home. On hearing her parents return, she decided to surprise them or probably play a prank on them; she quickly ran into her wardrobe. Unknowing to her, while she was running into the wardrobe she made a that caught her parents attention as they entered the house. Mr. Crabtree not expecting anybody to be at home thought that an intruder was in the house. His first instinct was to go for his .357 caliber shotgun, and straight up to his Daughter's room to investigate the noise. As Bobby Crabtree entered his daughter’s room, Matilda quickly rushed out of the wardrobe shouting Boo!!! just to startle her father, immediately Mr. Bobby Crabtree let the bullet fly straight to her daughter’s throat….. After about 12 hours of treatment, the 14 years old girl died. (Culled from: New York Times, The shooting of Matilda Crabtree)
The above story happened in New York U.S.A. One might actually blame Mr. Bobby Crabtree for this tragedy; which is not totally wrong but the fact is that everyday we fall prey to this situation in which Mr. Crabtree has found himself; a situation where instead of thinking before we act, we act before we think. This situation Daniel Goleman in the book Emotional Intelligence referred to as EMOTIONAL HIJACKING.
Emotional Hijacking is a situation where the emotions or the emotional brain pushes us to act before the thinking brain comes into play. Primarily, our brains can be divided into two sections; the Emotional Brain or the Amygdala and the Thinking Brain or the Neocortex. Both aspects of the brain work differently in most cases, for instance, when one mind is telling you to loan your good friend some money while another mind is telling you that he will not pay you back because he's unemployed, these are the two separate aspects of the brain at work. The emotional brain due to sympathy is encouraging you to give, while your thinking brain is working more on facts and telling you he might not pay back.
The clear fact is that the thinking part of the brain is very rational and is meant to control the excesses of the emotional brain, so that for instance you do not fall deeply in love with the wrong person or that you don’t get too scared in the smallest of situations, or that you don’t get too angry at someone who has been good to you. But there exists a little ‘problem’ in the structure of the brain and the neural pathway that hampers the control the thinking brain has on the emotional brain, but before we get to that, consider the following….
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you reacted to someone or something and
afterwards, you regret reacting that way? Have ever yelled at someone for a reason too little for the shout, but which you only realized afterwards? Have you ever gone to the market to buy a beautiful cloth only to come back and regret buying it? Have you ever done a good for someone and afterwards you realize that you should not have done? Have you like Mr. Crabtree taken an action at first instinct which you would give anything to take back? Don’t beat up yourself much; it is not totally your fault. This is the reason why:
The ‘problem’ with the brain structure which causes emotions sometimes to take control even before the thinking brain understands the situation is that the nervous link between the sense organs, Thalamus and the emotional brain is shorter than the link between the senses, Thalamus and the thinking brain.
In simpler terms, the wire or road linking the emotional brain and the senses is shorter than the wire or road joining the thinking brain to the senses. What this means is that when the senses perceive something, it goes into the brain straight to a bus stop called the thalamus, the thalamus. The thalamus converts the message to a language the brain can understand. But because the emotional brain (Amygdala) is closer to the thalamus, the emotional brain receives the message first before the thinking brain (neocortex) receives the message. In such a case the emotional brain is the first to react to an impulse before even the rational thinking brain starts to act. This is why immediately you see a man with a gun you become scared, your heart beats faster warning you of danger even before you realize that the person with the gun is actually a police officer in which case there is no cause for alarm… yes that is the emotional brain acting first. That is why when you see a crowd of people running towards you, your fist instinct will be to run with them before you even begin to wonder why they were actually running?
Emotional brain receives the message first that people are running towards you before the thinking brain even gets to wonder, why they were actually running. Once the emotional brain receives the message, without even consulting the thinking brain, it mobilizes all the hormones necessary to counter the situation. Such hormones like Epinephrine, Nor-epinephrine (the Fight-or-flight hormones), serotonin and Adrenalin. These hormones will tell you to either run or fight back or hide or be strong or cry or any other reactions that characterizes the emotions.
In the case of Mr. Crabtree, his emotional brain took over and secreted hormones that urged him to pick up a gun and fight the intruder, without giving the thinking brain time to consider the possibility that his daughter had come home early or did not even leave at all as was the case in this story above. Everyday people fall prey to this structural situation of the brain; they act before they think, and afterwards regrets follow.
Even though the structure of the brain is already built to be that way from our birth, it does not mean that all hope is lost. We can learn to control our actions…. The key is in the realization that the emotional brain does not think for itself like the thinking brain does, instead it learns from experiences. The actions initiated by the emotional brain are based on what it has learnt over its lifetime. If for instance, you have had several experiences where someone is being killed by a gun and at that moment, your heart beats faster because you are afraid, the emotional brain learns this reaction, such that anytime you see a gun, your first reaction will be that your heart will start to beat fast and you unintentionally become afraid, until you teach it (the emotional brain) another response towards seeing a gun. The clearest example is the common reaction most people have when they come in the slightest contact with a cockroach. Though we may never have seen a cockroach bite or kill someone, yet whenever we see it we become startled and sometimes shout as if something terrible had happened. This is as a result of what the emotional brain has learnt from watching other people over the years, so that the more people around you fear cockroaches, the more you will fear cockroaches. This will continue until you teach the emotional brain another response such as getting angry and killing the cockroach instead of running scared (This explains why most rural dwellers do not fear cockroaches as much as the urban dwellers, they probably see it every day and have developed a nonchalant emotional reaction to it). This may be referred to as getting accustomed to…. Since it is clear that the thinking brain is more rational then the emotional brain, one can teach his brain not to act immediately but to consult the thinking brain first. When you find yourself in any situation do not be so quick to act, give your thinking brain time to come into play with its rationality before you start to react (it usually happens in seconds). If you continue in this way for some time, then the emotional brain will eventually learn to always consult the thinking brain in every situation so that they can go into action together.
The key to achieving this is self awareness or simply knowing your feelings. Once you find yourself in any situation, take some seconds to ask yourself these very important questions;
What have just happened?
How do I feel right now?
What can I do in this situation?
If you can cultivate the habit of doing these always; then you are on your way to becoming a better emotional man.
Inspired by Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence.
Nice write-up , !
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