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we rupture and we break
we stagger and we shine
mistake after mistake
inhabiting our minds
“Untethered” by Allison Joseph
In this series on Big Emotions, we’ll be exploring the science behind emotional flooding, as well as different ways to create emotional resilience.
As a child, I was a very well-behaved kid, until I wasn’t. It was as if a switch flipped, and I’d respond by angrily throwing every piece of clothing out of my bureau drawers. Or wailing at the top of my lungs, wandering in the woods behind my house, completely undone by how I felt. At these moments, I was unable to speak, to process. I was completely swept up in my emotions.
When we are stressed, lonely, overly-tired, grieving, we simply have very little capacity left to sort out how we feel. The part of our brain that can help us remember that we are overloaded, or remember, for instance, that going to the doctor makes us feel panicky, or remind us that we’re too hungry to think straight – that part of our brain is offline.
At that moment, small things become huge. We feel untethered from our controlled selves and thrust into a sea of turmoil. “we rupture and we break,” as Allison Joseph writes. We can find ourselves ruminating on all the things we’ve ever done wrong or find ourselves suddenly crying or yelling.
This is particularly true for people with ADHD. As psychologist Sharon Saline explains, “the flooding of hurt, frustration, fear, or anxiety is too much to process for the already taxed executive functions of folks with ADHD.”
This emotional flooding is scary. We feel out of control.
But there is hope. When we learn how to pause, welcome our emotions – even those that are drowning us – and become curious about what we need, we can learn how to swim with our feelings. Coaching can help.