My membership for a particular organization was due to expire.  I thanked them for their friendly reminder email, telling them I was not sure of the exact date that my membership would be up.  Their response was:

Our records show that a hard copy of a letter was sent to you on January 5, 2010  to inform you that you were to expire in 90 days.  It was never returned to us.

This immediately threw me back to my grade school days when I, in vain, tried to explain to the nuns why I could not understand the chapters in the textbook well enough to complete the homework assignment.  You know, the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you indeed you are going to fail and to fail miserably, and getting chastised in front of the entire class.  Afterwards, the class would tease me mercilessly ….

Fast forward to today … if I read between the lines, did they [also] call me a liar?  Are they telling me that I did indeed receive their hardcopy letter?  Much like the nun telling me that I didn’t even try to understand the importance of some minor battle in the Civil War.

This is a great example of how email messages can be misconstrued, taken out of context and begin feelings of irritation and resentment.

Rationally I don’t believe the writer intended for her words to come across as harsh as they did.   I felt her index finger jab my chest.  I felt my defenses rise — I felt my credibility and my reputation being attacked.  My caveman brain wanted to take over and fight for my own self-esteem.  Luckily I took a deep breath and my rational mind took over.

It wasn’t what she wrote, it was what I thought I read.

BC&A reports that the “Top Ten Threats Cited in EMS ASRA [NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System] Reports:

Mission Preparation/Operational Pressure                    93%

Excessive Workload                                                      84%

Communication Difficulties                                            75%

. . .

Distractions                                                                  28%

Pilot                                                                              17%

Assume that EMS personnel are trained and are accustomed to working under stress.  75% of the time they consider communication difficulties a threat?  What does that mean for the rest of us that do not generally work under stress …. our stress experiences has peaks and valleys.

How many times in a typical day do we ‘visit’ the fight/flight/freeze arena?  And how long do we remain that prisoner?   When we sense that our unconscious reactions will overtake our conscious actions, we need to focus on the outcome we want, not escaping from the current situation.

How difficult is it for us to communicate clearly the first time?  And what are our consequences if we don’t.  And how do we know if our meaning and intention are clearly stated?  We can take cues from the other person/people, we can restate our communications several times in several different ways, we can ask them to repeat [not regurgitate] what you said … and you can ask for feedback.

It’s not what you said … it’s what they think they heard.

Mutual bad behaviors .. what else?

I was watching a recent episode of “Raising the Bar” .. this one was called “O! Say Can You Pee” about the behavior US Code states that one should stand with the hand over their heart when the US National Anthem is being played.

The judge was trying some out-of-the-box thinking to ease the court’s load.  What was the alternative?  An apology from the defense side to the prosecution side, and from the prosecution side to the defense side.

When someone wrongs us, or threatens us — even a perceived threat — we react.  In our reactions, we don’t think through our words, actions or behaviors.  Nor do we think through the consequences of these actions.  This is where we get ourselves into trouble.  Our emotional brain takes over and throws us into a ‘fight or flight’ situation.  When our middle brain, our emotional brain, perceives a threat, it reacts.  Pure and simple.

When you are unconscious of your motives, you react.

When you are conscious of your emotions, you respond.

By the way, by apologizing to each other, and adding their reasoning – making their thinking visible – they saw the world from the other person’s side and had a newfound appreciation for war, drinking, the United States Amendments and the National Anthem.

Yes there really is a sickness called “Hurry Up Syndrome”!  I knew this disease existed, I was surprised that it had a real scientific name!  According to University of Manchester’s Dr. James Reason, this time crunch that we operate under increases the chance that we will make a mistake by 11 times.*

When we are operating with this malady, we tend to make decisions based more on emotion than relying on fact, or on a combination of facts and emotion.  Our perspective changes, and our natural cautious checkpoints are crushed.  We are focused on completing the task, resolving the uncomfortable or threatening situation, or wanting the offending person to leave us alone!  In other words, our amygdala [Amy, as my clients know it] hijacks and takes control of our thinking.  Our neo-cortex is not given the opportunity to take over.

EMS pilots are especially susceptible to this … they have a critical care patient they must fly from Point A to Point B.  Knowing this is a critical flight, can cause these pilots to take risks they may not have taken otherwise.

Think of how your communication changes when you are experiencing “hurry up syndrome”.

It isn’t what they said, it’s what you think you heard!

*B&CA magazine, October 2008, p. 44

I like the show Criminal Minds. It’s a drama about FBI profilers. This particular episode dealt with the abduction of a six year old boy. The mother told the FBI agents that she did not want to know what happened to the previous boys that had been abducted, she simply wanted to know how they were going to get her son back.

The dialogue between the agents and the parents went like this:

Agent: Was it normal for your son to walk to a friend’s house by himself?

Wife: What are you saying?

Agent: It’s just a question

Wife: [speaking very defensively] No it’s not. Do you think we had something to do with this?

Agent: [maintaining his calm, detached demeanor] No I don’t. If this was his routine, someone could have been watching him for some time now.

Husband: He had only done it a couple times …..

In times of crises, even the most well-meaning and innocent questions can be misconstrued and sound accusatory to the listener. The listener may immediately get defensive, stubborn and irritated while reading voice tones and underlying meanings into what they heard.  The emotional brain, the amygdala, would take over and, unless checked, could spiral out of control.

It’s not what you said, it’s what they think they heard.