Feeling Flooded

A few weeks after we bought our first home, I went to the basement during a rainstorm to start a load of laundry. It had been raining all week and I already knew there were little damp spots around the edges of the basement's brick walls. But I was totally unprepared for my feet to land in water before I landed on the bottom step.

And so, six months pregnant and home alone (Cliff was away on business), I hauled myself to Home Depot for a giant squeegee. The next day I began the slow process of pushing a pond's worth of water down the drain.

This, as you might imagine, is not a fond memory. Our basement is now flood-proof and slowly being remodeled, but I can easily recall the emotions I felt that night as my socks got soaked in the dirty water: frustration, anger, helplessness, fear, loneliness, indignation, indigestion (I was pregnant, after all).

These are pretty much the same surge of emotions I feel in the middle of a fight. That's why I wasn't surprised to discover this rush of emotions, in psychological parlance, is actually called flooding.

Rising Waters
Marriage researcher John Gottman (I'm quoting him a lot these days since I'm reading his book, "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work) says flooding happens when you're faced with a rush of negativity that is so overwhelming, and so sudden, that you feel shell-shocked. He says it's a primitive alarm system that signals emotional danger in physical ways. And of course he looks for examples of this happening in marriages because when one member of a relationship often feels flooded, it's not a good sign for the relationship's future.

When I get flooded, I feel my vision change: all I see is the argument in front of me. Sometimes I know I'm not being rational or sensitive. To paraphrase a country music song, I'm smart enough to know better, but still too mad to care.

Personally I tend to experience this emotion in parenting more than in my marriage. Each week has at least one or two moments where the kids (inadvertently) push me to the edge. I know raising my voice won't help, and neither will responding with sarcasm. And yet I'm still too mad to care.

Recovering from the Flood
Since reading Gottman's description of flooding, I've been identifying those moments where I'm teetering on the edge, and trying to figure out how to stop myself before the emotions fully rush in. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1) The first step is to admit it. Like in AA, you can't get anywhere if you don't know what you're dealing with. Telling myself I'm feeling flooded is somehow comforting: it gives me permission to step back and process my own emotions healthily.

2) Remember that feeling flooded is a strange way of showing you care. This is a bit convoluted, but bear with me: I don't get flooded about things that are less important. So the very fact that I'm feeling this rush of emotions is a reminder of how much I love my kids, for example. And when I remember this affection in the moment of being flooded, their annoying behaviors diminish in importance. Just a bit, perhaps, but perhaps also enough to get myself under control.

3) Breathing is a good place to start. Remember when I said that at the moment of being flooded, my vision changes? If my emotional response to something can affect my vision, then perhaps changing something physically can affect my emotional response. I'll start with deep breaths. And counting to 10. Or 100. No need to rush these things.

I'll let you know how it goes: I'm on my way to pick the kids up from daycare now.