A flood is not just about what happens when a river exceeds its banks. It can also refer to what happens when a person is subjected to more intense stimulation than he or she can effectively handle. Some brief comparisons between the natural world of geography and the inner experience of the mind will illuminate this point.
Whenever a person is overwhelmed by more cognitive or emotional input than the brain can effectively process, a kind of neurological flooding occurs. The nervous system can only handle so much before it starts to withdraw from the source of stimulation. This is when people begin to compensate in a number of ways: the ability to pay attention diminishes or emotional responsiveness begins to ‘numb out‘.
In more drastic situations a person who is flooded with intensely unpleasant emotional stimuli can start to shut down along several dimensions of healthy functioning. Reactions become either blunted or excessive, a sense of emotional security can begin to wither, and a person’s overall ability to cope with even minor events can falter. Once effective neurological processing ceases to keep up with the excessive demands placed upon it, long-term traumatic repercussions can develop. Just as in nature, the damage caused by flooding can continue long after the waters recede.
But the amount of water that falls is not the only reason why a flood occurs. How the land is contoured can make all the difference. A well-irrigated field can handle a lot of water, and even benefit from it, while a barren plain has no place for the water to go. Similarly, good drainage goes a long way toward keeping the current moving without backing up to cause even more extensive damage. Ground that is already saturated can’t absorb any more. And finally, the strength of the barrier between water and land is as crucial as anything else. The flood doesn’t happen unless the levee breaks.
All of these variables have correlates within the human coping mechanism. Based upon the above, it’s possible to be as prepared as possible to prevent emotional flooding when a deluge of stress occurs in life.
For instance, are you well-irrigated or barren? This is determined by the extent to which you have ways to expend the energy of anxiety in the most effective ways possible. Exercise, hobbies, creative outlets, adequate sleep and diet, spiritual and philosophical sources of support and other aids to the development of resiliency all help to dissipate and even productively utilize some measure of stress in productive ways.
What does it mean to have good psychological ‘drainage’? This is achieved by having trustworthy people to confide in about the full range of your emotional experience. This is why friends, healthy family members, support group peers and even counselors and therapists are so important. This helps your emotional ground from becoming so saturated that you can’t handle any more difficulties constructively.
Self-awareness can’t be over-emphasized. Remaining mindful of your entire state of being is crucial to insuring the health of your intellect, emotions, body, relationships and spirit. This is the equivalent of monitoring the levee when the waters rise and insuring that areas of ‘high ground’ remain fully tended. This is not the time to realize you have holes in your boat, no oars and no provisions to use until help arrives or the waters recede.
This whole extended metaphor emerged from a simple reflection in a therapy session about the distinction between ‘flooded’ and ‘’washed’. To finish the analogy, this is the benefit of keep all gutters and drains free of emotional debris so that they can effectively carry the stress away. With these characteristics, you can withstand the inevitable deluges of life stress to come into and go out of your life in the best way possible.
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