Dr. Julie Gottman

And what brilliant...

John here and his colleague Bob Levinson discovered with physiology is that when a person was flooded, they were in fight or flight.

Their heart rates were often over 100 beats a minute as they sat there.

And they started stonewalling in order to go inside and try and soothe themselves because being in fight or flight while you're sitting there feels awful.

Makes you sick.

So first of all, there is no correlation between personality type and flooding.

Anybody can get flooded.

Okay.

Anybody, first of all.

And what does that mean when you use that term flooded?

Okay, so what it means is that you are so overwhelmed by what feels like facing a saber-toothed tiger.

So what's happening is you're hearing what feels like an attack.

It may not be one, but it feels like one.

And because it feels like an attack...

And it's a dangerous attack.

It's threatening.

It sets off this fight or flight response.

And so men who experience this and get flooded are going to look like this.

They give themselves permission to look away.

Yeah.