Your Brain in the time of COVID-19 | Thoughts from being quarentined.
Bringing some thoughts from my day job to my photography blog, since the whole world seems to be running together into chaos anyway! When I’m not taking your cute family photos, I’m a Learning and Organizational Development Manager for a larger retail organization.
If I wasn’t at home, sheltering in place, I would be going to work every day and I would actually be leading a Learning Series training session on this very subject! Well, I guess not this exact subject, because I would never have thought about how one of my favorite leadership topics would SO well relate to what we are going through. But here we are! So let me pull some of the things I love about NueroLeadership and share how it relates to what you might be feeling every day.
There is a field of neuroscience describes how our brains operate from a social standpoint. Most of the time, we walk around with our brains in a neutral state. We are just living life. But any little thing can happen and push us one way or another on this continuum towards “threat” or “reward” mode.
When we move into threat mode, our fight or flight response is activated. We are focused on survival and we physically lose are ability to access the part of the brain responsible for higher-lever, rational thinking. We can’t creatively problem-solve, we can’t apply logic or reason, and we definitely can’t be our most productive selves.
Reward mode is the opposite (duh). When we are in reward, we have full control over our thoughts. It’s when we are in our zone and thriving. Not many of us are being pushed over to a reward state right now, so I’m not going to spend much time on this.
So what causes us to move one way or the other?
Enter: the SCARF model. This is the five primary social triggers that cause our brain to react. The crazy part is that these social triggers can have the same effect as physical ones. So, something upsetting your brain can literally cause it to react the same way as if you were in physical danger. Crazy, right?
Here are each of the 5 SCARF elements, along with a quick description and how I see them effecting us during this time.
First up is STATUS. Status is how we view our relative importance compared to others. When we find ourselves in a position where we feel inferior, our brains shut down. Think about how people get star-struck if they meet a celebrity. You can’t think of anything to say, or you get really nervous. Or maybe you get nervous talking to someone of the opposite sex that you think is way out of your league. That’s because you’re in threat mode due to a perceived lower status.
Admittedly, I would say STATUS has the weakest correlation to how we are all feeling right now, but there could still be some status threats. Perhaps a feeling of helplessness as you aren’t in any kind of position to make an impact. Or, if you’ve been laid off or furloughed from work, you may feel a lowered status as you are no longer contributing in the way you once were.Next is CERTAINTY. Our brains crave routine and patterns. Most of what causes people to fear change is because it’s a deviation from what we know. Knowing is better than not knowing, evening when it’s bad news. When there is something uncertain on the horizon, it’s almost impossible to think about anything else; our brains are in full-on threat mode due to the uncertainty.
The link to our current state is pretty obvious, but here are some of the things I know we are uncertain about: There is currently no real timeline to when this state of lockdown will be over. If we knew that we just had one more week, or even month, we could probably handle it much better. We could make future plans. But we are all just hanging in the unknown. We are uncertain about the true effects of this virus. Every day there are conflicting reports about the infection rate, mortality rate, how far away from others we should stay, how long can it live on our groceries, are masks effective. You name the topic, and you’ll find two experts who disagree. It’s hard to have any sense of control when we have no real certainty about our situation.Third in the model is AUTONOMY. This is our sense of control over the events happening to us and around us. People don’t like to be told what to do or how to do something, especially when given no choice in the matter. The old stereotype of wives telling frustrated husbands exactly how to accomplish a task (guilty of that!), or your boss micro-managing the work you are doing are examples of threats to our autonomy.
Right now, we have lost all kinds of control of our worlds. We are being forced to stay home and away from the places we like to go. Many of us are now homeschooling our kids, despite a total lack of knowledge on how to effectively do this. Millions of people around the country have been laid-off, furloughed, or have their work reduced, all with no input on the matter. Other essential workers may feel the same way, as they now feel they are working in dangerous situations that they don’t have control over. We have definitely lost so much control of what’s happening in our lives at the moment.The fourth domain is RELATEDNESS. Humans are social beings and our connection to others is essential for our health and wellbeing. In a normal social setting, our brains are constantly trying to determine if a person is a “friend or foe”, and using all of the things we’ve experienced to decide if they are in or out of our social group. We need a tribe of people around us to . New studies actually show that in terms of your health, loneliness is worse than smoking! (Neither one is good for you, but it turns out being lonely is worse!)
Clearly, being isolated from loved ones is tough. I am starting to miss people I don’t even like usually! All kidding aside, it’s hard for us to have so little social interaction with people we love. In addition, our threat response is in high gear when we get close to people. A neighbor walking towards us on the sidewalk is not the kind of thing that we would normally bat an eye at, but now our brains are wondering “will he move 6 ft away” “is he exhaling too hard and contaminating the air around me”. We don’t make small talk with people at the grocery store; we get to chat with a friendly server at our favorite restaurants. We are just relating to others in the way we are used to.Lastly is FAIRNESS. This is our sense of whether or not things seem fair. This one is probably the most obvious, in that it is exactly as the name describes. When it seems that we are getting a raw deal compared to someone else, it’s easy to be triggered. We want things to be equal and balance, and well, fair!
I see the fairness threats plastered all over social media! People who are just outraged by what others are doing, even though it has no REAL impact on that first person. It’s a fairness trigger. When you see a group of people gathered together, or hear that a neighbor had a small gathering, it can be infuriating. You might be thinking “I am following the rules and suffering through this, while this other person is just doing what they want and making things worse for everyone”. You have a point, but the likelihood that it will have any real impact is small. The emotional response from the brain however, is huge.
I could talk about this topic for hours! If you are looking for more info, I’ll link a few articles and books below. Or leave me a comment about what else you want to know, and I would be happy to make a follow up post!
David Rock is the founder of the field of Nueroleadership. Here’s more from him.
This is a great article about the SCARF model and how to use it improve your interactions with other.