The Short-Circuiter

The Short-Circuiter is the Pressure Reflex that shuts you down when the pressure feels like too much. It is one of eight Pressure Reflexes named by Deano Sutter, founder of Pressure Reflex™ Leadership Training System. It wants it to stop. And it takes your best answer with it.

You know this moment

Someone questions your numbers in front of the whole team.

And your mind goes blank.

You'd checked them twice that morning. They were right.

The meeting moves on.

Fifteen minutes later, in the car, it arrives. Every figure. Word for word. Perfect.

To nobody.

Why do I freeze?

You'll tell yourself you were being professional. That it wasn't worth the fight.

But you never decided to go quiet. It happened before you could decide anything.

A version of you learned that speaking up makes it worse. The Short-Circuiter takes over and shuts everything down.

It runs on one line:

"If I stop, it will stop."

So you go quiet. Even when you're holding the answer.

When is The Short-Circuiter the right responder?

Every Pressure Reflex is an emergency responder. Each one is built for a real threat.

In a real emergency, The Short-Circuiter is exactly who you want. A dog is growling a few feet away. A stranger is screaming at you in a parking lot. Going still and saying nothing is the safest thing you can do.

A false alarm looks different. A question about your numbers. Being called on in a meeting. Too much landing at once. Nothing gets worse if you speak, but your alarm reads the moment as more than you can handle, and The Short-Circuiter shuts everything down. Your reaction ends up bigger than the moment. That's a false alarm.

What does The Short-Circuiter look like?

• Going blank when you're called on
• Losing your words the moment someone pushes back
• Freezing on a decision everyone's waiting on
• Checking out halfway through a hard meeting
• Going silent in the middle of an argument at home

What does The Short-Circuiter cost you?

People don't walk away thinking you were being professional. They walk away thinking you weren't sure.

Once it's called in, The Short-Circuiter shuts down at all costs. Including the answer you had ready.

The shutdown is supposed to make the pressure stop. It usually makes it worse.

Your repeated reactions become your reputation.

Is The Short-Circuiter one of your main Pressure Reflexes?

You might recognize it in lines like:

• "I disappear during pressure."
• "I stop communicating when I'm overwhelmed."
• "I shut down fast."

Everyone experiences The Short-Circuiter at some point. For some people, it's a predominant Pressure Reflex, the one that shows up most, especially around uncertainty, failure and being in the spotlight.

And when it is, it rarely shows up alone. It often brings one or two other Pressure Reflexes with it.

Either way, The Short-Circuiter is not who you are. It is who takes over.

Protection isn't the problem. Outdated protection is. What was trained can be retrained.

"I was interviewing with Fortune 500s for big roles, but I was paralyzed by the fear of putting myself back into the situation I was leaving."

Dino Hainline, Creative Strategist, Writer and Composer

The goal isn't to never pause. It's to pause without disappearing.

See all eight Pressure Reflexes