What Happens in Your Body When Someone Says We Need to Talk?

It is 4:40 on a Thursday. Your manager stops at your desk and says, "Do you have a minute? We need to talk," and walks toward the small meeting room. You sit for a moment before you stand. Your hands are damp, and the paragraph you were writing is gone from your mind.

Within seconds the brain flags the sentence as relevant (LeDoux, 2014) and the sympathetic nervous system starts a body response (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009). Skin conductance rises within one to three seconds (Dawson and colleagues, 2007) and the pupils widen (Bradley and colleagues, 2008). Cortisol peaks after the conversation has ended (Kirschbaum and colleagues, 1993).

What Happens in the First Three Seconds?

The laboratory's view of the first seconds comes from studies that show people emotional pictures while recording the body. The skin conductance response, a brief rise in the electrical conductance of the skin as the sweat glands in the palms and fingers activate, begins one to three seconds after a stimulus appears and takes another one to three seconds to reach its peak (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007). The pupils dilate more for arousing pictures than for calm ones, whether the pictures are pleasant or unpleasant, and the dilation rises and falls with the skin conductance response (Bradley, Miccoli, Escrig and Lang, 2008). In picture studies the heart slows. In the six seconds a picture is on screen, the most arousing pictures, threat and violent death among them, produce the most pronounced slowing of the heart, the largest skin conductance responses, and the largest changes in the startle reflex, and only the startle increase is specific to unpleasant content (Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert and Lang, 2001). The authors read the slowing as part of attention, the body taking in information before it acts.

The picture studies are the model, and the step from a picture to a manager's sentence is an application. The appraisal that starts the sequence is the amygdala's, and it runs before the sentence has been fully processed, as Why Do I React to an Email Before I've Finished Reading It? describes. At your desk, the damp hands are the skin conductance response.

Why Do Four Harmless Words Start It?

"We need to talk" announces that someone with power over your standing has an evaluation to deliver, and it gives no information about the content. In the laboratory stress research, the two task features that produce the largest cortisol responses are an evaluation by other people and an outcome the person cannot affect (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004), the finding set out in What Does Fight or Flight Mean at Work?. The sentence supplies both before the conversation has begun.

It also supplies ambiguity, which the brain processes as a separate condition. Ming Hsu and colleagues scanned people choosing between gambles whose odds were known and gambles whose odds were unknown. Ambiguous choices produced more activity in the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex and less in the striatum, the region that tracks expected reward (Hsu, Bhatt, Adolphs, Tranel and Camerer, 2005). Hearing the sentence puts a person in Hsu's ambiguous condition, with the outcome unknown and nothing to estimate it from, and the same response to unknown odds is part of why teams choose a known problem over an unknown fix.

What Happens on the Walk to the Room?

The walk takes forty seconds. The content and the timing of what comes next are unknown, which is the condition the uncertainty research isolates. In Christian Grillon's startle study, the startle reflex between cues was larger when no cue signaled the unpleasant stimulus than when one did (Grillon, Baas, Lissek, Smith and Milstein, 2004), the finding behind why waiting for news is worse than getting bad news.

Worry about what is coming activates the body before the event and extends that activation across the time before it (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006), the same anticipatory activation a speaker feels in the minutes before a talk (Why Do I Get a Jolt of Adrenaline before Speaking in Public?) and the one that runs through a Sunday evening before a week you expect to be hard (Why Do I Dread Sunday Evenings?). The slower hormonal chain is already underway during the walk and will peak tens of minutes later (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009).

Why Is It Hard to Think Clearly in the Room?

When rehearsal and grouping are prevented, people hold about four items in the focus of attention at once (Cowan, 2001), one limit behind why your brain feels full by the afternoon. Under the high levels of norepinephrine and dopamine released during stress, the prefrontal connections that hold information in mind weaken and practiced responses get stronger (Arnsten, 2009), as Why Do I Make Worse Decisions When I'm Stressed? describes.

The manager says the project is being reassigned and explains why over three sentences. You register the first sentence, and the explanation that follows arrives while your attention is on what the first sentence means for you. Afterward you can repeat the opening and little of the rest.

Why Do Some People Go Quiet and Others Snap?

In the defense cascade described by Kasia Kozlowska and colleagues, arousal is usually followed by a freeze stage, the body activated and holding still with fight or flight on hold (Kozlowska, Walker, McLean and Carrive, 2015). The person who goes quiet in the meeting room, agrees with everything, and thinks of the objection in the car is in that stage, the one behind Why Do People Go Quiet in Meetings Instead of Pushing Back?.

The person who says something sharp before the manager has finished the second sentence has moved to the active stage, the sequence behind Why Do I Snap in Meetings and Regret It Later?. The same person can do either on different days. Kozlowska's account lists the stages and gives no rule for which one a given situation produces.

Why Does It Hurt If the News Is That You Were Left Out?

Suppose the conversation is about a project you have been moved off, and a meeting you were not invited to. Naomi Eisenberger, Matthew Lieberman and Kipling Williams scanned 13 people playing a ball-tossing game with what they believed were two other players, who after a while stopped throwing the ball to them. The exclusion raised activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and the more distress a participant reported, the higher that activity was (Eisenberger, Lieberman and Williams, 2003), the finding behind why being left out of a meeting hurts. The region is also active in the distress component of physical pain, which is the overlap the authors describe, and 13 people is a small sample.

Why Does the Same Conversation Help One Person and Harm Another?

Two people can hear the same sentence and appraise the arousal differently. Jeremy Jamieson, Matthew Nock and Wendy Mendes put 49 people through the Trier Social Stress Test after telling some of them that the arousal they would feel helps performance. The people given that instruction showed higher cardiac output and lower total peripheral resistance during the test, the pattern the authors call a challenge response, and afterward they showed less attention bias toward threatening words (Jamieson, Nock and Mendes, 2012).

So two colleagues who get the same sentence can run two different patterns of response, and the difference between threat and challenge appraisal is part of why the same deadline energizes one person and wrecks another.

What Happens after the Conversation Ends?

The skin conductance response falls halfway back from its peak within two to ten seconds (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007), so it is a signal of seconds. Heart rate stays higher through a social stress task (Kirschbaum, Pirke and Hellhammer, 1993). The hormonal part is slowest. In the Trier test, cortisol in the blood peaked as the task ended and cortisol in saliva about ten minutes after it (Kirschbaum, Pirke and Hellhammer, 1993), and across the laboratory studies levels were back at baseline 41 to 60 minutes after the stressor ended (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004).

The conversation ran from 4:42 to 5:00. At 5:10, back at your desk, the hands are dry and cortisol in saliva is at about its peak. The prefrontal functions that weigh options are weakened while the stress chemistry is high (Arnsten, 2009), which is the basis for holding a decision that can wait. Replaying the conversation at 9 pm extends the activation into the evening (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006), the process behind Why Does My Body Stay Switched On after Work?.

What If It Happens Every Week?

One conversation produces one response and one recovery. Allostatic load, Bruce McEwen's term for the wear produced by repeated or poorly regulated activation of the stress systems, takes four forms in his account, repeated hits from new stressors, failure to adapt to a stressor that repeats, failure to shut the response off when the stressor ends, and an inadequate response that leaves other systems to compensate (McEwen, 1998). A manager who delivers every piece of news as "we need to talk" produces the first form on a weekly schedule, which is the point when stress stops helping and starts wearing you down. In his account the damage comes from the pattern, so the recovery between conversations is what separates a useful response from wear.

Why Is a Team Worn Down by Repeated Change?

Jason Bernerth and colleagues built a scale for change fatigue and found that people who scored high on it reported more exhaustion, stronger intentions to leave, and weaker commitment to the organization (Bernerth, Walker and Harris, 2011), the pattern behind why a team is exhausted by another change. A new system announced the same way as the conversation above, with the evaluation implied and the content withheld, starts the same sequence in each person who hears about it, which is part of why new software at work feels like a threat, and that threat to standing and control is the second of the three causes set out in Why Is Change at Work So Hard?. The scale measures a perception and McEwen's account describes physiology; the link between them here is the sequence above, which is an application.

What the Skin Conductance Response Is

Skin conductance response: a brief rise in the electrical conductance of the skin, produced when sympathetic nerves activate the sweat glands of the palms and fingers. It begins one to three seconds after a stimulus, peaks one to three seconds later, and recovers halfway within two to ten seconds (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007). It tracks arousal in general, pleasant or unpleasant (Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert and Lang, 2001).

What Does the 90-Second Claim Get Wrong?

A popular figure says that the chemistry of an emotion is flushed from the body in about 90 seconds, and that anything felt after that is the person choosing to keep it going. The figure comes from a memoir by the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor, who describes it from her own experience and cites no measurement for it (Taylor, 2008). The measured signals run on different clocks, from seconds for the skin conductance response (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007) to the cortisol clock above, so no single figure describes them.

What Can You Do When You Hear It?

Ask what it is about and how long it will take. The question converts an unpredictable event into a predictable one before the walk to the room.

Tell yourself what the arousal is. The instruction that produced the challenge pattern in the Trier test was that the racing heart is the body preparing to perform.

Write down what is said, or ask for it in writing. Notes take the load off a working memory that is holding what the first sentence meant.

Stop the replay. The activation continues for as long as the conversation is being rehearsed, so the move after work is an activity that takes attention off it.

The next time someone says "we need to talk," ask what it is about and when, and notice which of the signals above you can feel, in what order, and when each one stops.

FAQ

What happens in your body when you feel threatened at work?

The brain flags the event (LeDoux, 2014) and the sympathetic nervous system starts a body response within seconds (Ulrich-Lai and Herman, 2009). The skin conductance response begins one to three seconds after the trigger (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007) and the pupils dilate (Bradley and colleagues, 2008). In picture studies the heart slows (Bradley and colleagues, 2001); in an active task before evaluators it runs faster (Kirschbaum, Pirke and Hellhammer, 1993). Cortisol follows over tens of minutes.

Why does "we need to talk" make me anxious when nothing has happened yet?

Because the sentence announces an evaluation by someone with power over your standing and withholds its content. An evaluation by others combined with an outcome the person cannot affect produced the largest stress responses in the laboratory (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004), and an unpleasant event that could arrive at any moment raised the startle reflex between cues more than a signaled one did (Grillon and colleagues, 2004).

How long does the stress response last after a difficult conversation?

It depends on the signal. Skin conductance recovers halfway within two to ten seconds (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007). Cortisol in saliva peaks about ten minutes after a social stress task ends (Kirschbaum, Pirke and Hellhammer, 1993) and returns to its starting level within about an hour of the stressor ending (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004). Replaying the conversation extends the activation (Brosschot, Gerin and Thayer, 2006).

Why can't I think clearly in a tense meeting?

Because working memory holds about four items when rehearsal and grouping are prevented (Cowan, 2001), and in a tense meeting those items are taken up by what the first sentence means while the rest is being said. Stress adds to the limit by weakening prefrontal function (Arnsten, 2009). Notes, or asking for the points in writing, remove the load.

Why do I go quiet when my boss criticizes me?

Because the defense cascade usually passes through a freeze stage before any active response. In Kozlowska and colleagues' account, the body is activated and holding still, and fight or flight is on hold until the situation develops (Kozlowska, Walker, McLean and Carrive, 2015). Going quiet in a meeting is that stage, and the account gives no rule for which stage a given situation produces.

Is it harmful to have this response often?

Repeated activation without recovery is what the stress research identifies as harmful. Bruce McEwen named the wear allostatic load and described four forms, including repeated hits from new stressors and a response that fails to shut off (McEwen, 1998). A single conversation followed by recovery is one response and one recovery; the weekly version with no recovery is the pattern his review describes.

Does the 90-second rule for emotions have evidence behind it?

No measurement supports a single figure. The claim comes from a memoir and is the author's own account (Taylor, 2008). Measured signals run on different clocks, from seconds for skin conductance (Dawson, Schell and Filion, 2007) to about an hour for cortisol (Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004), so the duration depends on which signal is meant.

What should I do when my manager says we need to talk?

Ask what it is about and how long it will take, which makes the event predictable, the condition that lowered the startle reflex between cues in the laboratory (Grillon and colleagues, 2004). Treat the racing heart as preparation, the instruction that produced a challenge pattern in Jamieson's study (Jamieson, Nock and Mendes, 2012). Take notes, and hold any decision that can wait.

Related Posts:

What Does Fight or Flight Mean at Work?

Why Do I React to an Email Before I've Finished Reading It?

Why Is Change at Work So Hard?