How to Change Your Stress Response Under Pressure

You don't have six personalities under pressure. You have one switch, challenge or threat, and your body flips it before you get a vote.

In this episode, Dale opens with the assessment that told him a truth he'd been outrunning for years, and uses it to hand you something far more useful than a personality type: the ability to choose who you are in the room the moment the stakes spike. Drawing on a current Harvard Business Review framework and the science of how the body actually reads pressure, this is a state-first guide to staying yourself when it counts. You'll leave with three moves you can run in your next hard conversation, and the surprising research on why "calm down" is some of the worst advice you've ever been handed.

IN THIS EPISODE
- Why your stress response is a default, not your character, and why that is very good news
- The lab finding that belongs on every conference room wall: the same racing heart can mean two opposite things
- Why telling yourself to calm down backfires, and the three words that work better
- The three-move switch you can run in fifteen seconds, in a real room
- What three of Dale's own assessments, across sixteen years, reveal about real growth, including the part that is still unfinished

THE THREE MOVES
1. Name it to tame it. Put the feeling into plain words so the thinking part of your brain comes back online.
2. Regulate to a 7. One long exhale, slower than the breath in, to unclamp the body before you speak.
3. Relabel, don't relax. Re-point the same energy from threat to challenge.

GET THE FREE FIELD GUIDE
"Throw the Switch" is a one-page worktool to find your own default and run the three moves when the pressure is on. Grab it at daledixon.me/switch

KNOW SOMEONE THIS WOULD HELP?
If a leader came to mind who turns into someone they don't love the second the pressure hits, send them this episode. You might be the one person willing to hand them the switch.

RESEARCH AND FURTHER READING
- Jon Miller and Drew Keller, "6 Ways Leaders Harness Stress," Harvard Business Review (July/August 2026). The six stress-response types referenced in this episode. You can find your own default through their Center for Stress Intelligence at stressintelligence.org/test.
- Jim Blascovich and Joe Tomaka, "The Biopsychosocial Model of Arousal Regulation," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 28 (1996), pp. 1 to 51. The challenge-versus-threat research behind "same racing heart, two opposite states." For a readable overview, see Mark D. Seery, "The Biopsychosocial Model of Challenge and Threat: Using the Heart to Measure the Mind," Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2013). For the performance link, see Blascovich, Seery, Mugridge, Norris, and Weisbuch, "Predicting Athletic Performance from Cardiovascular Indexes of Challenge and Threat," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 40 (2004), pp. 683 to 688.
- Alison Wood Brooks, "Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement," Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 143, No. 3 (2014), pp. 1144 to 1158. The "I am excited" studies on singing, speaking, and math under pressure.
- Matthew D. Lieberman, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, and Baldwin M. Way, "Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli," Psychological Science, Vol. 18, No. 5 (2007), pp. 421 to 428. The neuroscience under "name it to tame it." The phrase itself comes from Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, "The Whole-Brain Child" (2011).
- Dale's personal arc draws on his TTI Success Insights Emotional Quotient and TriMetrix HD assessments, administered through Price Associates.

ABOUT THE PRESENCE LAB
The Presence Lab is a podcast about the skill underneath the skill: regulating your nervous system so you can be fully yourself under pressure. Hosted by Dale Dixon, executive communication coach and author of "Sweating Bullets."

Listen to more episodes and subscribe at daledixon.me/podcast

Transcript

The Empathy Score That Stung

SPEAKER_00 0:00

More than a decade ago, I sat across the table from a man named Ron Price. Now, if you don't know Ron, he's one of the few people alive who understands these assessments, the trimetrics and the emotional intelligence work better than almost anyone on the planet. He had my very first EQ report in front of him. And I did the thing that I still do. That thing, it drives him just a little bit crazy. And I said, I failed, didn't I? He looked at me over the top of that page and he told me very kindly, I can't fail this. It's not that kind of test. There is no pass fail. It just shows the truth about how you are built. And I leaned in a little harder. I said, Yeah, so I failed. Here's why I keep using that word. Even now, even though Ron is right, and I know he's right, one number on that page was sitting way down at the bottom. Empathy, a 24, flagged low. And that report did not soften it. It said, basically, more or less that people who score down there, it hurts to think about this. People who who score down there can struggle to feel what other people are feeling. And that someone at the very low end might watch something ordinary and something genuinely shocking and have about the same flat response to both. Remember, if you haven't heard my story, former television news anchor, there's a lot that I have seen in my life because of that. So I read that sentence about myself, and the hard part was not that the test was wrong. The hard part was that the test was right under pressure. I was not a nice person. I got aggressive, the perfectionism took the wheel, and the people in the room paid the toll. You can just ask my wife. She lived with the version of me that report was describing, and she will tell you that it was accurate. So, no, I did not fail a test that day. But I met myself, and I did not love who I met. And I'm telling you this in the first two minutes because everything I'm about to say in this podcast only works if you believe I have actually stood where you might be standing right

Why Stress Types Are Only Masks

SPEAKER_00 2:24

now. I'm Dale Dixon, and this is the Presence Lab, where we work on the skill underneath the skill. It's not what you say in the room, it's the state you are in when you say it. There's a piece going around right now out of the Harvard Business Review about stress. It's really good. It says most of us have a default way we respond when the heat comes on. And it sorts those defaults, the article does, into six different types. We're gonna get to those, but I want to do something the article does not quite do. I want to take you underneath the six types to the one thing that is actually running the show. Because once you see it and you stop trying to fix your personality and you start doing something far more useful, it'll all make sense. Today is about your stress response, why you become a particular person the moment the stakes spike, why that person is not really a choice yet. And we're gonna go through three moves that turn that person into a choice. I call it responding versus reacting. So stay with me to the end because I'm going to tell you what two more assessments said about me, one a decade after that pitiful 24 score, and one just within the past year. It's not it's not a redemption story. And I think it may be a little better because it's true. And I'm still a work in progress. And if you want the work tool version of all of this, we've built a short field guide called Throw the Switch. And it's gonna help you find your own default and run the three moves that we're gonna work through today. It's free, it's at Dale Dixon.me slash switch, and I'm gonna point you back to that at the end. So here is the version of this conversation that does not work. You read the article, you find your type, you nod, and you say, Yep, that's me. I'm the controlling one under pressure, and then you file it away like some kind of horoscope. That's the trap. The six types are a mirror. A mirror is useful, a mirror is not a method. And that's a lot of what I learned with that EQ assessment back in 2009, all those years ago. But it was a mirror, and Ron said that. Here is the other version, though, that does not work, and it's the one that the whole culture has been selling us for years. When the pressure hits, who's heard this? Calm down. You probably filled the blank in before I said it. Just calm down, take a breath, lower your heart rate, get calm. And we say it because it sounds right, and it's most likely completely wrong, and there's really good science on why, which we're

The Calm Down Advice Is Wrong

SPEAKER_00 5:18

gonna get to. You do not need fewer nerves, you need the same energy pointed at a different story. Because the truth is, under real pressure, you are not choosing your response at all. At least not yet. Something deeper than our strategy brain has already decided who we are going to be in that room, and it decided in about a second. And that is the thing we have to get to. It's not the mask, it's the thing under the mask. So let me put this into your week so it doesn't come at you like a textbook. You're in a board meeting, and a member that you respect asks the one question you were hoping no one would ask. Or maybe you're running the town hall three days after layoffs and a hand goes up in the back of the room. Or the deal call is going fine until the number comes back wrong and now everyone is looking at you. Or maybe it's a peer in front of your team, takes the credit that was all really yours, and they just smile the whole time. In each of those, there is a moment, just half a second, where your body makes a decision about what just happened. And out of that decision comes the you that everyone gets to meet. Maybe you go cold, clipped, very, very precise because precision feels like armor. Maybe you get loud and fast and start solving before anyone has finished the problem. Maybe you just go quiet and try to make the tension disappear, even though it doesn't. Maybe you grab control, tighten the circle, start running the room like a command center. The experts have six tidy names for these, and the names barely matter, and in a minute I'm gonna tell you why. So I'm gonna just own mine. I was the one who grabs the wheel. I tighten the grip, I control the room, I filter out anybody who's not already in my circle, and I call it, or I did call it, leadership. It was fear. And maybe you heard yourself and one of those just a second ago. So hold on to which one. We're gonna come back for it. And now, let's say we know we're gonna work through this together, but you hold that same board meeting, the same member, and the same question that you are dreading, only this time in that half a second, because you listen to this podcast podcast, you catch it. One slow breath, and the person who answers is not the clipped defensive version of you. It's the one who makes everyone in the room a little smaller without meaning to. It's someone steady, it's clear, it's a little curious, even. The question that was going to expose you becomes the moment they remember you for. It's the same room, it's the same question, it's the same pounding heart, but it's a completely different person walking out. And whatever your hijack looks like, the cold one, the loud one, the smoother, the one you just caught yourself in, there is a version of you waiting on the other side of the switch. That gap between the you that gets hijacked and the you that gets to choose is what this whole episode is about. But notice what all six out of the Harvard Business Review article have in common. Every one of them is a reaction that already happened. So by the time we can name it, we are already doing it. So the question is not which type are you? The question is what flipped underneath to make us that type in the first place. Here's what actually flipped. And I think once you see it, you're not going to be able to unsee it.

Challenge Versus Threat Under Stress

SPEAKER_00 9:02

So for a long time, the story we all believed about stress was simple. Stress is just stress. Our heart pounds, our hands go cold, and that means that we are rattled, we're losing it, and the job is calm down. So a researcher named Jim Blaskovich was not convinced of that, though. So instead of asking people how they felt, he wired them up right before the kind of moments that make all of us sweat. And he watched what their bodies actually did under the surface. And he found something that had been hiding in plain sight. Behind the very same racing heart, there were two completely different states. He called them challenge and threat. Here's the part we're tattooing somewhere. In both of them, our hearts pound. From the outside, you can't tell the two apart. But underneath, like when you've got those electrodes attached, they're opposite. So in a challenge state, our body opens up and everything flows to where we need it. In a threat state, it clamps. The tight chest, the cold hands, the dry throat, the walls of the room start closing in until the only thing we can see is the problem right in front of us. We don't see the solutions. And I you probably know that feeling. You have probably had it in the past month. And here's what I need you to hear. That is not weakness. That is your body throwing a switch to threat. And it threw it in about less than a second before you got a single word in. So that racing heart that we've been apologizing for our whole career was never the real problem. The clamp is the problem. And the cruel part is this: we cannot talk ourselves out of the clamp with a pep talk, and we cannot calm ourselves down. We actually have proof of that. And it is one of my favorite studies to tell. Think about the advice you have gotten your whole life right before a big moment. Calm down, take a breath, settle yourself.

Why Saying I Am Excited Works

SPEAKER_00 11:18

So a Harvard researcher named Alison Wood Brooks wanted to know if that advice even works. So she tested it with three of the things most of us dread: singing out loud while a machine scored every note, giving a speech, and doing hard math against a ticking clock. One group she coached to calm down. The other group she simply had say three words out loud first. I am excited. The excited group came out ahead across the board. Higher scores, stronger performance, more confidence in the room. Because, and here's the secret: excitement and fear are the same engine running at the same speed. The only thing that changed was the story they told themselves about the pounding in their chest. Calming down asks your body to slam the brakes at full speed. And it just can't do that. Telling yourself you are excited just changes the sign on the same wide open door. So here is the whole presence lab idea in one breath. State first, words second. When your body has thrown the switch to threat, you do not get to choose the calmer, wiser version of you because that version is not home yet. You settle the body first. You get it to unclamp, and then only then the real choice comes back to you. Settle the state, then pick the story in that order every single time. So forget the six masks for a second from that HBR article. Underneath all of them is one switch challenge or threat, open or clamped, and almost nobody is touching it because almost nobody knows it's really there. So we spend our whole careers trying to swap masks, trying to be a little calmer or a little warmer or a little more decisive, and we don't reach down to the one switch that is generating all of it. Here's the line that I want you to keep. Your stress response is not your character. That's what Ron was really telling me back in 2009. It's your default, and a default is just a setting nobody has changed yet. And that's really good news hiding in a hard assessment. The 24 score that I got was not a verdict on my soul. It was a factory setting. Factory settings can be changed. They're not erased. And I want to be careful here. We're not taking it out and putting it to somebody else's wiring. But the switch, the thing under the mask that we can learn to throw on purpose, that is the entire job. So we're gonna work through three moves

Three Moves To Throw The Switch

SPEAKER_00 14:10

that actually do that. And we're gonna talk through them. Tool number one, name the switch. When you use it, the instant you feel the heat climb, the chest tightening, the jaw setting, the urge to control or flee or fix or whatever it is, that half second before you become the mask, the move is to silently, precisely name the state. And the state is not, I'm fine. It's not calm down. Name what is actually true. That's a threat. My chest is tight, and I want to grab control. It's like the group did in the test. I'm excited. There's an old phrase for this that has stuck around because it works. Name it to tame it. When we put the feeling into plain words, the thinking part of our brain comes back online and the alarm just drops a notch. And when it turns the volume down, it does not shut it off. But down is just enough. Down gives us a vote. The sample line, the one you say inside your own head, that's threat noted. I don't have to obey it. That's it. It works. Tool number two. Regulate to a seven on a scale of one to ten. So here's when you use it. When you are revved up to a nine and still climbing and you're about to speak anyway, which is exactly when most of us can do the most damage. So the move is one long exhale, slower and longer than the breath you took in. And it's not a relaxation trick, it is a physical signal that tells the clamped system you're safe. You're not trying to get to zero. Zero is asleep. You're trying to get from a nine down to a seven, and it's the place where our range comes back. So in Sweating Bullets, I wrote about the physical side of the stress response. The breathing, the body, the way balance improves the second you have something steady to lean on. This is that in one breath. You can't deliver from a nine. Get to a seven first. So the sample line, and this one you can say out loud because it buys you that beat to get you scaled down just a notch. Let me take that in for a second. And then you exhale. Then you can speak. Tool number three. Relabel don't relax. When you use it, here's when you use it. Once you are at a seven, and the body has loosened its grip, now and only now the story is yours to write. So the move is to take that same pounding and re-appoint it. Flip the story from threat to challenge, not calm down. Try this matters and I'm ready for it. It's the same fast heart, it's a different door. The body follows the story, but only once it's calm enough to hear it. And this is the excited move from a few minutes ago in that study, the one that beat calm down, just in the right order, after you have settled, not instead of it. So the sample line, this is a big one. Good. I do my best work right here. Name it, regulate it, relabel it. That is the switch thrown on purpose in about 15 seconds in a real room. So here's the whole thing on one page. The six types are real, but they are downstream. They're what shows up after the switch has already flipped. You, we, we don't get better under pressure by calming down, and we don't get better by deciding to have a different personality. We get better by reaching the one switch underneath it all, throwing it from threat to challenge in our body first, and then our story follows. And the reason that should land as hope and not homework is the line from earlier. Your stress response is not your character, and nobody is stuck with a default. We were just never handed the switch,

Proof From New Assessments Over Time

SPEAKER_00 18:32

and now we have it. Which brings me back to Ron and to that 24 score. I have taken the assessment again twice since that day across Ron's world. And the story those numbers tell is not the one that you would script. This is not a Hollywood story. A decade after the 24, I sat down with the same family of assessments from the company. And the dimension that I want you to notice, because it's the whole point of this episode, is self-regulation, the ability to catch a disruptive impulse and redirect it before it runs the room. So back in 2009, it sat at the very floor of the range. Ten years later, on the updated version, it came back an 88, well above the norm. The report said, plain language, that stress no longer makes me overreact, that when I'm under pressure, others might not even know it. That is my switch. My own file caught me learning to throw it. Almost every part of me had climbed above average by then. The one thing still sitting at the bottom of my own list was the part about reading and feeling other people. It had finally crawled above the line, but it was still my lowest. Then this year, or in the past year, I should say, I took a different and a more behavioral assessment. And it told the harder half of the truth. The thing that I was worst at in 2009, developing and coaching people, now sits at the very top. My coaching score came back at 100. Presenting, 100. My capacity to read and understand others, 94. The part that measures staying disciplined and rational in a crisis, it's considered well developed. That is the measured man my wife has watched me work to become. And on that very same report, page about how people see me under pressure, under moderate pressure, the words can be demanding and aggressive, and when I'm under extreme pressure, abrasive and controlling, those words are still on the page. Empathy measured as a warm behavior is still one of my lowest marks. The part of me that governs my reactions on the inside, where nobody can still, uh nobody can see, still says needs development. So here's the truth across all three. I didn't fix the 24. I learned to throw the switch. And I've got the numbers to prove that the switch is real because self-regulation is exactly the muscle that grew. But the way I land on people under real pressure is still a work in progress. And it's something that I'm working on continually, and I'm really fortunate that my wife of 31 years will happily confirm that I am still a work in progress, but she will say she has seen the difference. So, Ron is still not going to let me say that I failed. And he's right, the way mentors are usually right. The test was never measuring whether I was a good man. It was measuring whether I could choose when it counted. For a long time, I couldn't. Now, more often than not, I can. And that's the whole difference. And it's available to you too, starting in your very next hard conversation. So here's the choice, and it's a real one. You can keep walking into those hard rooms as the person you're wiring picks for you. And a year from now, you're going to have the same words on your own report, the same costs that you've quietly stopped noticing, and same moments that you replay on the drive home, or in your very next hard conversation. Could already be on your calendar. You can catch the half second and throw the switch. Once. Not perfectly, just once. Name it, get to a seven, then relabel. You're not going to nail it. Like I said, I'm still working on this stuff. But you're going to catch it. And then you'll do it once and then twice, and then you'll figure out catching it's the whole game. And if you want

Field Guide And Share The Door

SPEAKER_00 22:48

help, I made a field guide. It is called Throw the Switch. It walks you through finding your own default and running the three moves when it counts. It is free and it lives at Dale Dixon.me slash switch. One more thing. You probably know a leader who becomes someone they do not love the second the pressure hits. Could be sharp, could be controlling, cold, fast. You know the one. And here is the thing about that person. They almost never say it out loud, and almost nobody is willing to say it to them. If that face came to mind, send them this episode. Not as a criticism, but as a door. You might be the one person who hands them the switch. I'm Dale Dixon. This is the Presence Lab. Please give us a like, write a review. It would be most appreciated if they're on your favorite podcast listening app. This is the Presence Lab. I'll see you in the next room.