ANDRA MEDEA, author of GOING HOME WITHOUT GOING CRAZY

New Harbinger Publications: Early in the book you discuss flooding. Could you explain what that is and how it affects you physically and mentally?

Andra Medea: Flooding is an adrenaline overload that overwhelms parts of the brain. Have you ever been so upset you can’t think, can’t speak, can barely cope? That’s flooding.

Landmark research on flooding was done by Dr. John Gottman and other researchers, working in labs that monitor changes in the body and brain as people become stressed. You may already know something about flooding from the fight/ flight syndrome, but now we can add many important insights.

You can expect flooding to affect you both physically and mentally. The first sign of flooding in many people is a tightness or pounding in the head. That’s your blood pressure rising. The throbbing headache that you associate with your parents or your Aunt Pauline is not just family dynamics but a physical sign you’ve begun flooding.

Your heart may start pounding, or crashing against your chest. Your breathing may go shallow, leaving you feeling short of breath.

Your face may get flushed. Fair-skinned people get red, while dark-skinned people get darker. You may get sweaty palms or a dry ‘cotton’ mouth. Some people report tingling in their fingers and toes.

You may also experience a lack of coordination. Stressed, you may fumble for a pen, or not be able to get your keys in the door.

It’s important that you learn to recognize your own physical symptoms when flooding hits. This is your first warning that you’re not operating at your best. The physical symptoms are usually the easiest to spot. You may never notice that you’ve stopped thinking clearly, but you can notice when it feels like the top of your head may lift off.

Mental signs of flooding include trouble with logic, language, or problem-solving. You may feel overwhelmed, disorganized, or unable to explain yourself.

For instance, once you start flooding you may suddenly be unable to get any words out, or start talking as if you’re brain impaired: “Mom! You told-- ? Wh—But—How could you!!”

Or your father fires a question at you about your plans for the future. Suddenly your mind’s a blank and you can think of nothing to say, yet you think about your future all the time. You feel like an idiot, but you’re not. It’s only a symptom of flooding.

You can break up flooding with any large muscle action, like climbing a flight of stairs or striding out to your car. Deep breathing, singing, or laughing also relieve flooding.

NHP: What is silent flooding? How can you prevent flooding?

AM: While some people get loud and aggressive when flooding, others get silent and withdrawn. They go inward and brace themselves against the storm of emotions. Rather than act out, they may go rigid. Sometimes they’re not able to get any words out. They may be every bit as upset as someone storming around the house, but their tempest is internal.

Other family members, thinking they’re being disregarded, may even provoke silent ones. They think “I’ll give them something they can’t ignore.” That’s a mistake. That volcano can blow in a hurry.

Rather than provoke this person, it’s time to de-escalate. They’re more upset than you think. Don’t insist that they answer you; they may not be able to get any words out. They certainly aren’t likely to be able to think or make sense.

Instead, simply ask if this person would like some space. If they indicate yes, then say you can talk later and leave them alone for a while. They won’t be able to have a conversation anyway until they calm down, so you may as well give them room.

If you are the person who silently floods, any of the normal flood control techniques would work. Move around, breathe, get some fresh air. If you can only get one word out, try “Later,” then go take a walk. Other people need to know that you aren’t ignoring them, but apart from that you might be better off somewhere else until you calm down.

NHP: You say that guilt lock explains one of life’s great mysteries—how you can feel so bad about a given event and still do nothing about it. What’s behind guilt lock and how do you break out of it?

AM: Guilt lock is the emotional equivalent to grid lock, and just as paralyzing.

Let’s say you really love your grandmother and know she’d like to hear from you. You mean to send her a card or call— but you don’t. Time passes. It bothers you that you haven’t called or written, and yet still you don’t do it. The nagging guilt turns up at odd times, when you’re falling asleep or driving to work, but the fact remains that even though you’re increasingly feeling ashamed of yourself, you somehow never call or write.

After a while you’ve let this slide for an inexcusable length of time. You feel terrible about it, your family has started to make comments, and still, somehow, you don’t get it done.

You’re not a miserable excuse for a human being. You’ve hit guilt lock. Guilt lock springs from a little known aspect of human nature. We think of guilt as a motivator, yet often the opposite is true. Studies have found that when we feel guilty, we don’t act; rather, we go out of our way to avoid the topic. Doing nothing naturally leads to more guilt, which creates more avoidance, which creates more guilt, until we think about the problem all the time and can’t bear to do a thing about it. That’s guilt lock.

Any deeply felt obligation can end up creating guilt lock. Families tend to heighten the effect. Families involve a thousand small commitments, many of which we’ve bungled. Having bungled them, we feel embarrassed, and feeling embarrassed, we avoid them. Soon again, guilt lock.

The good thing about guilt lock is that once you act, the worst is over. It’s not acting that’s the killer. Do anything useful at all to break the paralysis, then follow up with your next move before it gets another grip on you. Once you act, keep acting. Momentum is the key.

And do, please, turn off the guilt. It’s not helping you, it’s hindering you, and you need all the help you can get.

NHP: What are some communication patterns that can lead to familial discord, and why?

AM: Linguists work with two common patterns in America: direct and indirect language. In direct language you say what you mean and mean what you say. There’s no mystery, and sometimes not a lot of finesse. In indirect language, you imply what you mean and expect others to read between the lines. That can be more tactful, but also more bewildering.

Direct speakers are surprised to discover that indirect speakers often find them rude, abrasive and insulting. On the other hand, indirect speakers can be startled to find that direct speakers find them manipulative, sneaky and maddening.

For instance, let’s say your mother casually mentions a terrible idea, like having your drunken uncle climb out on the roof to fix some tiles. In trying to talk her out of it, a direct speaker would say: “Oh Mom, you can’t do that! No, no, no, no, no.”

An indirect speaker would get rather thoughtful and say, “I don’t know. Isn’t cousin Jerry working part time these days? “

They’re both actually saying the same thing. But what’s tactful to one is totally mystifying to the other.

Now, psychologists have mixed reviews on which style is better, but the linguists say that both forms have been around a while and here to stay. The secret is to spot the difference and adjust what you say, especially when you’re driving other people crazy.

NHP: Are there any steps one could take to prevent a full-scale blowout once they begin to get worked up over an unpleasant family conversation?

AM: Families tend to fight about the same things over and over, so there’s no point in being taken by surprise. Since you know it’s going to happen, you may as well plan ahead.

Full-scale blow-ups are fueled by the flooding phenomenon we just talked about, and you can train yourself to head off flooding.

Flooding is a learned reaction. If you flooded the last three times you saw your step-father, you will likely flood the next time you see him. Your body has learned that step-father equals flooding and will start pumping adrenaline on cue, whether or not he says anything wrong. The mere sight of him will set your head pounding and make your thinking malfunction.

This learned reaction certainly can work against you, but it can also be harnessed to work in your favor. Your body can be taught to unlearn flooding, just as it learned to overreact.

You do not want the mere sight of your step-father to send you into a mental tailspin. That gives him too much power over you. You want to avoid flooding, not because you feel warm and gracious towards the man, but because you need your brain to cope.

So what you can do is to set aside some time in a quiet room where no one will interrupt you for an hour or two. Disconnect the phone and tell the kids to turn down the TV.

Now, conjure up the sight of whoever it is who triggers your flooding. There are likely to be images, sounds or smells that will particularly evoke your feelings. It may be the sound of her footsteps coming down the hall, the smirk he gets when he’s made a verbal jab, or the smell of old tobacco.

Thinking of this person and all the triggers, deliberately take yourself to a state of flooding. Feel it wash over you. Make note of your symptoms, like shortness of breath or the way that your thoughts suddenly start spinning in circles.

Now deliberately take yourself out of flooding. Do something physical: jog in place. Swing your arms. Move your chair. Breathe. Get moving and break up the adrenaline.

Once you’ve come back down, check how you’re doing. Is your mind clearer? Do you no longer feel trapped? Are your thoughts steady? Keep it up until you feel like your own best self.

Now take yourself through it all over again. This trains yourself to pull out of flooding, so you will not be vulnerable when your family goes through its usual thing, and you can keep a clear head when they are losing theirs.

NHP: You have developed ‘The Conflict Continuum.’ What are the different levels of conflict and what characteristics are particular to each level?

AM: Level one, the healthiest form of conflict, is focused on problem-solving. People may not be in a good mood, but they’ll act appropriately, try to negotiate for what they want, and show some elf-restraint even if they’re annoyed. This isn’t because they necessarily feel cheerful or enlightened, but because they’re trying to solve the problem and they feel this is the best way to make it happen.

By level two, problem-solving gives way to power plays. People say and do things that really don’t make sense: they forget about solving anything and just try to ‘score’ off the other person. Give-and-take gives way to three new skills: accusation, manipulation and whining. Fortunately in this range people eventually manage to get over themselves, clean up their behavior and go back to solving problems.

Level three is defined as blind behavior: people say and do things they would never say or do if they were thinking clearly. Far from solving the problem, they just make things worse. The situation becomes dysfunctional; their best efforts only dig themselves in deeper. Like the co-dependent who tries to get an alcoholic to stop drinking, people can struggle mightily and still be mystified at how bad things get. Sometimes people quit trying at all because it becomes painfully obvious nothing’s working.

Level four is predation or tyranny. At this point behavior is so out of control that people have become a danger to themselves and those around them.

Let’s look at some examples of how the continuum works. Let’s say you and your sister are pretty decent to each other even when you fight: you leave some space for compromise and even listen to each other when things go wrong. You may not exactly like each other at that moment, your patience may be starting to wear thin, but you do your best to work things out. That’s problem-solving at level one.

However, no one’s perfect, and let’s say your patience gives way. You and your sister have a temporary flare-up. Perhaps you’re both visiting your folks for the holidays, and after making plans you discover your sister is about to go off with the family car. You react: “Hey! Not so fast! I’m supposed to get the car.” You both dig in your heels and try to face each other down, but neither of you give in. After a little while you realize this isn’t getting either of you out of the house, so you start bargaining about how the car can be shared, who can be dropped off where, and how you can get a lift back home. You both got hot, realized it wasn’t getting you anywhere, and then finally settled down and solved the problem. That’s level two: a foray into a power play, then dropping the foolishness and getting back to business.

But let’s say you and your sister have a fairly sour relationship, and you no sooner see her than you regress to the kind of cheap jabs and sniping you did when you were angry adolescents. You won’t compromise about the car or anything else. You recreate enough old patterns and open enough old hurts to leave both of you angry and wishing you’d never come home. You manage to ruin the trip for both of you. That’s level three blind behavior: chronic, debilitating and ultimately pretty miserable. You don’t snap out of it, and for all the sound and fury, you actually have little to show for it.

Finally level four predation might be when both you and your sister encounter an uncle who is now out of jail for child molesting. You both have your own memories of the man, and frankly, you hate him. Yet he’s charming and behaves as if he’s just come back from an extended business trip. None of the family mentions where he’s been. You and your sister both grow silent and watchful as he plays with a young cousin, and yet you do nothing. You leave feeling troubled, upset and vaguely ill.

Now, it’s easy to freeze in the presence of a predator, but it’s not logical and not a good survival skill. It’s evidence of the old traps that still bind you.You and your sister are not predators, but you’ve both fallen into a classic victim role. You become strangely passive around someone you fear and detest. You fail to act in your own interest, or in the interest of the vulnerable child. The entire scene makes you ill, but you do nothing.

This does not make you as bad as the predator or somehow complicit in his crimes. It does show how you can fall into predictable patterns that can be understood and prevented. Knowledge means freedom. In the past you’ve been caught in these conflict patterns because you didn’t know what they were. Once you see how these patterns work, you can learn to change them.

NHP: In your book, you discuss healthy behavior—how do you define healthy behavior?

AM: The healthy form of conflict tries to solve a problem. That includes a willingness to negotiate, enough flexibility to work things through, and a reasonable grasp of reality. That means a willingness to face facts, even when you’d prefer something else were true. None of this is comfortable or entirely tidy, but it is the way to move forward.

There’s a characteristic self-restraint around healthy conflict. It isn’t necessarily that we feel great about the other side, but that we understand that blowing up or lashing out will only make matters worse. So we bite our tongues, take a deep breath, and ignore the clamoring voices inside us that just want to do something rotten.

It’s OK that you feel these voices clamoring to act out, as long as you don’t act on them. There’s no point in expecting perfection from normal human beings. Perfections doesn’t cure conflicts. Problem-solving does.

NHP: You suggest the metaphor of a “blind spot” when addressing irrational interactions; could you please explain what this is? How can one better heed his or her blind spot?

AM: Some family problems never seem to get solved, and instead dysfunction would set in. It used to puzzle me why this was happening, why smart, hard-working people seemed to be hitting an invisible wall. It was easy to think the other side was just being heartless or mean, but I often found people in these situations weren’t intentionally unkind. What they were was startlingly unaware of their own behavior and the effect it was having on others. They simply couldn’t see what they were doing. They’d hit a blind spot, and so the problem went on and on.

For instance, some kids in the family never seemed to grow up. Others were trying mightily to grow up, while others in the family seemed intent on stopping them. Trivial conflicts might drag on for years, while profoundly troubling issues got swept under the rug.

When someone has hit a blind spot, common sense solutions can be sitting, neglected, in plain sight. Yet most of the family can’t get as far as noticing the problem, much less doing anything about it. Instead you hear denial, like “Oh, your dad will stop drinking. It’s nothing. Don’t worry.”

When people are caught up in blind behavior they behave so strangely it lends itself to irony. Does dad need to stop drinking? He’ll think about it over his scotch. Does mom need to stop nagging? She’ll get to it as soon as you wipe your shoes and pick up your coat and get that exasperated look off your face.

Once a problem gets into someone’s blind spot, it can grow and fester in a way that normally would never be tolerated. Yet these breakdowns aren’t the mark of a bad person. They’re the mark of an ordinary, flawed human being who can’t see what they’re doing.

Now, the catch about blind behavior is that it tends to spread. While your family may not notice that their behavior’s out of line, you may not notice that you’re an adult now and have a good deal of choice in how you deal with them.

Let’s say your father has a chronic pattern of taking shots at you for no reason. For the last few years he picks on your hair. You get mad or hurt or sarcastic, but it doesn’t change anything, it just feeds the fire.

Well, place yourself in the here and now, not when you were a scraggly teenager. Take a close look at this old guy who’s giving you a hard time. Is he ridiculing your looks because you have a full head of hair and he doesn’t?

Then ask in your mind: “Is all this because I have more hair than you do?” You don’t even have to say it. Just thinking it clearly will change that conversation forever.

NHP: What does it mean when a family member is predatory? How does one recognize a predatory family member, and how do you suggest dealing with them?

AM: Tyranny or predatory behavior includes all the profoundly destructive family traumas. These include domestic violence, child abuse, sexual abuse, late stage addictions, or extreme personality disorders, such as psychopathology.

Now, you may also feel uneasy thinking of sweet Uncle Charlie as a tyrant when he’s merely a constant drunk who’s destroying his liver. Uncle Charlie isn’t the tyrant; alcohol is. Charlie hasn’t been in charge in years. Left unchecked, the alcohol will kill Charlie and destroy his family in the process. Charlie may be very nice; the drug behind him isn’t and the drug is the threat to the family.

Now, families normally are meant to protect one another. Homes are built with four walls and a door, designed to keep danger away. Storms and thieves are outside, while family and friends are inside. However, sometimes that system goes wrong, and a predator ends up inside the house instead of outside.

It may be Uncle Harry, who’s a little ‘funny’ around little girls, or Dad, who’s put Mom in the hospital twice so far.

A family will unite against a foreign predator outside its walls; but if the tiger is inside the family circle, then the family doesn’t call it a tiger, they call it “Grandpa,” or ”Aunt Sue.” The family will unite to protect the predator, insist there is no problem and little Jimmy just fell down some stairs.

Boundaries around predators become terribly flawed, so you’ll need to create new ones. You need to re-draw the family circle and put the danger back on the outside.

Let’s say the predator in your family is a rageaholic. Something triggers her: a TV show, an unexpected word, the phase of the moon, and she starts spewing venom. You don’t talk or argue with her when she gets this way, because you have before and it’s never worked.

Instead, gather up those you love and take them somewhere else. Put the protective circle around them and the raging terror outside of it. Take them all to the movies, or for a drive, or a walk around the neighborhood. Get them out of there.

The odd thing is, people who have grown up around predators are often very protective people. The catch is that they often choose the wrong people to protect. Rather than protect children or the vulnerable, they protect the addicts or the perpetrators.

You’ve to get your aim right. Protection is good, you just need to be thoughtful about who you’re protecting.

NHP: The holidays in particular seem to be when many family conflicts arise, ironically at a time when families hope to experience togetherness. What are some precautions one should take to avoid disputes during these events?

AM: If you want happiness over the holidays, you may need to take charge of things in a way you haven’t before. You may have had hopes that your family will know how to deal with you, or be reasonable, or be welcoming. They may not know how. So rather than ask them to do things they clearly don’t know how to do, perhaps it’s wiser to take the lead and decide how you are going to be happier whether or not they get a clue.

It might help to come up with one thing you want to accomplish over the holidays. For instance, you might want to have some quality time with your grandma, or get your uncle on tape, or have five minutes when you have a really good laugh with your brother. Then if you get into a situation with someone else, see if you can’t step out of pointless fight and go after one of the things you want instead.

For instance, your sister might be baiting you and you find yourself ready to snap back, just as you always have for the last seven years. Instead of doing it (which you know doesn’t work), stand up and say, “Uncle Jerry—I brought a tape recorder. Can I get the story of when you got lost in the mountains?”

Then pick yourself up and go do something else on your list. If you like you can note the shock and indignation on your sister’s face when you find something more interesting than fighting with her. And don’t be surprised if your sister follows you into the next room to hear the interview. Be nice about it.

Now, your sister or your cranky dad may never change, but you have other people in your family. Someone else is bound to be as bored with old fights as you are. Go catch them and have some fun. Your family clearly needs some new leadership, so it may as well be you.

New Harbinger Publications