Emotional Flooding: Symptoms, Causes & How to Calm Down
Emotional flooding sounds exactly like what it is: a complete wave of emotion that hits so hard that it overwhelms you. It can affect how clearly you think and even how you process what’s happening around you.
When you’re emotionally flooded, your body can’t quite tell the difference between a genuine threat to your safety and a heated conversation. It reacts the same either way, affecting you both physically and mentally.
Emotional flooding doesn’t appear out of nowhere. Certain situations, patterns, stressors, and underlying health conditions can make emotional flooding more likely.
This article will cover:
- What emotional flooding is and what happens to you during emotional flooding.
- What triggers emotional flooding.
- Conditions that make emotional flooding more likely.
- How to calm yourself down during a flooding episode.
- When frequent emotional flooding is a sign of something deeper.
- What professional help looks like.
What Is Emotional Flooding?
Emotional flooding is what happens when you feel so overwhelmed by emotion that thinking clearly or making a decision feels impossible.
Psychologist John Gottman first used the term “flooding” to describe a state during conflict where a person becomes both psychologically and physically overwhelmed to the point where they can no longer problem-solve.[1]
In one of his studies, couples were monitored and asked to discuss a topic that was difficult for them. When the conversation started to become heated, Gottman’s team tracked what was happening on a physiological basis.
His team observed that partners became defensive or critical, and in some cases, experienced a complete emotional shutdown.[1]
Gottman’s findings showed that this kind of physiological arousal during conflict predicted relationship decline and even divorce.
While emotional flooding isn’t a formal, clinical diagnosis, it’s still a popular term that connects with established research on emotional dysregulation.
What Actually Happens to You During Emotional Flooding?
When you’re emotionally flooded, changes happen in the brain. It switches into a state where the amygdala, your brain’s threat detection system, takes over, and the prefrontal cortex, responsible for reasoning and self-control, goes slightly offline.
Research on emotional regulation describes this as a breakdown in the network that normally allows the thinking brain to regulate emotional responses.[2] This change causes the following emotional flooding symptoms.
Physical Symptoms
When Gottman’s team observed emotional flooding in real time, they noted physical symptoms like a climbing heart rate. This happens because the body is running a full stress response, almost as though you’re in immediate danger. The functions needed to either address or run away from the threat are fired up, which is known as the fight-or-flight response.
Cognitive Impairment
Beyond the physical symptoms, research on acute stress found that it impairs working memory and cognitive flexibility.[3]
If you’ve ever been in a situation where feeling emotionally overwhelmed caused your mind to go blank, or you couldn’t take in what someone is saying to you, this is stress impacting you cognitively.
Misreading What’s Happening Around You
When you’re in a state of emotional flooding, you may notice that it distorts how you interpret other people’s behavior.[4] In some cases, neutral actions might incorrectly register as hostile during an episode.
For example, your partner closing a door firmly might be read by you as aggression. Or a colleague’s short email might feel like a personal attack.
This happens because your threat detection system is scanning everything around you as though you’re in immediate danger.
Emotional Shutdown
Research shows that the freeze response can be triggered by the feeling of inescapable danger.[5] This is supported by Gottman’s observations that some people experience emotional shutdown when emotionally flooded.
This suggests that flooding can look like intense emotion or a total blank. In both cases, it’s a case of complete nervous system overload.
What Triggers Emotional Flooding?
Certain situations are more likely to push your nervous system past what it can handle.
Going back to Gottman’s research, relationship conflict is one of the most observed triggers. This conflict often stems from feeling rejected or criticized. If you’re already sensitive to these experiences, that alone can be enough to trigger flooding.
Accumulated stress, within or outside of the relationship, is another trigger. It might seem as though you’re managing individual stressful situations well, but when they start to accumulate, it can trigger flooding.[4] When a rough week at work is combined with an argument with your partner and growing financial stress, it can hit hard and without warning.
Triggers can also be related to neurodiverse and mental health conditions that make flooding more likely.
Conditions That Make Emotional Flooding More Likely
Some people find that they emotionally flood more easily than others. That’s often due to an underlying condition that has lowered their threshold for emotional overwhelm.
Trauma
Trauma keeps the nervous system on edge through a persistent trauma response, which is linked directly to emotional flooding. One meta-analysis found that people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show hyperactivity in the amygdala alongside hypoactivity in the prefrontal cortex.[6]
Interestingly, the same analysis found that as prefrontal activity dropped, amygdala activity rose.
This shows that the brain’s threat detector is overactive while the part that would normally regulate it is underperforming. As we noted earlier, this imbalance is similar to what Gottman found with those who were emotionally flooded. The difference is that, for someone with PTSD, that’s a baseline state, rather than something that happens under extreme stress.
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Emotional dysregulation in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is now recognized as far more common than it was previously understood. Research states that dysregulated emotions affect anywhere from 32 to 85% of those with ADHD.[7]
This means that people with ADHD may also experience strong emotional responses that can trigger flooding.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is synonymous with high emotional sensitivity, as well as a slow return to baseline emotions after an incident.[8]
This means that emotions can stack on top of each other because the person hasn’t recovered from the last trigger before the next one arrives.
Anxiety
Anxiety is a condition that keeps the nervous system running at a higher emotional baseline. That can mean even a small addition to an already full emotional load can be enough to tip you into flooding.
Research on people with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) found that for some, the sympathetic arousal stays elevated even at rest, and this predicts more intense physiological symptoms.[9]
Depression
Depression leaves you with fewer cognitive and emotional resources for regulating how you feel.
One study found that people with depression had a reduced capacity to deal with negative emotions through cognitive reappraisal.[10] This is the ability to reinterpret a situation to change its emotional impact, and when that ability is impaired, emotional flooding becomes much more likely.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
How to Calm Yourself Down During Emotional Flooding
If you’re prone to emotional flooding, in the moment, it can feel as though nothing can stop the flood and you just have to wait it out until it’s passed. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be the only option. You can practice coping skills that work with your body, not against it. Some of the most effective include the following.
Recognizing the Flood Early
This sounds easier said than done, but it gets easier with practice. If you learn to recognize your personal warning signs, it can become one of the most valuable skills.
For example, you may start to notice signals that the nervous system is escalating, such as:
- A racing heart.
- Clenched jaw.
- Tunnel vision.
- A sudden urge to leave the situation.
Everyone’s early signs look a little different, so it helps to track your own. After your next few emotional flooding episodes, jot down what you noticed in your body in the minute or two before things boil over.
If you’re able to pinpoint these feelings in real time, you instantly give yourself more options to deal with the situation.
Remove Yourself From The Trigger Temporarily
Removing yourself doesn’t mean avoiding the situation. It’s more of a strategic pause that gives your nervous system a chance to come back down to baseline.
Even stepping away for just 20 minutes can make all the difference, as Gottman’s research suggests. He found that when couples took a 20-minute break, where they stopped talking and read magazines, it was enough to dramatically change the conversation that followed. It also gave their heart rates enough time to return to normal.
Physiological Calming
Research on slow breathing under stress found that five to six breaths per minute helped maintain parasympathetic activity during stressful situations.
Cold water on the face is another technique to consider, as this triggers something known as the diving reflex. This is a rapid parasympathetic response that slows the heart rate and counteracts sympathetic surges.
Splashing cold water on your face or holding a cold pack against your cheeks and eyes for 20 to 30 seconds is usually enough to bring on the response.
Grounding Techniques
Sensory-based exercises that bring your attention back to the present moment can help to interrupt the stress response. One simple version is naming:
- Five things you can see.
- Four you can hear.
- Three you can touch.
- Two you can smell.
- One you can taste.
Work through your senses one at a time until your attention is back in the room instead of in your head.
For example, if you focus on what you can see or hear, you’re giving yourself the chance to pull your awareness out of the emotional storm.
Grounding techniques are commonly used in therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
When Frequent Emotional Flooding Is a Sign of Something Deeper
The occasional emotional flood is common. It’s a normal part of being human. A single incident doesn’t mean something is clinically wrong or that there’s an underlying condition causing it.
But this is where frequency and intensity are important to observe. Your nervous system needs time to fully reset between episodes, so how long recovery takes can give you important information.
If flooding episodes are happening multiple times a week and recovery is taking hours rather than minutes, that is something that needs to be investigated. The same also applies if the emotional triggers are getting smaller, but the reactions are getting bigger.
You could consider professional help here, especially if the flooding feels connected to trauma or another mental health or neurodivergent condition.
What Does Professional Help for Emotional Flooding Look Like?
Outpatient treatment can be a good starting point for many people who experience emotional flooding.
Outpatient treatment means attending scheduled therapy sessions while still living at home as normal. The skills you learn in sessions are then practiced in real-life situations where your flooding episodes happen. That real-world practice is a big part of why outpatient treatment works so well.
Therapies like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) directly teach distress tolerance and emotion regulation skills, which can also be adapted depending on any underlying conditions.
If your doctor suggests medication, outpatient care provides a setting where medication can be frequently evaluated and adjusted if needed.
Find Help for Emotional Flooding With Mission Connection
If emotional flooding has been affecting your relationships or your ability to get through the day, and the strategies you’ve tried on your own aren’t producing enough change, Mission Connection can help.
We provide outpatient mental health treatment for adults dealing with the conditions that make emotional flooding more likely. We offer several options for effective treatment, including in-person programs at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, virtual telehealth, and a hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care.
Our outpatient programs are designed so you can build regulation and distress tolerance skills while continuing to manage your daily responsibilities. We will start by understanding exactly what is going on so we can provide the most effective treatment plan consisting of evidence-based therapies.
Our treatment addresses both the flooding itself and the condition driving it, so the work reaches the root of what’s lowering your threshold. This is more effective than only focusing on the symptoms of emotional flooding.
Mission Connection is Joint Commission-accredited. We also accept most major insurance providers, so that your recovery is not hindered due to financial issues.
If you’ve recognized yourself in anything on this page, reach out to us online or call us at 866-833-1822 to find out how we can support your long-term recovery.
