Do you find yourself tiptoeing around certain people, doing your best to avoid eggshells and landmines?
We all encounter people who are easily tripped up and set off all kinds of alarms that put our nervous systems on high alert. We become hyper vigilant around these folks. It can feel like we’ve been dropped into a scene from the “Matrix” carefully plotting our actions and reactions.
Ironic isn’t it? That when we would most benefit from being grounded and calm, with a clear head and strong sense of reason, we self-activate our own “high alert, on guard” scanning system. We become Nervous Nellies, making the job of avoiding eggshells and landmines nearly impossible. We are bound to trip up.
I spent a lot of my life in that Nervous Nellie state. I literally felt like I was jumping out of my skin, so fearful that someone was about to blow up unexpectedly. I could not afford to let my guard down. If it was a false alarm, it still took a very long time for my nervous system to return to baseline.
Whenever you find yourself instinctively scanning for eggshells and landmines, there will be more than a few things at play. Let’s investigate some of the common components of Nervous Nellie emotional and nervous system dis-ease.
Emotionally volatile people struggle with discernment. Everything hits them like a 10 on their radar screen. Something minor can cause them to explode as easily as something major and legitimate.
Emotionally volatile people rely heavily on anger to express their needs and discharge their own feelings of nervous system discomfort. These folks think anger is a tool but it is not. It is an indicator light that something is wrong. People who rely solely on anger as a change agent are like fire-breathing dragons. They project out a lot of heat. They want help putting out that fire, but everyone around them runs for cover.
If you grew up in a family where anger was the only game in town, it is your own relationship with anger that fires you up. No wonder your nervous system kicks in and puts you on high alert with a shot of adrenaline. Anger feels scary. Your well-honed response system will tell you to run, hide, or play dead. You might feel like you are in a “freeze frame” of the Matrix — what is the best course of action to take? One false move and it’s all over.
As a kid, anger terrified me. My parents became super-sized scary people when they were angry. Nothing good ever came from unchecked anger. I was afraid of my own anger, fearful I would become just like them if I let it overtake me. As a direct result,I often snuffed out my anger. The direct result was I took my own “high alert, this is important” warning system offline.
For those of us who unplugged our own “anger” indicator lights, we lack discernment too. It becomes hard to intuitively know what is truly important to us, what matters most. So we put up with a lot of inappropriate behavior and over-reactions.
No one ever taught us how to work with anger to fuel change for something that matters most. No one ever demonstrated how to use boundaries to keep us all safe in our relationships.
Here is an important caveat that we often miss as we pick our way through eggshells and landmines. There is a lot of variability in how people show up in daily life when anger is all they have at their disposal. One day they seem to have their act together and the next day they are explosive about everything. Sometimes they let even a big deal roll off their back like a duck; other times, something benign becomes a 5 alarm fire. It is their predictable “unpredictability” that keeps us hyper vigilant.
Now we have pulled back the curtain on anger and hyper-vigilance. We can see the relationship dynamics at play. It becomes crystal clear that both parties have a role in the eggshells and landmines schematic. The power tool we can deploy to shift both parties out of this non-productive matrix is a boundary. Set and hold a boundary to stave off a fire-breathing dragon.
I like to think of unchecked anger as nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Anyone who lets their anger hop in the driver’s seat and careen around like Mayhem in an Allstate Insurance commercial, is much more out of control than I am. Where there is smoke, there is fire — and this poor person is scared and became scary. (Hat tip to Brene Brown who shines a light on this common phenomenon for all of us.). I wonder what help looks like for this angered person and what they are really fighting for.
As for those mirrors, I need to adjust them – so that this angered person can see themselves reflected in them. Rear view mirrors to reveal what caused them to swerve and lose control. Something tripped this person up. Something matters a lot. What is it?
I’ll let you in on a game-changing secret when it comes to this pattern of eggshells and landmines. When we use images and metaphors to conjure up a relatable scene, it is a powerful psychological shifter – one that has a soothing effect on our nervous system and grounds us. We begin to operate from our parasympathetic nervous system (the tend and befriend internal system). We tend to ourselves first, get calm and grounded — and then we can meet that angered person and the present situation with clarity and boundaries.
The more you put this into practice, the easier it becomes. Imagine that angered person as an animated cartoon-like fire breathing dragon and then as the bandaged, chaotic Dean Williams as Mayhem in the Allstate commercial. Power shifter!
Now, set and hold your boundary.
We can validate an angry person’s frustration, disappointment and fear. And we can right-size it. Is this really a 10 on the radar screen or something much more irrelevant? Having a big emotional vocabulary is like having an ace up your sleeve. Anger is a big ball of fire – made up of more than one emotion. Tame the fire breathing dragon by helping them get more “emotionally granular”. What is packed into that fiery outburst?
Why is this a big deal today when yesterday it had no impact whatsoever?
When we validate what someone is feeling, but don’t let them off the hook and act on those feelings completely unhinged and unchecked, we are setting and holding a boundary. If they want and need our help, they surely can find a more respectful and inviting way to get it. Unchecked anger is not going to work.
I confess that developing these meta skills to overcome that uneasy feeling of walking on eggshells and avoiding landmines is something that requires building inner confidence, cultivating greater self-awareness and lots of reps. It can be done. It is so worth it.
Will you have an opportunity today to imagine someone who is overreacting to their anger as Mayhem? Made you smile!
