ETHICAL

Embracing Conflict
its greatest extreme, the flashbacks experienced by abuse survivors
and combat veterans.
The amygdala has a direct line to the pituitary gland and can set
off our emergency response systems before our intellects can catch
up. Adrenaline pours into our bloodstream, norepinephrine floods
our synapses, our cells release all their sugars into our veins to give us
energy to fight or run, and everything instantly feels terribly, terribly
urgent. Triggering is particularly common, and intense, in intimate
arguments, where all of our old triggers we learned as children, when
we were truly helpless, may get stimulated.
The first thing to recognize is that nothing can get resolved in this
adrenalized state. The flight-fight-freeze responses to adrenaline give
us tremendous energy to survive a crisis, but not very much in the way
of common sense.
But all is not lost. Two things happen during this physiological
stress response that we can learn to use. The first is that if we can
occupy ourselves for fifteen or twenty minutes without restimulating
the stress reflex, our physiology will return to normal and we will
return to sanity. The process of taking a time-out to get calm again
is described below.
Better yet, every time we succeed in spending that fifteen minutes
taking care of ourselves in the kindest way we can muster, we actually
physically heal our amygdalas-by growing more fibers that
deliver soothing neurotransmitters-and thus increase our capacity
to soothe ourselves in a crisis. So practice, practice, practice being
kind to yourself.
Here's how to take a time-out when you and a partner get triggered.
Find a way to stop and separate, then find a kindly way to take
care of yourself for about fifteen minutes without retriggering your
emergency system, until your adrenaline gets back to normal and you
feel relatively calm.
There are some agreements you will need to negotiate beforehand
with each of your partners. First, everyone should understand that
a time-out is absolutely not about whose fault this is. If what you're
doing or talking about is what triggered the emergency overload, then
both of you need to stop doing that in order to stop the adrenaline.
Stopping can be difficult: someone is almost certain to feel abandoned,
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