Every so often we hear of a sports person or celebrity passing off some appalling or destructive behaviour as a “brain snap“. (AFL footballer Barry Hall’s snap was widely publicised in mid 2008.)

While high profile hijinks get into the media, we all have seen, heard or experienced people doing what seem to be incredibly stupid things as a knee-jerk reaction. In the ministry, such events can be very damaging to ourselves, our career, our families and to the people to whom we minister.

A foundation part of emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to know and manage our own emotional states.

Sometimes, however, it seems that we find ourselves reacting without even realising it. We can end up doing things inappropriately or out of proportion to what has just happened—leaving us wondering, “Where did that come from?”

Part of the key to this lies in the way our brain processes information.

Many are familiar with “reflex” actions, where the nerve signals to an event never get to the brain before the body reacts. The tap on the knee by a doctor is a classic example of this.

Our brain has two paths which information flows, one flows via the hippocampus to the amygdala. The second path flows directly to the amygdala. The part of the brain, centred around the amygdala, is now understood to play a key part in our emotional life.

Where this becomes important is that the shorter path to the amygdala allows us to have quicker responses—the classic fight/flight responses are part of this. However, this response is not very precise, meaning we can have an emotional response before we even have consciously registered an event has happened. The longer path, allows the event to register and a more fine-grained response to happen. This is the slower of the two.

The answer to the question “Where did that come from?”, then, is your emotional memories. The amygdala, as stated above is not that precise, quick to respond, but not precise. Therefore, if something “reminds” us of a highly emotional event, we can have an emotional response to the similarities, even if the events are very different and the response is quite inappropriate. This is sometimes called an emotional hijack.

The higher our EQ, the less often and less damaging emotional hijacks will be. Ultimately, we can re-educate our emotional memory so the hijack is avoided.

Our personal life, relationships and ministry will all be enhanced as we learn to manage our own “brain snaps”.