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Hi collaborator! (Thanks for being here! Your discount code is at the bottom of this email!) One day I was walking with Muggins and they exploded out of nowhere! They were barking and lunging at everything they saw, and even at things they anticipated but didn’t actually see. It was so stressful and overwhelming! As we headed for home, I reflected on what could have caused Muggins to react with such intensity. I started at Muggins’s reaction and worked backwards, tracking all the “sensory events” leading up to the explosion. I realized that Muggins’s reactivity didn’t start on the walk – it started at home! Before the walk, watching squirrels caused excitement, waiting without movement built frustration, and scary sounds triggered fear. Muggins didn’t have enough time between experiences to decompress, nor did they have enough support to manage their feelings. So, once we were out on the walk and successfully passed a shepherd with an intense stare, Muggins’s capacity for managing stress ran out. Basically, all these sensory experiences were alerting and fear-inducing. They were stacked on top of each other, building a state of stress inside Muggins’s body until they reached their limit and: boom! An explosion of lunging and barking, not “out of nowhere”, but right on schedule. This experience reminded me of volcanos. Their explosions are obvious, but we don’t see the pressure building up under the surface that leads to the explosion. Naturally, I created a graphic to describe this concept in a super fun simple-to-understand way!
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