Dr. Nicole LePera

You can't just calm down like maybe a very well-meaning loved one is telling you to do.

Because you are so flooded and brought back in time and your body can't calm down unless you teach your body how to calm down.

So beginning in the body, as I often suggest we do, it feels very much like a stress response, which impacts three major systems that we can give our self-awareness of by focusing our attention on our heart rate, our breathing, and the tension in our muscles.

So for a lot of us, right, a moment of emotional flooding, and again, I'll just briefly talk about, right, the over and under, is when our heart starts racing, our breath quickens, our muscles become tense, we might clench our jaw or even our fist, right?

We're flooded with energy.

I want to also give justice, though, to those of us that kind of shift into a more shut down state, where instead of, right, all of that amplified energy, we might feel numb, feel cold in one second.

Right.

Our heart rate, we can't even feel our heart in our chest and we're holding our breath and our muscles might well as feel like putty.

We want to get up and run, but we don't even feel like we can summon the energy to.

So that's what's happening in our body.

Right.

This immediate we don't have to think about it.

Our body is already shifting into that action or reaction in our mind.

What's mapping on to that stress response, because that's what we're talking about here, whether you're in the fight or flight with that amplified energy or the kind of shut down state, the other end of that spectrum.

In our mind, and I'm sure some of us very much relate to this, it looks like urgent, overwhelming, all or nothing, black and white.

You're always, you're never type thinking.

Those are really great markers.

Again, when the reaction is immediate, urgent, all or nothing in body and in mind.

We don't feel like we can even stop, right, our body's reaction in those moments.

Those are great cues that what's happening is emotional flooding and even tying it back to the concept of our inner child is reacting in that moment, which is why oftentimes the reaction we're having outwardly, the screaming, yelling, saying something we don't want, taking our, you know, toys and going to our own sandbox or not speaking, giving the silent treatment, fine.