Have you ever felt flooded?

I don’t mean “water in your basement” kind of flooding… I mean emotional flooding. It’s when your emotions take over and overwhelm you. Flooding makes it difficult to think clearly, process your emotions, and take appropriate action.

It’s common to become emotionally flooded when you are dealing with stressors without the skills it would take to manage them. Perhaps you experience something that takes you back to a traumatic event (in other words, you are triggered). Or perhaps you experience intense emotions without piecing together that there is a trigger in the first place.

Emotional flooding can scare people away from wanting to process their feelings. Over and over again, clients in my psychology practice express fears of exploring feelings that hold deep pain. It’s such a valid fear, especially when my clients have been taught (directly or indirectly) that their emotions are unimportant, bad, dangerous, or burdensome.

In order to decrease emotional flooding, it’s crucial to develop a relationship with your emotions. If you don’t have a relationship with your emotions, chances are high that “in-the-moment coping” will be extremely challenging for you. The only way out is through. Unfortunately, there aren’t shortcuts or workarounds. It’s instrumental to have a roadmap for getting through your emotional overwhelm.

First, let’s talk about why you might have a rocky relationship with your emotions in the first place.

Childhood is the time when kids are learning, growing, and absorbing everything in their environment. But what happens when their environment is one that doesn’t make space for emotions? What happens when their........

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