How To Actually Treat Overwhelm (Not Just Cope)
Quiet freedom is waiting for you
Overwhelm is complex. It builds from an accumulation of things happening in your body, mind, and your environment, all interacting with each other (if you want the full picture of why this happens, I’ve spoken about it in more depth here). If you're a highly sensitive person, overwhelm can build even faster.
It’s often helpful to meditate, breathe slowly, have a bath, or do some journaling. But if you’ve tried all these things and you’re still asking yourself, “why am I so overwhelmed all the time?”, then this article will give you something different to try when it comes to how to deal with overwhelm.
The Body: Calming Your Nervous System
It’s helpful to begin with some nervous system regulation – and yes, this is managing the symptoms as the first step, but it happens alongside a conversation about the mind. If your nervous system is highly activated or holding you hostage in a state of temporary paralysis, then you are going to struggle to make any changes to the overwhelming situation that you are in.
The most effective tools for self-regulation include slowing down (like actually walking more slowly and taking breaks), breathwork, sleep hygiene, nutrition and hydration, movement, deep relaxation, and bringing more joy into your life. These are the foundations for a supported, happy body, and for preventing burnout before it takes hold.
Even 5 minutes of breathwork for stress, or meditation can lower the baseline enough so that deeper work can be achieved. If you listen to my overwhelm rescue meditation a couple of times a week, it’s highly likely that you will feel enough of a shift so that you can observe deeper insights.
One easy tool that you could try is called the physiological sigh. You take two inhales through the nose and one long, slow exhale through the mouth. This pattern has been found to produce a fast drop in stress. Doing it for just 5 minutes per day can have a markedly positive effect on mood and stress levels.
The Mind
Of course there are some aspects in life where the cause is more obvious – like the stress of juggling work and childcare – but there are always deeper layers, such as how you relate to time pressure, or how you deal with the feeling of having to let people down.
Once there’s a bit more capacity, you can start to explore what’s happening in your mind at the conscious and subconscious levels. This is where you might explore your early life conditioning, how your coping mechanisms have evolved and how they hold you back, and what reframing your beliefs might look like.
You can work on identifying your likes and dislikes, and commit to fulfilling your needs instead of ignoring them. One good way of leaning into this is to notice when you say to yourself “I should”, such as “I should probably meet up with that person”. When this happens, think about your intention, and that will give you some clues about how you can make changes.
Another tool that helps is to naming the emotional overwhelm, either silently or out loud. Saying “I am feeling overwhelmed right now”, changes the brain by calming your amygdala (the brain’s alarm system), whilst switching on the more rational prefrontal cortex which is the sensible adult part of the brain. This is sometimes also known as ‘name it to tame it’.
It removes the emotional charge by connecting the mind with the body and helping you to become present. When you’re present, you’re no longer lost in the river of emotions. Instead you’re on the riverbank and are able to observe your emotions.
Your Environment and the Mental Load
This can sometimes be harder to change because it involves people and circumstances outside of your control. But even tiny shifts can make a difference. A small shift might look like having a brave conversation. If you’re living with someone, you might each take responsibility for some household tasks like making dinner or washing up, so that each of you can set down the mental load for that particular task and free up some headspace.
Asking for help, introducing boundaries without guilt, building flexibility into your routines, challenging cultural narratives, collaborating in your relationships: these are all examples of how you can adapt your environment.
It's also helpful to make sure that you have a space in your home that feels like it’s a sanctuary. Environmental mess can feel like chaos in the mind. If you know that there is somewhere that you can turn to in your home that feels calming, then that will support your nervous system.
If it’s difficult to create a physical sanctuary, then listening to ambient or calming music on your headphones can be an effective option because it creates a sense of ‘space’, even if it’s not physical.
Trust The Unknown
An important step is to learn to trust your intuition. Trust that change can feel unfamiliar but it’s worth trying things differently. How else will you know whether it works if you don’t try?
Once you learn to regulate your emotions better, reframe your beliefs, have those scary conversations, and learn to say no while still being kind to others, then the outlook can appear very different.
If you can face your discomfort, face your fears, reframe your beliefs even though you’ve held onto them for your whole life, you'll have that sense of freedom from overwhelm and burnout that you’re looking for.
Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash
