Dr. Pamela Kreiser

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938 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 11 Aug

Dr. Pamela Kreiser’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.

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Asking For A Friend with TalkDoc · #145: When You Shut Down Mid-Fight, This Is What's Happening Inside You! · 11 Aug 2026 podcast

But the acceptance of it, I think, is the first thing. And I think what it means then is we focus on the utility of the speech and say, okay, so when we talked about that thing, this happened. And now that this has happened, there's a physical response that has to be managed. I can't do it for you if you're flooded. You have to do it for you. There's nothing I can say. I can't disqualify. I can't.

throw on all these piles of words to do it. You have to do it, but you also have to know yourself and know if you're the flooded person, I have to accept that that's a human tendency and I have to know the thing that's going to get me out of it. And it's not going to be to go have a beer in the other room and think bad thoughts about your wife.

And I think you have to also vet it for big and small because I think you can have small versions of this. I'm not sure we're worried about those as much. But when you have a big topic and this is how it tends to land, you know, how we're going to raise the kids or should we have a kid or whatever, these bigger things, if we keep having the same reaction and never having the conversation, I think that's the more danger. Not when we have little hiccups. We're going to have conflicts. We're going to have disagreements, questions, things not talked about.

So you got to be realistic about what's the utility of what's going on. But for me, I really found when I kind of came to grips with the fact that my spouse tends to get flooded on certain topics, when I realized the scheduler is my best friend, because I'm good because it's back on the schedule. Okay. We don't have to talk about it right now. Let's talk about it tomorrow morning.

Yes, I think that is true. I do agree with that. But I also think there's a lot of stonewalling happens where we didn't see it coming. So I don't know if it's always like, oh, we're about to talk about having not having kids again or having kids again. And now that's difficult. I'm going to get flooded. I don't know that I think it's more spontaneous than that, which means it's less controllable.

And so I think because of that, I would say that it's a little bit more hijacking than it is that. But the scheduler is my best friend. And the reason that is, is I remember I wanted to have the conversation right now. And if you could just get up and talk about it, I'd be happy. I know you're flooded, but that's just, that would be something great. So just knowing that I have to accept that. And then when we get to these conversations that are scheduled, there's been a little more preparation.

Because if you think more on the hijacking side, that person's had a little more prep to think through, okay, we're going to have this conversation. It's going to be a different scenario, but here's what's the success of it. You don't have the emotional charge anymore. I was going to actually, in a moment of sharing what kind of we're visiting together, you're saying like if you have this organization and then

relatable one for a lot of people. I think so. And I would also say that that could be more widely applicable to hard topics generally. So let's say it's finances. And we know the research on that, that there's a lot of like a third of couples don't talk about finances at all before they get married, which is unbelievably shocking. I think it was 34% in the study we read. And

And we were all like totally horrified at that. But that doesn't mean if you're listening to this and you haven't talked about finances that your relationship's doomed. We're just saying it's a big thing. Schedule it. Put it on the calendar.

Right. No, but that's it, Taylor. So I think then if you have a hard topic, another wide application here would be to say, hey, we need to schedule this out and once a month have a chat about finances or every other month talk about savings or investing. And the thing that I think that happens when we have things that are scheduled, I think it just takes the emotional drive out of it.

Yeah, totally. And the mystique. And it's like, okay, we're gonna do our check in on money. And it's the first Saturday. And we usually do that with a cup of coffee. So, you know, but then you have the conversation. I think it just becomes less difficult. Yeah.

And I think there's definitely a misconception about avoidance of topics or conflict generally that feeds into some misconceptions about stonewalling. So, you know, I've taught college more than 30 years and I spent a lot of time talking with college students about conflict. And

I still to this day will hear people who prefer avoiding in their communication. At the end of the semester, which we just had, they will say to me, I didn't realize I was adding to the conflict. I thought I was helping the conflict by not having the conversation.

Interesting. And I think that's an interesting part of this. If we don't schedule, I think that's an interesting part where someone who gets flooded goes, wow, this is if you're not educated about this, this is bad. I don't like how this feels. Maybe I'll help us get out of this bad place and just we don't have to go there ever again.

The problem is that Gottman's research doesn't show that that's going to work. It shows that that's going to actually lead to determination. So my students realize this is different. Avoidance is different than stonewalling. They have some overlap. But when you and I decide to avoid something, we still leave it in the room.

So I hear from avoiders saying, I wasn't causing any trouble. I wasn't doing anything. I didn't bring anything up. But for all the people that wanted it brought up, it's still there. It's like a sibling that's like, I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you. You're part of that problem. I can't get that out of my head.

You know, and I, one of the analogies I give is sometimes I'll say, you know, you, you drive on a freeway and you have a very slow car in the middle. Let's say you have a seven or eight lane highway and you have a very slow car and they'll say, I'm not doing anything except for there's accidents all around you.

But I didn't get in an accident. I'm fine. That's sort of the perspective I hear from the avoidant person. But here's what I would also say. We're talking about relationships you want to keep, the close relationships. Why would you do that to the close relationship when the other person obviously wanted to talk about it? The other person is struggling with the fact that we aren't talking about it.

So it's not going to go away by you just going, oh, my bad. I'm going to go get a beer. I'm out of here and hang out. That won't improve it. Avoidance does not improve it. And I think there's still a fair amount of people in our society that equate avoidance with I'm helping. I didn't bring it up. I didn't cause the conflict. I wasn't the problem.

And I think avoidance by itself still does a bunch of damaging things. Now pile on top of that the COVID era that we all have come out of where there was higher levels of avoidance. So I think people actually increased their avoidance in that stage and perhaps have not made adjustments since.

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