Hi worklifers,
A very simple definition of smokescreen is as follows: “A smokescreen is a cloud of smoke created to conceal something else.” In a military operation, troops might lay out smokescreens to obscure the rescue of victims. In software, smokescreen decoys are used to blanket a network and catch bad actors. Smokescreens also manifest in more subtle, everyday ways. One of the most insidious is when indulgent emotions hide behind other emotions.
I like to think of certain emotions as regular visitors within ourselves. These are the emotions we are most familiar with. You may even be able to identify these emotions, to say "Hello there,” when they come up, and use various strategies to effectively deal with them. However, these emotions can become stuck emotions when they present themselves behind smokescreens, under the guise of other emotions. This prevents us from effectively processing them. There is new information hiding behind these smokescreens, but we can’t quite get to it until we have fully questioned what we’re experiencing with curiosity and openness.
Smokescreens prevent us from labeling our emotions correctly, which prevents us from being vulnerable with ourselves and with others. One of the biggest benefits of debunking smokescreens is the ability to build authenticity and self-compassion, both within ourselves and with people across our work and our lives. By building curiosity and willingness to question them, we can accelerate our growth and build our personal brands as authentic, empathic leaders.
I would like to share some of the common smokescreens that I have encountered during my own journey, as well as some techniques for identifying and debunking them.
When anxiety was a smokescreen for shame
A few years back, I had taken on a new job. The role was going to be challenging, as we were down to four people from a team of ten. I had only been there a week when I had my first panic attack: I was taking a shower when I felt my heart start to race. I could sense that something had gone terribly wrong, but had no idea what was happening, because I had never felt this way before. My husband was not at home, and I was alone with a four-year-old. I could not reach my husband, but I had the presence of mind to ensure that someone could care for my son while I tried to figure out what was happening. After taking a few deep breaths, I was already feeling better.
The natural reaction was to acknowledge the anxiety, breathe into it, and go along with the rest of my day. Once I had built a better understanding of smokescreens, however, I realized that the anxiety was trying to tell me something. When I dug deeper, I found that the heart of the issue was not the anxiety itself, but a whole lot of shame manifesting as anxiety. I had never been in a situation where I had to hire a new team. I was brand new to the job, and I was worried about what people would say or think about me. I had a great sense of self-doubt and fear of rejection from others. The anxiety was the symptom of a bigger issue, and it was much easier to place the blame entirely on the anxiety than to call out the shame and fear that were causing it. Every time I felt anxious about my situation, I simply avoided it and went about the day. I was pretending that it would magically go away. I was not ready to acknowledge that the root problem was shame, and that anxiety was merely a smokescreen.
Once I realized this, I was able to finally be vulnerable, acknowledge my fear, and even set realistic expectations of myself. I could see more clearly that there was absolutely no one putting pressure on me to hire a team within a certain deadline. Moreover, I was learning to become someone who could hire and build new teams. This required me to be willing to learn, open for failure, and able to lead from a place of vulnerability.
When anger was a smokescreen for disappointment
Anger often appears as a smokescreen for disappointment. The easiest way to understand this is to understand “stealth expectations”. Brene Brown famously defines these as those expectations we don't even know we have, which set us up for significant disappointment.
I have experienced this many times in my life, as I tend to think I am angry, only to realize that I’m actually disappointed Recently, I was planning conversations with my partner teams. I work on a product that requires alignment across many partners. I found myself particularly angry about how long it was taking to reach alignment with the partners, even though we had run a similar process for the previous year. My anger kept me focused on finding the reasons why this was so hard this time around. My favorite justifications were the pandemic and teams located across multiple time zones resulting in delays.
When I dug deeper, however, I found disappointment hiding beneath the anger. Disappointment is sadness or displeasure that someone or something has failed to fulfill our hopes or expectations. I was hopeful that the timeline would be shorter this time around, and that the process would be more efficient, as we had done pre-work and gone through this with our stakeholders in the past. While that was all true, we hadn't considered the fact that we had two new leaders this time. They were also in decision-making roles, and they were taking time to ramp up, gather the required data, and facilitate the decision-making. All of this amounted to the process taking longer than I was expecting, resulting in displeasure and disappointment. I had all these stealth expectations that were masked by my anger. The prefrontal brain chose not to review them, because that is exactly what anger does: It masks our rationality in the moment. It is so easy to jump to conclusions and indulge in anger, but by taking a step back and analyzing how our own expectations set us up for disappointment, we can gain much-needed perspective.
When overwhelm was a smokescreen for sadness
My third example is around overwhelm, and the way that the indulgence it creates can act as a smokescreen for sadness. It was the month of June, and I was approaching my first Father’s Day without Dad. I was used to the month not being an easy one for me. The deadlines are what make it stressful: year-end closing, people and talent discussions, green light product reviews, and the end of the school year. On top of all that, Father’s Day had now been added to the list. There came a point during the month when I felt completely overwhelmed. In her recent book, Atlas of Heart, Brene Brown defines overwhelm as an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function. The solution to being overwhelmed as described in the book is no-agenda, non-doing time; however, I have found I do exactly the opposite when I am overwhelmed. I keep pushing through my to-do list, as if doing something will make me feel less overwhelmed when in reality, it only adds to my state of distress.
As I have become more aware of this extreme state of overwhelm, I have learned to do a better job detaching from work and doing nothing, even if only for ten minutes. This brings about a stillness that often reveals more information. In June, during this state of stillness, I uncovered not just sadness, but longing, which is an important part of grief. As Brown mentions, many of us feel the need to keep our sadness and longing to ourselves out of fear of being misunderstood, or seen as lacking fortitude and resilience. The solution to heal from the loss is in fact the opposite: to find meaning and connection with those around us, and in what we have lost.
When overwhelm manifests as a smokescreen, it feels like a hamster wheel. We keep on doing more, thinking it will go away, instead of detaching and noticing whether there is anything beneath the stress that needs processing.
Here is a simple system for becoming aware of your smokescreens and getting unstuck:
Notice whether you’re experiencing an indulgent emotion. Does it feel like a "Hi, there, good to see you again"? Is it one you can easily identify? Some common smokescreens other than the ones listed above (anxiety, anger, overwhelm) are confusion and self-doubt. Is your natural reaction to avoid, resist, or react to them? If so, they could be acting as a smokescreen for something deeper.
Question the emotion with openness and curiosity. Stay still with it for as little as five to ten minutes and ask yourself, "Why this? What else is going on?” Keep repeating to yourself, "What else?" to see if you uncover new information. Simply observe what your emotions present to you.
Decide: Is there new information (like in the example above, in which I uncovered sadness and longing), or is this routine information (e.g. overwhelm happening from taking on more things than you can handle at the moment)?
If this is routine, allow the emotion instead of resisting, reacting, or avoiding it. Allowing an emotion means processing it fully with your prefrontal brain, taking a step back, and using a protocol you have set for yourself that works for you (e.g., getting off the hamster wheel and taking a walk).
If reflection presents new information, such as sadness, then it is time to process it instead of indulging in overwhelm. I am still learning how to process sadness from longing, but one of the protocols I have been able to cultivate is closing my eyes and connecting for a moment with the loved one I've lost. I also give a tight, warm hug to one of my kids to seek that sense of connection and heal in the moment.
By following this routine, I have been able to debunk some of the smokescreens in my life and uncover new information time and again. In doing so, I have learned to build more vulnerability, authenticity, empathy, and connection with myself and those across my work and life. I hope that these techniques will help you too.
Maithili Vijay Dandige