Flooding Vs Emotional Expression

[DogwoodTree]

Wasn't sure where to put this...

Can you explain your understanding of the difference between emotional flooding vs healthy emotional expression?

So, it seems to me that my emotions are either off/completely inaccessible, or they're flooding my brain. I'm not sure at all what a healthy expression of sadness would feel like, as opposed to the deep despair or the anxious panic or the overwhelming pain.

T today was talking about how I need to develop some basic self management skills (centering, grounding) before we can get into the deeper trauma issues. Wishing I had asked more about what those skills were. Anyway, seems like the goal would be to find a way to get the emotions from the inside to the outside, whatever that looks like. But the team was concerned about my ability to be stable through that process. I guess I thought emotions are emotions, whatever they look like. Is there a different way these kinds of emotions can be released that doesn't involve flooding?

 

[Tinyflame]

I think flooding is not just emotional expression, but all the horror/ fear/ tears loss etc (whatever it involved) that is (for me) a mix of memories or even one individual salient one that is set off by a trigger & frequently snowballs & then distorts the (my) present (think Tsunami). To me, healthy expression of the same emotions would be related only to what applied in the present (rain), even if it included the past in a positive way, such as gratitude etc (but a memory, not a re-living).

I agree, work on stability. If you think they're overwhelming now, just remember they can even be worse. You need to be prepared for that or it's beyond unbearable, because they can come up with any relevant trigger. I find it's like dominoes, flooding is not one re-living but one after the other.

(If that makes sense.)

 

[hodge]

I agree with Junebug. I think you need to get coping skills together before you get into your traumas. That has been the only way I've gotten through working through them. You really need to practice relaxation and mindfulness and get those down before digging into your traumas. I hope your therapist can get you up to speed on those. If not, post again and I'll try to help.

 

[Tinyflame]

Like @Eleanor said, counter-conditioning. After-the-fact try to associate something positive. Like @hodge said, something that involves relaxation, de-compressing, safety, something 'good' (because nothing will feel good or manageable).

 

[Deleted member 1860]

Once you start feeling emotions like a normal person, you'll want to shoot yourself out of boredom! Yeah, it sucks that normal feelings are so bland. (I really don't get why normies fall apart so easily given that their emotions are like 1/100th of what ours are.....in that sense, I see them as being very weak.) I have moments of normal feelings and I want to look at normal people and tell them to suck it up b/c this shit is nothing! Sorry to be so harsh, but yeah, once you have moments of non-emotional flooding, you'll understand the boring part and it will make you understand normies even less. NO WONDER so many of us seek out those adrenaline rushes! If my emotions continue to go down this normie bunny trail, I'll be an adrenaline junkie in just a few years.

 

[joeylittle]

Try looking up stuff on Emotion Regulation - it's a DBT thing - the idea is that you can experience the emotions but while maintaining a tiny bit of awareness that allows you to turn down the intensity if they start to snowball/flare out of control.

For me, flooding is when I can't stop. Healthy release is when I can stop.

 

[Deleted member 28942]

@DogwoodTree my therapists is vey helpful with this. She helps me get in touch with the negative emotions but at the end finds a way to bring a positive experience. The positive experience can be a safe place installed with EMDR or guided imagery, or some from of experiential release. I find it very helpful.

 

[Fadeaway]

For me, flooding is when I can't stop. Healthy release is when I can stop.

Such a simple line but it is perfect! Thanks for the light bulb moment :tup:

 

[barefoot]

@DogwoodTree I'm finding the same thing at the moment, so don't have any great words of wisdom. I just wanted you to know that you're not alone with this challenge.

I love @joeylittle 's explanation about being able/not being able to stop - spot on! And makes me realise that I'm nowhere near able to do that yet! Sigh...

 

[Friday]

Ever watch a toddler? Pure emotion. When they're happy they're literally jumping up and down and spinning around from the joy of it smiling like the sun is bursting out of them in pure love happy joy bliss. When they're sad they're screaming and bawling at the top of their lungs, tears enough to drown them, snot free flowing, unadulterated grief and loss and disappointment. When they're angry they attack. Biting to draw blood , head butting, hitting, kicking, throwing themselves at the ground, chewing the linoleum, pulling hair...would kill the person in front of them if they had more strength than a squirrel. Heck, mild irritation = toy truck to the head of the offending individual (there's a reason toddlers have soft toys, in general! More for everyone else's safety than their own!). Et cetera.

That, right there, is unregulated emotion.

There is no pause. They feel it? Their body is expressing it. It generally takes about a year of constant monitoring by very alert -and increasingly exhausted- others to teach them how to moderate their emotions (terrible twos, or terrible threes).

99% of the tricks we use to learn to control our own emotions? Are the exact same methods parents teach toddlers. Everything from the subtle (voice modulation & tone) to the overt (time out).

We lose our long practiced ability to monitor & regulate our emotions again at puberty. Yay, hormones. ((And if you're female, emotions tend to go sideways during pregnancy & menopause, as well)). There are certain disorders which really highlight these periods (esp. Toddler & Teen)... Which tend to make these periods either take longer to learn these lessons, or same timeframe, waaaaay more intense.

It's a very human thing... Having to learn control.

Having control isn't something we're born with. They are skills we acquire over time. Sometimes we have to reacquire them. Guaranteed at least twice or thrice a lifetime. Trauma means at least once more.

 

[DogwoodTree]

I agree, work on stability. If you think they're overwhelming now, just remember they can even be worse. You need to be prepared for that or it's beyond unbearable, because they can come up with any relevant trigger.

If stability is the ability to suppress emotions...I've had 41 years of practice. My emotions were never allowed to exist in my family. When I'm flooded, I freeze, or try to disappear and become invisible and nonexistent. So...(honest question)...how can I practice stability without having access to normal emotions? It's either Niagara Falls...or the Sahara Desert.

I think you need to get coping skills together before you get into your traumas. ... You really need to practice relaxation and mindfulness and get those down before digging into your traumas.

I'm working on these. But...it seems like relaxation is essentially [dissociate...disappear]. And mindfulness is essentially [freeze and minimize]. It just seems like...if I was able to have these skills in healthy ways...I wouldn't have these problems anymore. Like...the process of developing the skills is essentially the healing process...because the skills won't even be possible until a great deal of healing has occurred.

The T team was talking about all of this yesterday, and they asked me what I thought about what they were saying. I really just didn't have an answer. It seems so much like circular reasoning to me. If you're already spiraling upward, great. But if you're already spiraling downward...

It's like trying to learn how to fly a plane while you're already up in the air and the engines have cut off...and down you go...and there's really no time for a gentle "first let's learn the name of this button, and then let's study aerodynamics, and then let's see what this pedal does, and then let's practice in a simulation, and then..."

NO WONDER so many of us seek out those adrenaline rushes!

Maybe this partially explains my family's addiction to drama and conflict. Grr.

For me, flooding is when I can't stop. Healthy release is when I can stop

This is helpful, I think. Like with a dam...is it a controlled release, or is it water coming from cracks or breaks in the dam? I don't think I have any floodgates yet...a way to express emotions that productively releases pressure rather than just pushing it back or being, well, flooded.

but at the end finds a way to bring a positive experience. The positive experience can be a safe place

T asked me one time about what my "safe place" could be. I love hiking...and I often disappeared into the woods when I was a kid to try to get my own space. So I talked about being out in the woods...and getting as far from other people as I could...and somehow merging with that space by disappearing, like, for real. He said I need to find a way to feel safe in the woods without disappearing to accomplish that. But honestly...disappearing seems like the only safe place. Everything else is full of triggers, and struggle, and conflict.

I truly can't recall a time or place where I felt safe. Not sure I even know what "safe" feels like.

would kill the person in front of them if they had more strength than a squirrel

Your posts make me laugh sometimes. Great visual.

 

[Tinyflame]

Dear @DogwoodTree , you said:

If stability is the ability to suppress emotions...I've had 41 years of practice. My emotions were never allowed to exist in my family. When I'm flooded, I freeze, or try to disappear and become invisible and nonexistent. So...(honest question)...how can I practice stability without having access to normal emotions? It's either Niagara Falls...or the Sahara Desert.

That was me too. However, I don't think stability is the ability to suppress emotions, but rather to deal with them when they occur (often can no longer suppress them). I think oddly their 'leaking out' (or overflowing/ overwhelming) is actually only when it is safe enough to do it. And for our mind or heart to allow it.

I think the first step is recognizing them, even through a backdoor approach of noticing our body. The second is figuring out which emotion(s) it is (even with the aid of a chart). Then working back to see where it comes from: perhaps the present, but with flooding it goes back to the past. Now, where/ what in that past is our mind focusing on? What is it revealing? And lastly, now what? What can we physically do to deal with feelings of despair, or rage, or overwhelming anxiety & fear, or worthlessness, suicidality, etc. And have a preformed plan. For example, it may include breathing exercises, exercise, sleep, reaching out for help etc.And lastly if it's identifiable, dismantling them (such as shame, grieving, etc.) Or I should say lastly, ideally replacing them with peace, even joy. (More than letting go, too, definitely different than minimizing or denial.)

The emotions re normal, but the intensity (or denying they exist at all, & experiencing numbness (which to me IS overwhelm) ) is what is different.

And (for me) there are several parts to it: the secrets we keep, the brutality of remembered details, wht I can't remember, self-blame, the ways of cognitive thinking (distortions), the impairment, even situationally (perhaps cortisol?) of what I need to remember at the time (even to stay alive), the validation/ lack of by others, the problems with self-worth, are some.