular, the connections between the left and right parts of the brain. One of the most important differences between people who cope reasonably well and those who overreact is the ability to connect thoughts and feelings. The stronger the circuits that connect left and right, the better able you are to tolerate and diffuse intense emotions (D. J. Siegel 1999).

  Dr. John Gottman (1998) studied couples in conflict and demonstrated the difficulty of integrating rational thought when the amygdala is firing. Spouses who had been identified as having highly conflic­tual marriages were easily provoked into fighting with each other. They quickly became angry and tended to dismiss or reject each other’s views. Not surprisingly, laboratory tests done during their arguments confirmed high levels of corticosteroids that indicated amygdala involvement. After their arguments were interrupted and they’d had time to calm down, their stress hormones and other physical markers returned to normal levels. Only then could each truly understand what the other had been trying to say during the argument. In a state of high arousal, people just can’t attend to new information or communicate in a thoughtful way.

  If the right brain takes the lead when we become stressed, our ability to comprehend potentially important information is compromised (Gohm 2003). As arousal and anxiety subside, we are better able to register and integrate ideas that just couldn’t be processed earlier. Usually this information allows us to rethink some of the rapid assumptions we have made and revise our conclusions. The stronger the connections between the left and right brain, the better able we are to stay with an emotional experience, reflect on it, and ultimately respond in ways that are productive for everyone involved.

  Emotions or Feelings

  Sophisticated brain-imaging technology has also helped resea
rchers understand the neurological differences between emotions and ­feelings. Dr. Mona Fishbane (2007) stresses the difference between the two. Emotions occur in the right brain regardless of a person’s age, ethnicity, or education. These basic emotions include happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. In contrast, feelings are produced when the thinking (left) and emotional (right) parts of the brain work together to achieve an understanding of the emotional experience. Strong neural pathways between the left and right brain help us become more aware of our own feeling world as well as the feelings of others (Schore 2003b; D. J. Siegel 2003).

  Anger, for example, is an emotion that might be produced in a variety of situations. You might be angry if your children refuse to listen to you, your boss asks you to work late at the very last minute, a car cuts you off in traffic, or you get home after a twenty-minute drive and realize that the cashier at the restaurant gave you someone else’s take-out order. The emotion is anger, but the feelings in each situation might be completely different. When your children disregard your authority, you might feel resentful that you now need to become the bad guy and enforce a punishment. If your own parents were overly strict and you had vowed to be more of a friend than an authority, your resentment would be even more profound. If your boss asks you to work late, you might begin to feel helpless or envious of a coworker who left early and wasn’t around to share the job. When someone cuts you off in traffic, you might feel diminished, as if you are insignificant or unimportant. It might remind you of times when people assumed that you wouldn’t stand up for yourself and took away things you were entitled to. Opening up the wrong dinner order might make you feel furious at the cashier’s incompetence. You might find that your standards for your performance, as well as that of others, are extremely high and that you cannot tolerate people who make stupid mistakes. On the surface, these situations create the emotion of anger; below the surface, they create feelings of resentment, envy, worthlessness, and lack of control.