Why Flooding the Zone Works—and What We Can Do About It

Through real conversations, we can teach our kids—and remind ourselves—to think critically and practice discernment.

Flooding the zone is a political tactic designed to overwhelm people with so much information that it’s hard to figure out what really matters. It distracts, attempts to control the narrative, and makes it difficult to assess what’s most important.

Recognizing and dealing with it requires two of my favorite skills to talk about: discernment and critical thinking. In Restoring Our Girls, I write about how important it is not just to define these skills for our girls, but to practice them in real conversations. It’s about engaging our kids in discussions with nuance and complexity, without defaulting to black-and-white thinking. The goal of flooding the zone is to keep us from using our discernment and critical thinking, which is exactly why we need to stay grounded in both.

Critical thinking is key, especially when it comes to media literacy. Headlines use emotional language to grab attention, images are chosen to evoke specific reactions, and word choices aim to shift perceptions—like the difference between “protest” and “riot.” Algorithms attempt to reinforce existing views, creating echo chambers without us realizing it. Noticing these patterns helps us see not just what’s being said, but how and why it’s being presented.

Flooding the zone is designed to leave us feeling emotionally overwhelmed. When that happens, it helps to pause and ask: Am I scared, confused, or just feeling rushed to react? Naming what’s really going on puts space between our emotions and the situation itself. Feeling overwhelmed can also trigger automatic thoughts, jumping to conclusions, thinking in all-or-nothing terms, or assuming the worst. A simple mental check—“Is this a fact or just a feeling?”—can help interrupt the spiral.

Discernment is about recognizing the noise and deciding what deserves our attention. Not all information is relevant, and not everything requires a reaction. Discernment helps us focus on what matters most and what we can control, versus what’s just there to distract us. To be discerning, we need to pause, breathe, and remain emotionally aware. When we take time to reflect and process, we’re able to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting impulsively.

Flooding narrows our view, making problems feel bigger and more personal than they really are. We can talk things through with someone we trust or ask ourselves, “How would I see this if I stepped back?” or “What advice would I give a friend in this situation?” Reframing like this reminds us we’re not stuck—we’re just in the process of sorting things out.

Critical thinking helps us make sense of information, while discernment helps us decide what to do with it. We analyze a situation to understand the facts, and discernment guides our response—that’s where wisdom, experience, and personal insight come in. Both skills also teach us how to sit with uncertainty. When we’re not pressured to have immediate answers, we stay curious, ask better questions, and engage with the world in a way that’s more grounded and less reactive.

One of my favorite movies, The Big Short, does a brilliant job of showing how flooding the zone, discernment, and critical thinking played out—or didn’t—during the financial meltdown of 2008. It shows the crisis from multiple perspectives, and between scenes, it flashes commercials, music videos, and pop culture clips—the same kinds of distractions that kept people from noticing what was really happening. At the same time, it highlights the people who were either creating the chaos or trying to call attention to it. It’s a layered look at how much can be happening at once, how many players are involved, and how easy it is to get sidetracked from what really matters.

This week on Zen Parenting Radio, Todd and I talked about how flooding the zone doesn’t just happen in politics or the news—it happens in our families too. As parents and partners, we can fall into the habit of overloading conversations with too many requests or grievances: “You never help with anything, you’re always late, and you keep ignoring my texts!” Or we give drawn-out lectures, covering every possible angle of a lesson about responsibility, making it hard to even find the actual point. Family meetings can spiral into discussions about everything—vacations, chores, schedules, grades—which means there’s no clear focus on anything. The zone is flooded with all our concerns, making it hard to see what really needs attention.

The first step is simply naming the pattern—saying out loud, “Let’s not flood the zone here”—to help prevent overwhelm or spiraling. Practicing this at home helps our kids recognize that zone flooding is a real thing out in the world, and it even shows up in sports, clubs, and the drama or posturing within their friend groups.

Maybe they’ll start to notice when they’re flooding the zone themselves, like when they unload every single bad thing that happened at school in one breath. In those moments, we can help them regulate by listening calmly and saying, “Sounds like you had a tough day. What was the hardest part?” or “You’ve got a lot on your mind. What do you want to focus on first?”

Through conversation—not lectures—we model how to pay attention to the flood. We show that feeling off-balance often comes from trying to process too much at once, and that this can be both an accidental habit and an intentional tactic used to keep us stuck.