Functioning isn’t so simple when you’re feeling overwhelmed.
Common experiences that can lead to emotional overwhelm can include:
Relationship issues
Physical or mental health illness
A demanding job
Lack of nutrition
Financial distress and insecurity
Significant life changes
Time constraints
Death of a loved one
Personal traumas such as abuse
Habitual lack of sleep
Let’s take the to-do list. When I get overwhelmed at the size of my to-do lists my brain is seeing the threat of scarcity: not enough time, not enough energy, not enough ability to fit everything into 24 hours. Or it sees the threat of failing, the threat of disappointing others, the threat of feeling like I’m not doing enough.
Human beings react to these feelings the same way we do with other threats: fight, flight, or freeze. Usually, we end up somewhere between freeze and flight, which usually shows itself as procrastination such as watching another episode on Netflix to doing tasks that are useful to get done but which don’t really matter in that moment.
The reason our bodies can respond so strongly to this negative emotion is the release of cortisol, the “stress hormone.” When you begin to feel overwhelmed, cortisol surges through your body and leaves you overloaded with intense anxiety. At the same time, our serotonin stores, the chemical that helps our bodies fight off depression and anxiety, start to deplete. This combination causes the intense feeling of total despair associated with being overwhelmed.
So what should you do if you’re overwhelmed, paralyzed, or procrastinating?
1. Ground yourself in the present using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique.
This is a great mindfulness technique as all you need is your five senses:
5 - Look around and name five things you can see, right now, from where you are.
4 - Listen and name four things you can hear.
3 - Notice three things you can touch, like the pages of a nearby book or the feeling of your feet on the carpet.
2 - Next come two smells: Breathe in the pages of a book or the citrus scent of the candle you lit.
1 - Finally, name something you can taste: a sip of cold water will do, or even just the taste of your own mouth.
This does not one, but two things to interrupt the overwhelm. First, it grounds you in your senses and the present moment. Second, keeping track of the counting and working your way through your senses interrupts spinning thoughts. It’s a mini moment of mindfulness to pull you back to feeling more grounded.
2. Clean Up Your Surroundings.
The phrase “outer order, inner calm” is popular for a reason. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, tidying the area around you restores order to a little corner of your universe and allows you to move forward. Restrict yourself to things within arm’s reach. Stack loose papers, put caps on pens, wipe away dust. The resulting order will help you feel like you’ve accomplished something and allow you to focus on the task at hand, not the clutter.
3. Cleverly Prioritise
Cut everything that should be done and stick to things that need to get done now. A helpful tip if you do not know where to start, is to look firstly at what are the most important tasks to be done that day, coupled with which task you feel like putting off the most. Whichever task hits that combination of factors is the one to tackle next.
4. Stop Multitasking
We know multitasking doesn’t work. Our brains are simply not designed to do two or three tasks at once. Instead, we end up moving back and forth among our various tasks. Holding a conversation while the TV is on, eating lunch at your desk, leaving your email open while you work, or simply keeping your smartphone at hand 24/7 are examples of things that force you to transition your attention (and then transition it back) hundreds of times a day.
Instead, practise doing one singular thing at a time. Remember: single-task, single-task, single-task.
5. Take the Next Small Right Action
When you feel frozen, think only of the next tiny step. The next right action can be ridiculously small—only you have to know that you’re inching forward by thinking “Okay, now click on the folder. Now open the document. Now start reading.”
6. Write Your Thoughts Down
Sometimes order comes from writing down all the whizzing thoughts going through my head. Writing puts my thoughts on paper, in the physical world. I am able to read and reflect on them. And from there I can gain some perspective - because sometimes my head can get so bogged down in the thinking that there is no doing going on. Writing it all down gets me out of the bog and able to refocus back on positive action.
7. Rethink Your To-Do List
Keeping a to-do list is so important to managing so many areas of life, yet if you’re overwhelmed, looking at a long list of tasks can be daunting.
One way to make it more manageable is to chunk like with like: put all your phone calls together, or all your writing tasks together. Chunking makes a long list more cohesive, more efficient, and by extension, less overwhelming.
Another method is to write your list with your schedule in mind. Plan big projects for the morning when you have the most energy and focus and schedule brainless tasks for the 3 p.m. slump.
8. Radically Accept What You Cannot Change or Control
You can strategise and organise all you want, but at some point, you will run into something you can’t change or control. When you do, radical acceptance is the only answer.
Radical acceptance doesn’t mean throwing in the towel. It means allowing for uncertainty and uncontrollability, without struggle or complaint, and keeping on with what you can do instead of dwelling on what you can't.
Summary
I hope you can see that your feelings and emotions do not own you. Just because you may feel overwhelmed does not mean that you actually are.
Exercising just a small amount of faith and hope that ultimately the things you cannot change will work out ok, allows you to free up your energy to focus on action.
Because if I only think about an issue, the issue will stay. So remember, positive action changes everything (P.A.C.E). Taking simple, positive actions will not only make a huge difference to your perception of how badly or well you feel you can cope with life’s challenges, but will in fact be the reason things move forward in order to change.