If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating…–Opening lines to Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If
The lizard leaps up
I was riding my bike to work, a fun 7-mile commute in a city with bike lanes and a general respect for those who bicycle. Still, a bike vs auto or truck? No chance for the bike rider. In general, those who bike are more fit than those who drive, but that fitness is of no comfort in a collision between a human body on a couple of wheels and an auto, even the small cars weighing in at more than 2,500 lb. of hard metal exterior.
Most bike riders have this knowledge much more top of mind than auto drivers. Virtually all bicyclists have experienced a fair number of close calls and lots of us have been victims of driver carelessness, including the infamous right hook, when a car suddenly takes a right turn without verifying that no one is in the bike lane.
Sure enough, a truck veered right into my lane, the skinny bike lane only separated from auto traffic by a line of paint. I shifted to my extreme right, almost up against the curb. Another couple of inches and the truck would have ended me. In the moment I yelled and gave him a rude gesture with a middle finger.
Um…I teach peace, I train deëscalation, and yet…
It was the dreaded amygdala hijack, the rising up of the most primitive part of the brain, the limbic lizard brain, taking control when extreme fear activates it.
Almost as quickly as I defaulted to my ancient survival reaction I was overcome with embarrassment. The driver of the pickup was already at least 150 feet down the road and I raced to catch him, not to yell more, but to salvage my own self-assessment as someone who makes peace, who teaches conflict transformation.
I caught him at a red light. He looked at me. I said, “Please watch for bikes. I thought you were going to kill me back there.”
OK, not too elegant, I confess. I was still in emotional recovery from a near-death experience. Regaining executive, forebrain control is not as instant as the sudden takeover by the simple but powerful base of the brain, always ready to rule, according to a study done by neuroscientists in 2021–and according to my own groundtruthing of my experiences.
Everyone has their own catalog of fears, sometimes informed by lived experience and just as often informed by our viewing habits–scary shows, violent films, news of horrific accidents on our local roads, house fires that show startling tragedy, etc. The cerebral cortex may be able to process it all rationally but the fear/rage portion of our brain is always taking notes, prepping for the moment when it decides it’s imperative to override the thoughtful, reflecting, analytical parts of the brain that evolved much later.
When that crocodile brain grabs control the civilized observer labels that dysregulation. Why are some people more dysregulated more of the time than others?
There are many factors. Two seem quite important.
Repeated trauma can load the amygdala with fast-firing signals.
Lack of positive experiences mean there are fewer brakes on that triggering.
Taming the lizard
In a six-week 2025 study done on 110 police officers in a city in China, half incorporated short meditative “lovingkindness” videos on their phones. At the conclusion of the experiment the officers who watched these 10-minute videos daily showed stronger communication skills, commitment to community policing, and deëscalation aptitudes. While this pilot study isn’t a categorical recipe for regulation perfection, it generally aligns with the results of other similar studies.
Indeed, it seems from the neuroscience that the “work before the work” is vital. That is certainly what we teach on the Portland Peace Team; self-talk ahead of time can leash the lizard much better than hoping for a quick action in the moment. As an example, following my bike rider dysregulation, I did that work, sort of thinking of it as putting a patch on that part of my brain. In close encounters after that, I remained sane.
Yes, that is only anecdotal, but that is also what we teach–deëscalating others is nearly impossible until we manage our own calm first and we all have our unique ways of self-soothing. Managing our own calm is an ongoing project.
Like airport security, we can indeed take measures to prevent hijacking. The dysregulated amygdala is not necessarily our fate if we learn to leash it.
