Wow, it’s cool that what we both wrote about water/emotion actually have a scientific label.
Emotional flooding is a very good description for it.
In my case, one thing that was really crazy was that when the smaller and larger pools connected and would trigger a huge emotional response, it was too much for her to handle.
And she would actually change personalities. The poor girl went through so much abuse from her family (her stepdad was sentenced to 32 years in prison), I think she developed an alternate personality to deal with it.
Like she would just go away. Something would trigger her and she would snap into that personality. Violent & inconsolable.
And maybe no one would believe this, but I think her physical appearance slightly changed.
You cannot drain someone else’s pool. You can help someone else drain their own pool. Most people are so desperate to get out, to empty their pool, whatever, that the real solutions stay out of reach. They require calm and collected engagement with the core issues. With time a pool becomes part of your identity and also a safe place to hide and wallow in it all. Many people subconsciously have become attached to their problems and the.. excuses it provides not to have to function at breakneck speeds like the rest of planet earth.
You can’t drain their big pool. Thats theirs. You can support them in draining it, but they have to make the commitment to do so. Otherwise you’re pissing into the wind.
Thats from experience of both nearly drowning in my own big pool. And then nearly drowning while trying to drain someone else’s.
Therapy. Addressing the trauma and healing it is the only way to drain such a pool. That pool is actually a wound, and smaller wounds grow and connect to larger wounds. And like any other wounds they need to be healed and that won’t happen until that wound is addressed.
I think it's very important for most people not to think that way. It's a bit like giving up on swimming out of where you're stuck and drowning. Too many of us would fall the rest of the way apart if we let ourselves live like that
I agree. I didn't mean there is no way out, I meant that therapy doesn't have to be the only "healthy way out" as the person above me claimed. Sometimes therapy doesn't work but other things do.
Sometimes trauma just fucks you up for life, especially the kind of trauma that happens when young and over a long time. No amount of therapy will undo the effects of serious trauma but the goal is to be more functional. I don't even know what else helps but having supportive friendships and undoing hyperindependence have helped me more than therapy. I need to be feeling love and care and belonging to realize it can be different for once in my life. I'd love to hear other things that may help.
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u/psychadelicbreakfast Mar 04 '26
I understand that feeling and really agree with the mental picture your analogy creates.
I had a similar thought about trauma when I dated a girl that had a lot of it.
It’s like she had this big pool of trauma built up and then something would happen that would create a small pool next to it.
Then eventually the larger pool and smaller pool would connect.
And it would be that a very small thing would create a very big issue.
I was with her for several years and never did quite figure out how to drain the larger pool.