Dealing With Emotional Lightning Strikes
When I get hit in the head, I morph from Calm Dakota into Dak the Destroyer, Wannabe Viking Marauder.
Take the time a college roommate (Chelsea’s brother) tagged me in the head with a rubber ball as I studied for an engineering test. RWWWARG. Dak the Destroyer grabbed my chunky TI-89 calculator and angrily launched it for a direct, ship-sinking missile hit.
I instantly regretted it…like I always do when my brain short-circuits, overloads my reasoning facilities and proceeds to impulsive action.
Of course, we don’t want to do this. Yelling at a friend, reacting strongly to a partner’s comment, creating a rift at work – ideally, we avoid these things like they’re thirsty 12-pound mosquitoes.
Training for Lightning Strikes
I love Brene Brown’s rule for these situations: if her face is hot from anger or shame, she doesn’t “text, talk or type.” No interactions while she’s flooded and the filters between brain and mouth are broken. (Oddly, she doesn’t mention chucking calculators.)
In electronics, capacitors are devices that soak up a spike in current when things go awry. Rather than melting wires and arcing all over the place, it’s an energy vacuum cleaner. SHVOOOO, dangerous energy sucked into safety.
I think of Brene’s “no texting, talking or typing” as a technique to load a personal capacitor. It allows us to absorb emotional lightning strikes, defuse intensity, and safely return to normal operation.
Whether we’re hammering a reply to an inane Facebook post (“I can’t even believe this?!”) or unloading on our partners before we fully process a situation, remember the capacitor buried deep inside us.
First, we safely store that energy until we can release it without burning ourselves – and others. Then (and only then) we air the hard conversations that are worth having.
But aim for mild shocks in those conversations, static electricity style. Not vicious lightning, the scorching, hateful kind. That we defuse, let it ping around in our personal capacitors before we release it on others.
The Good News: We Can Improve
I haven’t thrown a calculator for years, but I still make mistakes.
One (lame) excuse is that I worked construction in high school. Let’s just say that calm, calculating behavior is an uncommon approach to dealing with feelings on job sites… Swearing or destroying a wall? HELL YEAH.
Still, how we deal with personal lightning strikes isn’t the important thing. What matters is having some plan for when things go awry.
Here are a few things that build my personal capacitance as I soldier on, chipping away at old habits and reactionary ways:
1. Meditation
After five months straight of daily meditation (<–not-so-humble brag), I still can’t levitate for an hour or slow my heart rate to 10 bpm. However, I like the concept of non-attachment to thoughts – hey look, a thought, neato – without diving deep into it. (For great meditations, check out the app Insight Timer.)
2. Practice Tough Conversations:
As Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius said, “When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.”
You probably aren’t an emperor (or are you?!), but it’s powerful to recognize that people will do frustrating things. (Check out The Daily Stoic for an easy entree to Stoicism or the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
3. Calm Role Models
Seek out quiet, powerful leaders who teach us to be better. For example, Yvon Chouinard’s book Let My People Go Surfing inspired my approach to business. For a comprehensive take on leadership, I also recommend The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.
Personal Capacitors For The Win
Next time lightning strikes your romantic relationship, during a work meeting, via a tough friend conversation, or just someone on Facebook who you immediately want to throttle, pause for a second.
Silently repeat NO TEXT, TALK OR TYPE as your personal capacitor diffuses the lightning strike. Take a deep breath and let the red color drain from your face. Let reason return. THEN engage.
Just don’t hit me in the head. Because then all bets are off.
Dakota, thank you for this today, very timely in my life. Please keep up the writings…
That’s exactly what I was about to say, Ramon! I’ve felt on the brink of chucking a calculator (hang on, what are those, anyway?) for most of 2020, and this post felt like such a good time out to regroup and remember we’re all struggling – but can always keep our eyes on progress if not perfection.
Go Jules Go recently posted…#NeverInNewJersey Round 3!
Phones are too expensive to throw, so I keep an old calculator in my back pocket at all times.
Glad to hear you found it useful! Intense times out there huh? No text, talk or type…over and over.
Thanks for the reminder in how to create some space as we navigate these travails, Dakota.
A lovely way to get us to think before we act. A personal capacitor might be a little more relatable than “take a deep breath” for some of us. I like it.
Instinctual reactions served us well in the jungle when we foraged for food, but times have changed. Sometimes it can be hard to turn off those instincts.
And of course, you would be a Stoicism fan 😉 Meditations is fantastic, but not an easy one to grasp to start things off. I like to recommend: “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by Irvine. It’s approachable.
Now that you’ve skipped the long drought on this blog and hit us readers with a great piece, bring on more!
Chris@TTL recently posted…From Hobby to Business: Making What’s Fun Into a Job
Good call on the simpler Stoicism stuff! Thanks for that. As for blogging, wellll, it’s been 7 years and sometimes I feel like doing other things, ya know? It’s a hobby, not a job, so I try to keep it fun!
Haha, that’s fair… but I’m still going to prod you! 😉
Chris@TTL recently posted…The Value of Time: A Telling Tale of Spending vs. Living
Forty years or so ago I was living in the woods (northern Cal.) still trying to learn not to throw things, etcera. A raw time. At one point I congratulated myself for only punching walls, for example, instead of people. I knew then that I was ready for college!
From my vantage of 1.72 years and in the middle of my second childhood and 2. Assembling a master battery switch that will charge the capacitors in my inverter without a “lightning strike” ,I think this is a great blog, thank you. You have sent along a lot of good links lately as well as entertaining writing. Be well and safe
Your second childhood sounds excellent to me! We can all aspire to that kind of outlook. Enjoy it!