Feeling Overwhelmed as a Sensitive Person? Here's What Helps

When Overwhelm Shows Up

If you're a sensitive person who feels deeply, overwhelm is probably no stranger. You know that feeling when someone asks, “what do you fancy for dinner” and your mind just goes blank? Or when you’re manically responding to work emails and you realise that you’ve been holding your breath for the last ten minutes? Overwhelm can feel like a dramatic meltdown, but sometimes it can be more nuanced, like a faint tightness in the chest, an endless mental loop replaying the same conversation, or that fogginess when you can’t remember why you walked into a room. And if you're sensitive, the edge comes faster than it does for most people.

Why Overwhelm Isn't Just a Mindset Problem

When it comes to understanding overwhelm, many people treat it as a mindset problem rather than a nervous system problem. You may think that if you could just get more organised and better at prioritising, it will go away. That’s not to say that sorting those things won’t help a little bit, but when you’re properly overwhelmed, your nervous system is running the show, and it’s not interested in your to-do list.

Research has shown that feelings of safety have a measurable neurophysiological basis and emerge from internal states regulated by the autonomic nervous system (Porges, 2022) rather than from what you think about your situation. When you’re overwhelmed, your nervous system will have activated one of three distinct neural pathways designed to protect you from threat. These three pathways are known as the ventral vagal state, the sympathetic state, and the dorsal vagal state (Porges, 2011) and they either mobilise you to fight or flee, or when things feel inescapable, they shut you down entirely. What you might see as weakness – the tightness in your chest, brain fog, or inability to make small decisions – could be a sign that your nervous system is trying to protect you.

And if you’re someone who is sensitive, then your edge can occur much sooner than it does for others, because you process things around you in a much more attuned way (Aron, 2013). People with sensory processing sensitivity have a smaller window of tolerance when it comes to processing sounds, light, textures, emotions, and energy. Sensitivity means your central nervous system is extra responsive, and you process physical, social, and emotional stimuli more deeply.

Why Talk Therapy Alone Doesn't Always Help Overwhelm

If overwhelm is happening in your nervous system and not just your mind, this informs how you approach it. Sure, you can talk about how overwhelm makes you feel, trace it back to childhood, and name the patterns, but if you don’t pay attention to what your body needs, then it’s very hard to change. Understanding why you people please can be genuinely liberating, but insight alone may not be enough to shift what’s happening in your body.

You might have left a therapy session feeling like something’s clicked, but then two days later someone asks a favour and that knot in your stomach comes back. This doesn’t happen because the therapy hasn’t worked, but it might be that you’re missing a piece of the puzzle: gentle awareness of the body. Talking engages the thinking part of the brain but overwhelm needs something more. Your nervous system has learned over many years that the world isn’t always safe, and it’s not going to be convinced otherwise just because you had a good conversation about it.

That’s why a synergistic approach to healing overwhelm is important. Lasting change comes from understanding your patterns AND helping your body feel safe with somatic work like breathwork, grounding, visualisation, and deep relaxation. Together these ideas can create long-lasting shifts.

What Actually Helps When You're Overwhelmed?

So what do you actually do when you’re in the thick of it? Here are a few science-backed realistic tools that can help to bring your nervous system back online.

 1 -

Ground yourself in your body

This sounds simple but it works. Plant your feet on the floor and really feel what it’s like to have them there. Notice your breath without trying to change anything, and then take a few slower inhales and exhales through the nose. Research shows that grounding provides immediate benefits including regulation of heart and respiratory rates, reduction of muscle tension, and calmer brain wave patterns (Porges, 2022).

 2 -

Slow your breath

When you get overwhelmed, your breathing often becomes shallow and more rapid. Slowing it down – particularly extending your exhale longer than your inhale – directly calms your nervous system (Birdee et al., 2023). Studies show that slow, nasal, diaphragmatic breathing significantly improves vagal tone and emotional control while reducing cortisol, anxiety, and stress, even in just a few minutes. You can also check out my meditation for managing overwhelm.

 3 -

Let your body move the energy

Sometimes you need to move what’s stuck. You could shake it out, go for a walk, hum, or dance to some music. I love a good wiggle in the kitchen whilst listening to Elder Island. This is because movement helps to discharge activation of the fight or flight response. Research has shown that inability to discharge activation is a key factor in how trauma gets stuck in the body (Koniver, 2025). Sometimes your body needs you to move rather than to sit still.

 4 -

Practice saying no

If saying no feels hard, try saying no to yourself first. Notice when you want to say no. How does it feel? Do you have any physical sensations? What’s stopping you from saying no? You don’t have to act on it but naming it can start to build the muscle. There is a significant relationship between the power of saying no and mental health. When you say yes but mean no, resentment builds, frustration increases, and over time this pattern can decrease self-esteem and contribute to depression. But saying no is a skill that can be learned, and awareness is the first step (Speed et al., 2018).

Managing Overwhelm: You Don't Have to Do This Alone

You don't have to become someone who never gets overwhelmed or who suddenly has perfect boundaries. The goal is to start recognising when your nervous system is running the show and to have a few gentle tools that can help you find your way back.

If you're reading this and recognising yourself, know that you're not broken, you're not too sensitive, and you’re not failing. You're just finally paying attention to what your body has been trying to tell you for a long time.

If this resonates and you'd like support, you can learn more about my approach to therapy here.

References

Aron, E. N. (2013). The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. Citadel Press.

Birdee, G., Nelson, K., Wallston, K., Nian, H., Diedrich, A., Paranjape, S., Abraham, R., & Gamboa, A. (2023). Slow breathing for reducing stress: The effect of extending exhale. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 73, 102937.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.

Porges S. W. (2022). Polyvagal theory: A science of safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 16, 871227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnint.2022.871227

Koniver (L). (2025). Grounding and the gut-brain axis: a review of emerging mechanisms and health implications. Journal of Medical - Clinical Research & Reviews 9(7): 1-4.

Speed, B. C., Goldstein, B. L., & Goldfried, M. R. (2018). Assertiveness training: A forgotten evidence‐based treatment. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 25(1), e12216.