Emotionally flooded?
What to do when you’re about to lose it
Images by Akira Hojo, Shane Rounce, & Michael Kucharski
Emotional flooding is what happens when we ‘get triggered’ or ‘lose it.’ Our ability to focus and listen plummets, and our speech gets clumsy. We get adversarial. We might explode, saying (or doing) something we regret. Or we might shut down.
This state is brought on by our nervous system whenever we perceive a threat.
You’re probably familiar with fight, flight, and freeze reactions to threats. Our body releases a cascade of hormones into our bloodstream to prepare. It causes changes throughout the body, including our…
eyes
salivary glands
skin & sweat glands
breathing
heart & circulatory system
adrenal gland
digestive system
bladder
sex organs
A wide variety of things can precede fight, flight, or freeze. Anything that reminds us of getting hurt (or seeing someone hurt) can be a trigger. An aggressive person or animal. The sound of skidding tires. The smell of alcohol. Or any sensation that reminds us of a traumatic incident.
We can get triggered in relationships, too, even in the middle of a conversation where no one said anything threatening. You may wonder why we react as if there’s a threat, even when the only thing that could possibly get hurt is our feelings.
Deep inside our brains is the amygdala, a pair of nuclei clusters. Like a smoke detector, it constantly scans for danger. It stores memories of everything that ever brought us pain. It remembers what brought us pleasure, too. It protects us by remembering things. And here’s the thing: the amygdala doesn’t care whether they hurt us physically; it remembers the emotional impact.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
This old saying is nonsense. Of course words can hurt us! And we can get flooded when we hear words that hurt us in the past. Gestures, expressions, and other stimuli can affect us the same way.
Since mere words can hurt and trigger us, flooding happens in relationships. What an irony, huh? That we might sense danger in the presence of someone we look to for safety and belonging.
When we get triggered, energy gets diverted from the prefrontal cortex, the front part of our brain that helps us stay calm, think, and communicate. Just think how essential staying calm and communicating are for good relationships. Read about all nine functions of the prefrontal cortex.
Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, uses the metaphor of a smoke detector. It’s an important alert system, but if the alarm goes off when there’s no fire, it’s disruptive. And if it goes off all the time, and you can’t turn it off, it’s very disruptive.
What to do.
If you get flooded, I suggest five ways to turn off your alarm and turn on your thinking brain.
1. Take a breath. A nice, deep one. Practice 4-7-8 breathing.
2. Notice that you’re flooded. Don’t fight it, as if it’s a bad thing—your amygdala is doing its job. I’m flooded. Thank you, amygdala. This upset me. Self-talk reengages your prefrontal cortex, helping you gain control.
3. Take a break. Tell the other person you need a moment. Don’t blame them at all. Ask for patience, and tell them you want to talk about it and have a good outcome.
4. Move. In Burnout, Emily & Amelia Nagoski write that “when your body gets soaked in stress juice,” moving can help you to “complete the cycle.”
Move immediately if you can. Engage in some mellow exercise. Walk, play with a pet, or stretch.
Move regularly. Daily exercise counteracts the impact of hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) that enter your bloodstream during flooding. They harm your systems when they stay in there for prolonged periods. Exercise also stimulates the production of endorphins and serotonin, which improve your mood. Minimum three times per week. Five times is better.
5. Check your story. When you get flooded, your brain looks for an explanation. Beware of snap judgments—you can’t get the whole story right in an instant. Snap judgments are only good for emergencies, when there’s no time to think and you simply need to fight, flee, or play dead to protect life. So check your story. Is it negative? You may be holding onto an ugly caricature of the other person. Toss it out and create a more gracious image.
6. Focus on how you’re feeling. Down in your body. Let your thoughts about a situation go for now. Use the emotions poster if it helps. This is mindfulness in a nutshell.
With practice, you can learn how to respond. Adopt these steps for emergency preparedness. People in the business of handling crises (such as pilots, first responders, and school principals) have emergency plans. They rehearse the steps until they become automatic, so they’ll know what to do when they hear an alarm.
Practice.
Q: When you get flooded, what do you feel and where do you feel it?
Q: How can you talk to yourself about it (step 2)?
Example: I feel tingly. My ears are burning. I’m getting flooded.
Q: How can you talk to another person (step 3)?
Example: I need a break. Can we try to work this out in a few minutes?
In therapy, I talk with clients about how they get flooded, and why. We discuss how memories and emotions are involved. And we look for ways to turn off the alarm and gain control.
