What is your worst nightmare? You know, the kind that startles you awake with your heart racing.
For me, it’s the one where I’m standing on stage. The curtain rises. I am alone. The curtain rises and the crowd hangs on my opening words. Onstage. Alone.

The worst possible thing happens. I can’t remember any of my lines of the play.
Or have you ever had this bone-rattling dream? You are sitting ready to take a test. You stare at the blank paper and suddenly you realize that you not only don’t know any of the answers, but you also have no idea, earthly idea about where to begin. Your mind draws a blank. You are sunk.

Feelings Of Fear And Panic

The feelings are fear, panic, and even more, the baseline is the realization that you are not perfect. You are not enough. You’ve been found out for who you really know you are.
Feelings like that don’t just happen in dreams. They come to the ballplayer who misses the game-winning toss or the person who finds their checking account overdrawn.

And for the nurse and nursing staff, those feelings can come at beside as the patient or loved one looks at you and says, “What would you do if this were your family?”
Many would offer an opinion. Many would want to jump in and ‘fix’ the problem as you nimbly think fast on your feet and come up with your best possible solution.

But what we do and what we think we would do can be two very different things. On a recent NPR.org podcast, “Hidden Brain,” Shankar Vedantam presented studies that discussed what is called the “Hot/ Cold Empathy Gap.” The studies show that our logical self can effectively line out a plan of action that is completely lost once you are in the middle of strong emotions such as anger, fear or sexual arousal. Our strong emotions disconnect us from our logical side of our brain.

Vendantam uses the example of the comedienne Morgan Smalley who left her venue following a performance that was stellar. She hit the proverbial ball out of the park that night and as she left she was basking in the glow of the perfect evening.

A man approached her with some random junky items in a shoebox. There were some pens, an Amazon gift card, a pair of shoes that weren’t even her size. The man said he’d sell the box to her for $25. She laughed and said sure. After all, she was on a roll!
Even though it was late and she didn’t know this man she took him to her ATM where she could only get withdrawal in increments of $20. She asked if he would sell her the stuff for $20 and he said no. So she withdrew $40 and gave it to him for a shoebox of items most likely swiped from unlocked cards.
But as she told her family when she got home, “But he was such a nice guy!”
In her aroused state following her great performance she completely lost track of her logical self.
It happened to her. It can happen to you.

How to Handle Nightmare

We may think we can handle our nightmare but that is our cold logic speaking and not our hot emotional self. The emotional self reacts automatically in spite of our best efforts. When our emotions are heightened we can lose our calm self. And while it may seem impossible to overcome, the solution that proved most effective was training. Our reactions are intrinsic but the good news is just as in learning any physical skill muscle memory can be changed. Anticipating and practicing a different response to intense situations can change how you respond.

There is a 400-year-old model that can help create a new response to the sudden blindside hits. It can provide an override to your usual response as you shift the attention back to the other person and away from you. And in the process, you can help them find the best solution and that is one that they find for themselves. And it all begins by asking them a question.

An open honest question.
Deep intentional listening can lead to deep connection. Deep connection can lead to transformation.
You have tools to do this already. Let me help you find your nightmare so you will be ready the next time when all the eyes are on you and the question is asked.
“What would you do?”