Overcoming Overwhelm
Overcoming Overwhelm
Look in any thesaurus, and the synonyms for overwhelm are pretty awful: overpower, subdue, oppress, quash, engulf, swallow, submerge, bury, suffocate.
Even the words feel weighty.
To anyone who’s experienced overwhelm, and that’s plenty of us, those words may be all too familiar. Whether the overwhelm is sudden or cumulative, chronic or acute, the feeling is one of drowning, immobility and powerlessness.
During those times, everything feels too big. It’s not just everyday busyness and packed schedules. There seems to be no time or energy for anything. So we do nothing.
Even worse, when we feel overwhelm, it’s easy to feel hopeless, as if this feeling will never pass. We seem mired in the quicksand of “too much.” We keep trying to will our way out of the quicksand, but our will just wants to lie down!
“Many of us feel stress and get overwhelmed not because we’re taking on too much, but because we’re taking on too little of what really strengthens us..”
Marcus Buckingham
We live in an overwhelming time as everything is speeding up. We find ourselves connected 24-7 to work, friends, entertainment and social media. The 24-hour news cycle keeps us unrelentingly informed — and often anxious, alarmed or outraged.
And this was before COVID-19 disrupted life as normal. The last year has brought new kinds of overwhelm into our lives. People have struggled with new kinds of “too much” — too much togetherness with school and work from home, too much loneliness and isolation, too much financial or work stress, too many anxieties, too much bad news.
We have lost connection with what really matters–what we truly love and value. We get sidetracked. Our lives are in such fast forward that we don’t even recognize we might need help until we’re drowning.
Connecting With What Matters
Part of the problem is our belief that overrates doing and achievement and underrates values and connection with what matters.
It’s not uncommon for a well-intentioned friend or a magazine article to suggest that we just do it. Make priorities. Choose three things and accomplish them quickly. Do a “brain dump” and create a huge to-do list with everything that you can think of on it. Now get started!
Not always bad suggestions, but overcoming overwhelm isn’t about measuring accomplishment. It’s about connecting with what has meaning for us, with what feeds and enlivens us.
Putting on a whole new sense of doing-ness is overwhelming. There will always be more to do! Connecting with what matters gives us the natural fuel for getting things done.
Recognizing The Symptoms And Triggers
In order to address overwhelm, we need to identify our individual symptoms and triggers.
Symptoms that you’re experiencing overwhelm can be: physical (e.g., nail biting, clumsiness, neck ache); psychological (forgetful, rude outbursts, defensive); social (poor hygiene, inadequate boundaries); or spiritual (loss of sense of purpose, unsure of what’s important).
What triggers those symptoms are also unique to each individual. It might be a deadline, a certain tone of voice or an unexpected change.
Noticing these symptoms and triggers is like setting off the two-minute warning buzzer. It’s time to reevaluate and refocus on what matters.
Equally important are prevention techniques. Along with adequate rest, nutrition and exercise dealing with overwhelm requires connecting with a sense of purpose. If these feel impossible, you may want to seek support with a trusted friend or therapist.
Connect with what you truly love and value first, and you will then find that the tasks more easily get done.
Author’s content used under license, © 2008 Claire Communications
Further Thoughts
Overwhelm can affect individuals differently and can change at different points in our lives. The disruption of this past year has offered us a new perspective on what we value, but also upended all our routines. If you’re noticing some of the symptoms of overwhelm identified above, you are not alone.
The antidote to overwhelm — acting out of a sense of purpose — can feel impossible when the experience is mired in deep-seated, negative beliefs. Much of the therapeutic work we do at Simmeth Counseling Group is helping clients work through negative beliefs that have come about as a result of trauma and negative experiences. These can have powerful holds that can trigger emotions like overwhelm. We use EMDR and other trauma informed therapy to help people release those negative beliefs. Once that happens, it’s much easier to address the symptoms and triggers of emotions like overwhelm and to connect to the positive beliefs and values that mitigate it.
If you’d like to talk about how we can help you, please call our office at 818-681-6627 for a free, 15-minute consultation. We offer both in-person and video conferencing sessions. For those who are comfortable with coming to the office, and do not have other compromising health issues, we’ve instituted protocols for cleaning and scheduling.
