![]() I can feel my heart racing and my blood boiling. Naming it, says Rose, would be to say to yourself or aloud something like: Wow, I’m really overwhelmed right now. “This is when our brain receives the message that there is no threat, and our heart rate slows, our breathing becomes deeper, blood flows back into the internal organs, and we feel a sense of calm.” When you take a deep breath, it activates the Vagus nerve in your spine, says Rose, which travels all the way up your brain stem, and literally presses down on the rest and digest part of your brain. “Breathing deeply activates the rest and digest part of our brain, which is the opposite of flight/fight/freeze,” she says. Rose recommends two ways to work yourself through emotional flooding:The first is to breathe, and the second is to name it. What do you do when you’re in the middle of an emotional flooding episode? “This could just perhaps be a result of men not being socialized in how to name, accept and experience their emotions rather they’ve been socialized to shut them down, which can only be effective for so long until they bubble up,” Rose says. While anyone can experience emotional flooding, Rose says that according to marriage researcher John Gottman, men experience flooding 80 percent more of the time than women, which can lead to defensiveness, stonewalling or shutting down. Interestingly, emotional flooding can be gendered. ![]() “Although we all experience emotional flooding at some points in our lives, those of us who are prone to emotional flooding have been changed by unsafe or traumatic experiences so that our brains and bodies are ready to react to threat in order to protect ourselves,” says Pickell. (Keep reading for how to explain to your partner what is causing the emotional flooding.) Who is more likely to experience emotional flooding? Your partner may not even realize that what they said was so triggering. “So when you experience flooding, it could be because there was an actual trigger that reactivated an old threat or an overwhelming emotion that feels really heavy to hold, and your brain is going into protection mode.” For example, if a hurtful thing your partner says to you or a name they call you, or a threat to leave you reminds you of something an abusive partner said to you in the past, this could lead to emotional flooding. Some people even experience ‘good’ emotions like joy as threatening,” says Pickell.Ī simple thought, an assumption, a memory, a heated conversation, an emotional sensitivity can produce the same physiological response as an actual threat, according to Rose. We can experience our partner turning away as threatening. “We can experience rejection as threatening. What we experience as threatening is typically deeply entwined with our past experiences, says Pickell, and is more than a direct threat of bodily harm. ![]() Our bodies and brains can recognize threat from something out in the world, an interaction with someone we love, or even a feeling we have inside,” Jordan Pickell, MCP RCC, tells SheKnows. ![]() But here’s what’s common: “At the most basic level, we become emotionally flooded when we sense that something is threatening. ![]() What triggers it?Įveryone might have different triggers for emotional flooding. In other words, any sort of reasonable response to what’s going on goes out the window and suddenly you’re down the rabbit hole of negative thoughts and extreme feelings, both emotionally and physically, that make it impossible for you to stay grounded. “There is a reciprocal relationship between the emotional brain and our executive functioning our emotional brain is located in the center part of our brain, and when it gets triggered, our amygdala, or emotional alarm, fires off, and literally shuts down our prefrontal cortex, which is our most evolved part of our brain and where our tools of logic, reason and rationality reside,” explains Rose. Those are all highly uncomfortable feelings, but not out of the norm. Here are some of the physiological sensations you might experience with emotional flooding: an increase in heart rate short or shallow breaths, a pit in the stomach, feelings of anxiety, constriction of the throat, tightness in the chest, sweating, or difficulty in thinking clearly. “When we get flooded, emotions can overtake our present moment experience, triggering a flight/flight/freeze response in our brain and in our body.” “In its most simple terms, emotional flooding is the experience of being overwhelmed when strong emotions take over, producing an influx of physiological sensations, an increase of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, often resulting in difficulty accessing our resources for calming down,” Joree Rose, LMFT, tells SheKnows. ![]()
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