Emotional Threat Assessment Wisdom

THREATS we deal with on a daily basis, but we are not always that well developed in detecting what is a real threat from what is not. Sometimes we overreact, and worse, sometimes we don’t react when we should.

This article creates a discussion on Threat Assessment. It’s a wisdom article because it discusses the varying approaches and considerations of discernment to empower the reader to make more informed decisions related to the actual scenario they are faced with.

Why do we need to know this? It’s because we are tempted all the time to overreact emotionally, when to do so could spell damage, or we don’t react to real threats, and then damage ensues.

Making our own threat assessment is about us managing our emotions and making them subject to the discerned reality.

What Emotional Threat Assessment Consists of

Unlike most other risk assessments, emotional threat assessment is really not mathematical. It simply involves pausing within our minds, in order to give our minds the time they need to process what the feelings being experienced mean.

Threat assessment is about asking questions like:

þ     This situation feels ‘this way’, but is that the reality others are experiencing or would experience?

þ     Should I be upset by this? Is it as desperate as it seems? Or, why am I not reacting or responding to this?

þ     What would I expect the next person to do? What will happen if I do nothing? What might happen if I do something – could I respond prematurely?

When we have invited our minds to consider a situation we feel emotional about, we provide the mind its moment of space. It’s all our mind would ask for. It’s all our mind actually needs. We empower ourselves when we grant ourselves time to weigh feelings and reality; to discern truth.

Having given our minds the time to consider what has been felt, we make a more informed and a more confident decision. We feel comfortable that we have honoured the truth enough that the truth will honour us as we stay within its bounds.

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Not everything we feel lines up with reality. Making an assessment of the emotional threat helps us stay calm in the harrying moment, it gives us confidence we have discerned reality’s needs, and it saves further emotional wastage and breakage.

Our minds were designed to complement our hearts and vice versa. Thoughts are made better for the inclusion of feeling information. Likewise, feelings are made safe when we test them against reality.

Threat assessment is truly about avoiding panic. This should be borne in mind whenever we face a threat, real or otherwise.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.