A collection about red brain and blue brain working together.
Flooding was one of John Gottman’s remarkable discoveries about the emotional brain during conversation. Flooding happens when the emotional brain has a fight-or-flight reaction and dumps neurotransmitters into the bloodstream. This process includes partial or total degradation of the cognitive brain. The result is our emotions hijack our behavior and we stop thinking clearly. More about flooding and managing it below.
Our emotional brain routinely runs our life in another important way. This influence is less dramatic but more far more common. Besides occasionally hijacking our system, our emotional brain makes most of our decisions. This is easy to observe if one has ever been dieting but eaten that doughnut anyway. There is a moment when we hesitate, then an impulse takes over. This is the emotional brain taking over. Our cognitive brain can override the emotional brain, but that takes a lot of energy, where the impulse is basically effortless. So when we are tired or distracted or distressed, we lose our ability to avoid eatin the doughnut (or saying something sarcastic to a colleague). This is well described and documented in Daniel Kahneman’s book.
Within that impulse, by the way, there is a window to turn towards the underlying emotions. Embracing them and reprocessing out triggers can release their power over us and realize healing, freedom, and high performance. Brandon Bays and Kevin Billett have developed very powerful tools for that work. Find out more about that here and here.
Fortunately, we can develop our awareness and skill with both of these mechanism through which our emotional brain runs our lives.
These are all practices of building EQ.
More about flooding: Here is a good description from Dr. Gottman’s website. A critical aspect of flooding is that it limits our ability to recognize that we are flooded.
“The difference between flooding and more manageable experiences of our emotions is one of magnitude. You reach the point when your thinking brain — the part that can take in gray areas, consider other sides, stay aware of the real state of affairs — is shut out. Psychologist John Gottman explains this emotional hijacking as the hallmark of our nervous system in overdrive. Something happens — and it could be almost anything — in your interaction with your partner that sets off your internal threat-detection system. This is your parasympathetic nervous system in action, preparing you for battle or flight. In this state, you lose some of your capacity for rational thought. Science describes this is as a decrease of activity in your pre-frontal cortex, the center of higher cognition.
“The stuff that works well when you are being chased by a mastodon doesn’t work so well in the home. Our instinctive reactions in these moments usually make the situation worse. The fight response we are primed for becomes a cascade of angry words that just deepen wounds. In flight, we might stalk out of the room or shut out our mate with icy silence.”
https://www.gottman.com/blog/making-sure-emotional-flooding-doesnt-capsize-your-relationship/
Elephants and Economics 