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- No More Tidal Waves
The Crash Happens
Some moments hit you seemingly out of nowhere. You go innocently about your day suspecting nothing. Suddenly the wave crashes upon you and you’re drowning. You can’t breathe and panic spreads throughout your body.
Congratulations! You’ve been hit by a tidal wave.
This happened to me at the end of August. Holly and I had been working on the launch of Practical Personality for months, and we were about to go live. We had written, recorded, and mostly edited eight introductory videos and articles to OPS, set up a newsletter, and created a new website from scratch.
Working so closely together and aligning on every decision was—and is—a huge challenge for us. The launch was only three days away. All this hard work would finally pay off.
When I came home from work, I was in for a shock. Holly had made a whole heap of changes to our website—and I did not like any of it. She had ruined much of our hard work in one foul sweep. I didn’t know how to respond. Panic took over.
Little did I know that I could have prevented this mess. One critical habit would bring me clarity later on: tracking my tidal waves in an error log.
You Can’t Breathe
Holly hadn’t ruined anything. She was smart about it and didn’t save any of the changes she made.
But the changes to the website weren’t even the big deal. Reverting everything would’ve been a pain in the ass but doable. It’s just work, and I’m fine handling that. I dreaded the emotions that would come with a tough conversation.
There were only bad options. I didn’t look forward to telling Holly what I was thinking, but keeping the changes wasn’t an acceptable option either.
I froze. I didn’t know. What. To. Do.
I felt angry and attacked, and—initially—I blamed it all on her and the chaos she caused me. I blamed her for not telling me what she wanted to do. I blamed her for disrupting our connection.
Of course, all that anger and blame was misplaced. Holly didn’t deserve any of it. Everything that happened was my fault. I didn’t get my way and felt resentment because of it.
Putting the blame back on myself and taking responsibility for the situation I was in, helped me resolve it in the end. It’s like escaping a prison cell you had the keys to all along.
What Is a Tidal Wave?
When you’re hit by a tidal wave, you’re thrown into a state of intense emotional and physical stress. The so-called “fight or flight” part of your nervous system takes over because of a perceived threat from the outside.
Your breath and heartbeat quicken, sweat breaks out, fear takes over, your mind races, and clear thinking is impossible. You experience intense anxiety.
A tidal wave feels like it hits out of nowhere, but it doesn’t. It travels and builds up slowly for some time until it crashes upon you with full force. That’s why we call it wave.
Little moments of stress and anxiety build up. Little mistakes and continued negligence stack up to bigger issues until the situation becomes overwhelming.
You had it coming, and it’s been all your fault. I don’t intend to sound mean, and I don’t mean this literally. I’m saying that framing everything that happens in your life as your responsibility is the best way to deal with tidal waves and control the stress and anxiety that they bring.
However, it’s not enough to understand tidal waves in theory. If you want to deal with them and reduce their impact, you need to get acquainted with them on a deep personal level. You do that by capturing them in an error log.
An error log is a journal for the purpose of tracking and dissecting tidal waves.
Writing about your freakouts allows you to vent and relieve the anxiety. You can get all your feelings out in their rawest form. Putting them on the page creates literal distance from your emotions, which lessens your attachment and helps you find balance. Your problem will still be there, but with a mind less clouded, you can begin to see it in a different light.
Stacking error log entries over time allows you to see your recurring patterns. You recognise that the waves hit like clockwork. They also hit with the same pattern again and again and again. Their pattern stays the same because you stay the same. The error log helps you to figure out why the tidal wave happened, how it built up, and how you brought it about.
It becomes increasingly harder to blame the outside world for your problems. Problems that will stay the same, unless you take responsibility. The theoretical knowledge seeps deeper into your bones and becomes lived experience that is the foundation for change.
How to Capture Tidal Waves
I write my error log entries in three steps:
What happened?
How did it make me feel?
Why did it happen?
I start by writing down the facts of the situation (as far as I can recount them). What did I do and what did others do? What unfortunate event came suddenly over me? — I come home from work expecting nothing and Holly has changed the entire look of the website (not for the better) without saying anything three days before the launch.
Then I write down how the situation made me feel. I describe my boiling inner world and vent on the page. I note down who or what I blamed initially. — I was fucking pissed. I freaked out, I was angry, I felt helpless. I hate having emotionally tough conversations. I hate losing control. And it was all Holly’s fault.
Lastly (usually after I calmed my stupid ass down a notch), I dissect the whole situation and figure out why it happened. This is the most crucial part:
Why did I feel the way I did?
What is it within me that found the situation unacceptable?
Which cognitive functions or animals were involved?
How did the tidal wave build up?
What did I neglect to do for too long?
How can I make sure it doesn’t happen again in the future?
For me, the big, painful tidal waves always look the same. Having feminine Fe last, I get triggered because I fear emotional disconnection from the tribe. Connection is elusive and fragile to me. I don’t fully believe that I can maintain what I have or cultivate new connection. When it seems threatened, I panic.
In other words, I was afraid to hurt Holly’s feelings because I didn’t like the changes she made.
I created this tidal wave because I’m a control freak when it comes to work. I am particular about what I do and how I do it. I often stick to one vision and streamline the process. I approach problem-solving with a long-term lens.
Holly is the opposite. She’s open-minded and experimental. She’s easily able to attack the same problem from a new angle. She doesn’t get stuck on one approach. She feels a need to express her creativity. She approaches problem-solving with a short-term lens.
Both approaches are needed and valuable for content creation. We hadn’t yet figured out how to combine them to get the best of both worlds. We still haven’t.
However, we know that our main problem is communication. We don’t do it enough, and we don’t do it consistently. We both have our needs, but we neglect to articulate them to each other and negotiate between them.
We also project constantly. We expect that the other thinks the same and acts the same. Knowledge of our personality types helped us recognise that this is simply not the case. It helped us see and express our differences and find common ground.
More communication and better communication will prevent future tidal waves and lessen their impact.
This is my general pattern in a nutshell: I fear the loss of connection and bring situations about that trigger that fear because I over-control and under-communicate. It’s always the same.
Keeping an error log helped me see the pattern more clearly. I feel its pain more viscerally. I can’t blame anyone else. I can’t run. I can’t hide.
It’s me who needs to change.