Avoiding an amygdala hijack

There will no doubt be a fair number of you who  – having read the title of this post – know where I am going. However I expect many many more might think I have made the penultimate word up!

So before I tell my story let me explain.

In his book “Emotional Intelligence at Work” Daniel Goleman describes the amygdala as “the brain’s emotional memory bank” – of triumphs and failure etc. At any point he says the amygdala  is checking to match  ”what is happening now to the stored templates of our past experiences”. So if you are having a bad experience this may be made worse by equating it to something that happened in the past which has lingering bad memories associated too.

Clear? Well maybe it will be when I tell this story.

Regular readers will know that I have been taking part in an Emotional Intelligence in Leadership programme at Napier University here in Edinburgh. After the first 2 days we were given a workbook – and challenged to use what we had learned so that we can review this when we get together for day 3 next week. I have found it very helpful already.

The story.

I need to go to my bank to do some transactions and open a new account.  Edinburgh is having a tram system installed right now and the traffic disruption is dreadful. I had been at a meeting what should have been a short bus ride away from the bank but it took a bit longer. It had started to rain and was windy so I was a bit bedraggled. The branch is in the most beautiful old building in the City Centre. I stood in the queue in this glorious old banking hall admiring the wonderful ceiling and the marble pillars and patiently waiting my turn. I was called forward. All of the banking advisors are sitting behind desks – no glass barriers – very civilised. I sit down, tell the young man what I want to do and he tells me that I will have to see a specialist to do that and I will have to make an appointment to do so.

Now…….on my previous visit to this branch I  had a major fall out with the staff when they would not do anything I needed them to do – for a whole load of reasons that seemed to me to be for their benefit and not mine. I ended up storming out and going back to my desk where I did everything by phone. I had made a special trip into town for no good reason. I vowed that when I decided what I was going to do with my money they were not getting it!

So you can see what my amygdala was doing this morning can’t you?

But – I took a deep breath and calmly explained that I was not willing to make another trip to keep an appointment and could I speak to the manager. A very nice lady came over and explained why the young man could not help me ( he was not at the right level) but I did not need to see the person for whom I needed and appointment ( that was a misunderstanding between me and him – no blame) and she would find someone to help me as soon as possible. Five minutes later another very nice lady took me over to her desk and within 20 minutes I was done and dusted with her direct number to call for any future enquiries. I told her that they young man had actually handled a potentially irate customer very well and wanted her to tell him ( and his boss) that.

So there’s the proof. With a wee bit of practice you can stop an amygdala hijack. I kept cool. I told myself that there was no need to accept what had happened before. I also told myself that that was not what was happening anyway.  I calmly explained to someone who could do something about it what I wanted and why. And let me tell you it is a very good feeling.

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4 days later and there is a footnote to this story. When I checked my bank book over the weekend it had been made up wrongly.  I called the lady who gave me the card but she was not available. The lady I spoke to asked if she could help and I told her what had happened. On her advice I visited another more accesible branch where the mistake was rectified and I got an apology from both. Still staying cool – but for goodness sake how many mistakes with one customer can a bank make??!?!?!?