Foundations

What happens for you when you are in a difficult conversation? How aware are you of your triggers, and what happens physiologically for you when you are stressed? What can you do to stay present when this occurs?

Most people are not trained to be able to respond well when triggered. They get angry, go into their habitual reaction pattern, and then berate themselves (and/or others) afterward and vow to change and be more in control the next time. Then another trigger arises, and the pattern repeats.

In this section, you'll learn how to break that pattern. Recognizing when you are in a stress response and how you normally react, you'll be able to apply two key components of your experience — feelings and needs — using the Self-Connection Process to reconnect to yourself and be able to act in a way that more accurately reflects your values. In other words, instead of reacting, you will be present enough to act — to choose how you respond.

This simple (yet not always easy) skill is a first step to being able to be in disagreement and difficult conversations with teammates and coworkers without being in conflict. Let's get started.

Fight-Flight-Freeze (The Stress Response)

All too often in modern day-to-day interactions, people react to what is happening around them as though their physical well-being is being challenged. The human body only has one way to respond to perceived challenge, regardless of whether it is an actual physical threat or simply an unwelcome comment at the water cooler. The way the body reacts to both is by releasing stress hormones such as adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol into our bloodstream.

This process is referred to as the Fight-Flight-Freeze response, or alternatively, as the Stress Response.

The Stress Response serves you when you need to protect yourself from physical danger, like when a lion on the savanna is attacking you. Nonetheless, in work and home environments, triggering the Stress Response because you are dreading an upcoming conversation or because you are upset by an interaction with a colleague not only serves to reduce your effectiveness, but also is harmful to your health.

Once the deeper parts of the brain are triggered into the fight-flight-freeze survival reaction, it's difficult to think clearly and sequentially, and the conscious mind tends to be flooded with thoughts about who is right, who is wrong, and who deserves punishment. In addition, people will tend to respond to similar situations according to habitual patterns of thoughts and actions that they have developed over the course of their life, and it becomes very difficult to apply the language and communication skills they possess.

As a consequence of the release of these stress hormones, peripheral vision narrows, and blood is shunted to the muscles for flight or to fight and away from reproduction and immune function. The hands moisten and you are likely to feel shaky.

If you do not do something to stop the release of stress hormones, it's less likely you will be able to think clearly, sequentially, and logically, and you will tend to act in ways that are contrary to your values.

Finally, as you come down from the Stress Response, you may experience an adrenaline hangover, the symptoms of which are lack of motivation, fatigue and weakness, thirst, headaches and muscle aches, nausea, vomiting or stomach pain, poor or decreased sleep, increased sensitivity to light and sound, dizziness or a sense of the room spinning, and shakiness.

Being able to recognize when you're in the stress response is the first step to being able to change it. Next, we will look at two building blocks that will support you in reconnecting to yourself when you're triggered — needs and feelings.

Universal Human Needs

The term needs, as used here, refers to the motives for conduct. For instance, all humans need water, air, touch, connection with others, fun, play, meaning, care, intimacy, etc. Everyone wants these needs met in order to survive, and more than that, to have satisfying and meaningful lives.

All too often, people become fixated on a particular way of meeting a need — a specific strategy. This fixation can become the source of conflict within oneself and with others. Yet a need is never tied to one single strategy — there are always multiple ways to meet a need. Knowing what you need (and what others need) from moment to moment helps you find strategies that will meet your needs and theirs. And, knowing the needs you are seeking to meet with a particular strategy can help expand the possibilities that might meet those needs.

When people are not aware of their own needs, they tend to spend more of their time reacting to one another, and this often creates havoc in their lives. The core needs (on pages 15and 16) are grouped into three main categories and nine subcategories.

Feelings

Feelings are bodily sensations that signal whether your needs are being met by what is going on around you as well as inside you. Positive feelings tend to indicate needs met, and negative ones, needs not met.

Paying attention to your feelings when asked (by yourself or someone else) about a particular need, you are able to identify which needs the nonverbal parts of yourself interpret as met or not met. With practice, you will learn the signals from your body that tell you if the need you have guessed or your practice partner has guessed is accurate at that moment in time.

Feelings give you important additional information with which to navigate your internal and external worlds. When you have this additional information, you do not have to react to your feeling states out of habitual patterns of action, the early versions of which were learned in childhood and typically have been built upon and reinforced. Instead, you can examine your life with an eye to how you can better meet your needs and the needs of others.

For example, if you feel angry, instead of reacting as you normally would, you can inquire into what needs aren't met and then choose to try something different than your patterns would dictate. Choosing responses that are different than your habitual patterns allows you to learn how to free yourself from the mindlessness of these habits....