The emotional hijack – how do you coach a client to increase their emotional regulation and prevent them ‘shutting down’, asks Nicole Berg
If you’re like me, now and again you’ll have a client with whom you really, really enjoy working. (I count myself lucky as this happens more often than not.)
Elinor (not her real name) is one of those clients; among other traits, she readily opens her life to me as her coach. Because of this, I was surprised when she asked for coaching around the topic of emotional regulation, saying that she believed her direct reports viewed her as ‘walled off’ – emotionally cold and distant, when this couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, Elinor shared that she has a pattern of becoming overwhelmed by emotion; her voice trembles, her body quivers and tears come involuntarily when she is discussing something she is passionate about. For example, parental leave policies in different countries and companies (no, she doesn’t have personal experience with this, she’s just exceptionally empathetic).
She doesn’t want emotion to rule her actions in this way; instead, she attempts to avoid this by emotional shut-down, so her direct reports think of her as someone who is cold, and has a wall up. This is not who she is, and not how she wants to be known.
Under the surface
The neuroscience of high emotions explains Elinor’s physiological characteristics of emotional overwhelm. In an emotionally triggered state, a person is in ‘fight or flight’ mode, a term also known as the amygdala hijack. It’s been estimated that in this state, up to 75% of conscious reasoning is lost as the amygdala, a part of the limbic system involved mainly in emotional response, takes over from the prefrontal cortex – the reasoning portion of the brain.
A person is not his or her best or most resourceful problem-solver in this state. In Elinor’s case, the threat of triggering this threat response now triggers the threat response.
While Elinor could easily recognise when this was happening as she began to fight back tears, for example, any person can recognise his or her physiological response by raised heart rate (and corresponding blood pressure), which is caused by releasing stress hormones to prepare the body for fight or flight.
There is almost always some visible signal of this as well – a clenched jaw, balled fists, a furrowed brow. A former psychology professor of mine shared how one clinical patient seemed to have no signal, though they sought this together. Finally, they discovered he was curling his toes in his shoes when he entered a triggered state.
A dimmer switch
Anthony Eldridge-Rogers, CEO and Founder of FRC (Foundation for Recovery Coaching) Worldwide, works often with emotion. In his recovery coaching work, he finds that addictions are coping mechanisms, and emotions are a key part of what is being ‘coped with’. Anthony suggests a metaphor of an on/off light switch – Elinor’s emotions appear not to have graded settings.
The goal in working with Elinor would be to help her create choice in her responses, and more options between ‘on’ and ‘off’.
His first port of call would be to look with the client at the kinds of situations that lead her to feel overwhelmed. Are they personal or professional? Has this occurred throughout her whole life? Are there certain topics that trigger a highly emotional response? What are the shared characteristics between different situations that lead to overwhelm? When does she feel safer? More powerful?
He would also keep watch for anything that connects to past relational dynamics; saboteurs or inner critics; the narratives the client creates and the client’s beliefs.
Conversely, or concurrently, perhaps Elinor experiences the world in a natural-born highly sensitive state. Anthony points out that we know people’s brains are not wired in the same way, and two different people may process data differently – the existence of autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit disorder, for example, illustrates this clearly.
It may be that the client’s overload of data occurs because she is an empath. It’s worth noting that the amygdala processes external as well as internal data (the latter including thoughts and beliefs), and doesn’t distinguish the two; this could contribute to the client’s overload of information accordingly.
In many workplace cultures, individuals are made wrong, or make themselves wrong, for being highly sensitive – they think that they shouldn’t feel, or react, in the way they do.
Encouraging acceptance will not only create greater peace of mind, but will help the threat response from becoming a threat in and of itself.
Beyond Coaching
In his work with people in recovery, Anthony has noticed a trend. Many people who are calm and on peak form in a crisis, like Elinor, have had experience of this previously in their lives. For instance, they may have grown up in a household that had addiction in it. In an instance where childhood experiences and trauma may be impacting life, a coach will have a conversation with their client about counselling as an appropriate way to process unresolved issues and emotions, either in addition to the coaching, or prior to further coaching.
This was not the case for Elinor, however, and we proceeded to apply coaching techniques to the situation.
Fear of Dogs or Just Fido?
Anthony also speaks about the importance of recognising contextual responses – the relationship Elinor has to content is significant. Is she becoming emotionally overwhelmed in all situations? To use an analogy, is this a generalised fear of dogs – or a fear of one particular dog, or dogs in a certain location?
Elinor states that she does in fact have different responses based on certain scenarios – in particular, she deals with large-scale crises (or supports her direct reports to do so as appropriate) as part of her role; in these situations, she’s calm, level-headed, confident and even brings levity.
As crises provide an option to have another way of responding, the questions to ask become: What goes on, internally and externally, for Elinor in these situations? What are the stories she tells herself about herself in crisis? What can we apply to other emotionally challenging scenarios?
Using and building on the resources Elinor already has, and applying them to challenging situations, is the way forward for Elinor. Mindfulness – being conscious of incoming external and internal data and the body’s responses – in emotionally charged situations, has proved helpful for her.
Once her emotions have a greater degree of regulation, Elinor’s direct reports will be able to see these emotions and to know Elinor more fully because of it.
- Next Issue: Reframing beliefs in a challenging relationship to allow space for growth
References
- J Hadley, ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Holistic Healing newsletter, 9 May, 2010
- The client found mindfulness, as described in this article, helpful: http://bit.ly/2OY0J6e