So all that progress we’ve made overcoming common human fears – like speaking in public, flying on a plane or just showing up in person – has taken a hit.
But, we seem to have forgotten how to function in a professional setting. The governor paused at times in his address, and normally (before the pandemic), that would have cued the crowd to clap. Unfortunately, there was an awkward delayed response, as the audience worked to recall how to react.
Pre-COVID, pleasing news might evoke an explosion of applause or even a standing ovation. But now, we seem to clumsily struggle to scoot out our chairs with napkins and silverware dropping to the floor as we move to an upright position in a show of honor and respect. That’s because we have caveman brain.
Here’s another example. I’ve heard successful businesspeople talk about how they’ve forgotten how to speak in a professional setting. A lot of families and pets are not impressed by an advanced vocabulary, and since that’s who we’ve mostly been speaking with or grunting at during the last two years, our communication skills may have suffered.
Being back together with groups of people is causing many of us to trip over our stress hormones and collectively tumble into caveman brain, like the herd of beasts our ancestors may have chased off a cliff. Think of our primitive brain stem throwing our intelligent cortex over its shoulder like a dead prehistoric animal and taking charge, telling our bodies to fight, freeze or flee when faced with a perceived threat. None of that works in a professional setting. So all that progress we’ve made overcoming common human fears – like speaking in public, flying on a plane or just showing up in person – has taken a hit.
Motivational speaker Mel Robbins says we have to trick our brains when fear creeps in. Before she gives a presentation in front of thousands of modern people, in modern clothes, using modern language, she moves her brain from fear to excitement.
“Fear is something that stops us all,” she says, “but it doesn’t have to. Fear is a physical state in your body that is exactly the same as excitement. Your heart races, you might sweat a little bit, you might feel tightening in your chest, you might feel a pit in your stomach, you have a surge of cortisol. It’s basically the way that your body goes into a hyper-aware state because it’s readying for action.”
So, how do we go from fumbling around with dread and move to smooth, positive anticipation? Mel would want us to change this experience for the simple part of our brains.
I get this, Mel. On a recent flight, I pulled an old trick out of my caveman brain toolkit. On bumpy flights, I used to position the little air fan above my seat directly at my face and create the sensation of wind on a roller coaster. “I like roller coasters,” says my caveman brain, now that we have the wheel and some simple machines. “Therefore, I’m having a good time and not thinking about falling out of the sky in this big heavy metal tube that I’m buckled into.”
She also says we should grab an “anchor thought” to reframe our minds from agitation to excitement. “An anchor thought is something that will anchor you, so that you don’t escalate any situation into a full-blown panic attack or into a situation where you screw things up.”
Mel wants us to make that anchor thought relevant to that scary thing. So, instead of focusing on the turbulence, for example, she wants us to focus on the people we love and the fun things that the flight is taking us to.
Like Mel, I like to nudge my caveman brain past the woolly mammoth event, as if the encounter already happened and I’m on to thinking about something that’s fun for my caveman, not scary, like a primitive roller coaster. QCBN
By Bonnie Stevens, QCBN
Bonnie Stevens is a public relations consultant. She can be reached at bonnie.stevens@gmail.com.
Leave a Reply