Imagine your brain as a control room. On most days, the switches flick and the dials turn just as they should. But then something small—an unanswered text, a missed deadline, a critical glance—trips the wrong lever. Suddenly, that control room is submerged. The signals blur. The system floods.
This week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, Pete and Nikki sit down with two returning champions of clarity and compassion: Dr. Sharon Saline and Dr. Dodge Rea. Together, they unravel the hidden mechanics of emotional flooding—not as a character flaw, but as a neurological response shaped by fear, history, and a sometimes-overzealous amygdala.
Through stories, science, and metaphor (including rogue trains and Wile E. Coyote’s ill-fated cliff dives), they reveal what happens when the ADHD brain short-circuits under pressure—and what we can actually do about it. Along the way, you’ll learn how shame disguises itself as control, how the body signals what the mind can’t process, and why sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is… go to the bathroom.
This is a conversation about reframing of the narrative so many ADHD adults carry with them: that being overwhelmed means being broken. It doesn’t. It never did.
Links & Notes
- (00:00) - Welcome to The ADHD Podcast
- (00:57) - Support the Show: Become a Patron Today https://patreon.com/theadhdpodcast
- (02:38) - Emotional Flooding with Dr. Sharon Saline and Dr. Dodge Rea
- (21:35) - The Consequences
- (25:09) - Is Emotional Flooding a sort of Trance?
- (28:51) - The Regulation and Recovery Process
- (40:19) - The Five C's
- (44:49) - The g.r.a.c.e. Sequence
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