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Have you ever wondered why seemingly such intelligent beings called our partners, family and friends, suddenly “lose it.” Something has triggered such a reaction.
It is usually fear !
It takes 1/60th of a second to engage fear. Why is this so?
In our first year of life the body has a system it develops to help ensure our very own survival. It is all about switching on and off our fear reflexes to make sure we survive. However, we are not conscious of them, and when events of life stimulate the fear reflexes, they can sabotage our relationships at any time by switching you back into your survival mode. Fear then becomes your motivator.
If a child develops normally, with a deep attachment bond to the parents or carers, it will ensure that love will override our primal fears and we feel physically and emotionally safe. All of this occurs at an unconscious level. However, life is often very fierce and we frequently do not feel emotionally safe or respectfully engaged according to how our neural networks have been wired.
Respectful engagement we have found looks totally different for each Social Brain Mode, which we will discuss in our next blog. To understand why respectful engagement is so critical to the engagement we have with others, we first need to understand how fear plays a role in our lives. These are primeval reactions and our bodies are wired to move away from danger to ensure our survival.
When we perceive something as fearful, there are three basic areas of fear that we can feel. The first one is about a fear of not feeling physically safe. It is known as our fight/flight reaction, where the body is prepared for action to avoid danger and adrenalin is released to enable us to fight or flee.
The second area is the fear of not being loved. If we do not feel loved we can feel emotionally unsafe. We often do not get in touch with this primal fear and use the first fear of fight or flight to react and get angry with the other person if we think they are not showing the loving behaviour in the way we would like to experience. So it is their fault and we try to make them unlovable by calling them names or blaming them so we certainly do not have to be vulnerable or responsible.
The third area is the fear that we will not be good enough in a particular situation, so we shame the other person if they are competent, so we do not have to acknowledge our primal fear, of not feeling good enough and we certainly do not have to take responsibility for changing any of our reactions - it is off course, the others persons fault. Our society totally reinforces this basic fear with its focus on criticism. We use the excuse that we are giving constructive criticism.
All human beings experience these fears but if we are not conscious of what fear we have engaged in a situation, we develop secondary behaviours as a child, to cover up our fears to not show our vulnerability to anybody else, particularly to our loved ones as we want to feel loved. So we might withdraw, or rage at the other, or feel sad and depressed or even embarrassed. As adults we have many, deeply dysfunctional behaviours, that we are not conscious of. We have not learned how to work with our emotions. When we form relationships with others, it challenges our personal identity, because they question our reactions and we want to feel connected and loved and feel offended. Once again it is our initial reaction, particularly our emotional reaction of fear that we need to identify under all the layers of our socialisation as adults.
The more wounded we are in relationships the more complex it gets. The solution is much simpler than you would realise. The body can only speak to you through its emotional reactions which are generated by brain chemicals. The brain is wired for love. We learn and grow best when we feel safe and loved. Fear will get our immediate attention, that is why it is so powerful and fear is used so much by the people in power to keep us in a disempowered position. Unfortunately, human beings, with an ego, (which we all have to different degrees) want to maintain that they are right and the other person is wrong. This only results in more fear, disconnection and dysfunction.
All it requires us to do is to acknowledge our fear, as the book by Susan Jeffers: “Feel the Fear But Do It Anyway.” describes it. This is all it takes to dissolve the emotion: do not put a story around it, simply observe it and acknowledge it, then it can dissolve as it moves us from our fear centre of the brain to our thinking centre. It works just like a small child that says to its mother, “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy” and the child does not stop until the mother says: “What do you want.” The fear reaction is the same, it is there to get your attention, you need to let your body know you have heard it, and simply respond with a statement “I am feeling fearful of not being …… (fill in whatever the fear is). This is not just only for the sake of our relationships, but fear is often the root cause of diseases in our body. So it impacts every level of our wellbeing.
Each Social Brain Mode has a different fear that dominates their reactions, what do you think yours is? The next time you have a strong emotional reaction, see if you can simply acknowledge what fear becomes engaged. You might have to repeat the acknowledgement several times, but try it and see what happens.
Did I not feel safe?
Did I not feel loved?
Did I not feel good enough?
If you want to know how to overcome your fear reflexes, you can find out more about it in our e-book “Your Social Brain Mode”, where I describe how to emotionally sooth each Social Brain Mode, or by contacting me personally if you wish to address long standing emotional issues you may be experiencing when relating to others. I can help you to identify what empowering strategies you need to master and how to overcome your emotional dysfunction. We all want to strive towards feeling happy, content and fulfilled in our relationships with ourselves and others.
Happy reflections!
Dr. Arini.
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