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Your heart is pumping, and your palms are sweaty. Your jaw feels tight.

Their lips are moving, but it's getting hard to track the conversation.

You may feel yourself zoning out and pulling away, or your blood is boiling, and you're starting to see red.

In either case, Dr. John Gottman explains that when we feel flooded, our minds and bodies are in a state of distress or diffuse physiological arousal. Our fight, flight, or freeze response is triggered. The alarm bells are wailing internally.

When I work with couples, I usually find at least one partner is well-acquainted with this feeling. If their partner routinely overloads them with information, or if their conflicts tend to take on momentum like a runaway train, flooding is usually not far behind.

I rarely get flooded, so early on, I was pretty oblivious to the fact that I flooded my husband constantly. When I got worked up about something and verbally processed it ad nauseam, I imagine it was like one of those spinning, tilting carnival rides stuck in the "on" position. He felt like he might vomit, and he wanted and needed off the ride. I was probably too busy eating ice cream on the midway to notice.

As I've come to understand his experience a little better, I know I need to pause and take some breaths, make sure he's tracking, and if his eyes start to glaze over, I need to give it a rest for a bit.

When we feel flooded, it's important to know how to calm ourselves and how to help our partners. Not unlike our electronics, when things stall out, unplugging and rebooting often do the trick.

The Prevention and Relationship Education Program (PREP)'s model for a good time-out focuses on four steps. I provide a brief overview below, but you can do a deeper dive into this skill with the book Fighting for Your Marriage by Drs. Howard Markman, Scott Stanley, and Susan Blumberg.

1. Notice.

Observe when the conversation is going sideways—maybe you're not fighting fair, things are rapidly escalating, and you feel your adrenaline pumping. Once you're here, the only real choice is to call for a time-out.

2. Make the Call.

Assuming the situation is physically safe, you can agree on a code word or signal to use when a standard time-out is needed. Or you can just ask for one (less fun than the code word option, but still effective).

Gottman recommends breaking for a minimum of 20 minutes to get our bodies and minds calmed down and back to a state of equilibrium, but this varies widely in practice. If you need the time-out, let your partner know whether you're talking about five minutes or an hour to help manage their expectations.

3. Calm Yourself Down.

The trick is to leave each other's presence and do something truly relaxing vs. seething from across the room as you stockpile counterarguments.

What soothes each of you is probably different. You might enjoy meditation or a warm bath, while your partner prefers to walk the dog or play a video game. Whatever helps you reset without ruminating works here.

Remember, time-outs differ from the silent treatment or withdrawal because you're communicating you need a break and putting parameters around it. The goal is to reconvene the conversation as soon as you can.

Storming out or shutting down without this understanding can call the emotional safety of the relationship into question. It leaves your partner worried about you and anxious about the relationship.

4. Get Back in the Game.

One critical note: It's often very difficult for the non-flooded partner to honor a time-out request when they want to resolve the conflict or process the issue on the spot. While time-outs should be granted anytime they're requested, it's crucial that you come back when you say you will. That builds trust.

If you agree on a 30-minute break and don't show back up for two hours, there's a good chance you'll have something else to fight about when you return. So, if you find you need more time as your break nears its end, let your partner know you need an extension.

When you're back together, you might be in a better headspace to resolve the issue, or it may seem pretty insignificant, and you agree to drop it. Other times, you may decide the issue still needs to be addressed, but revisiting it at another time is best (ideally within 24 hours so it's not relegated to the back burner).

Final Thoughts

Really give thought to the circumstances that make you feel flooded and overwhelmed, and ask your partner to do the same. When we're more mindful of the topics or ways of interacting that cause flooding, we can make strategic adjustments to keep things from spiraling out of control.

Being aware of our own experience is part of it. Also, learning some of your partner's "tells" can help you be more responsive as you sense they are nearing the flooded threshold, so you can hopefully rein things in before a time-out is needed.

The most important realization for me has been that the conversation is effectively over once our partners are flooded. Forcing them to "stick with it" once they are in a state of distress won't yield any productive results. As the saying goes, "Know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em."

Fold the hand and redeal here.

While breaking for a half hour may feel like a setback, you're likely to process the issue faster in the long run. You build goodwill by granting the time out, and your partner returns fresher and ready to re-engage. Sucking some of the intensity out of the conversation will probably help you both come back more level-headed, too.

As counterintuitive as it seems, sometimes we have to disconnect—consciously and briefly—before we can meaningfully reconnect.