5 Steps to Tackle Overwhelm
When life gets busy, it’s easy to let stress and overwhelm steal your joy.
Managing a full life can be a tricky juggling act. It’s so much fun to live a full and thriving life, packing it full of healthy community, self care, exercising and staying healthy, family time, events, and work that you love. How do you manage and balance it all? Is that even possible?
I’m not here to tell you what the right balance is for you. We’re all wired a little differently, but I do know we’re all made to thrive and not merely survive in overwhelm. There is one part of the brain that is responsible for making sure we do survive though.
The amygdala sends signals to our body when we sense danger, or overwhelm, and tells our nervous system to prepare to run or fight. It starts a temporary stress cycle of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol to give us the strength and determination to deal with the emergency. There’s one small problem.
This part of the brain responds to our thoughts with zero rationality. If it senses a hint of overwhelm because of a pile of laundry, there go the stress hormones. If we walk in to work and our desk is still a mess from the day before, the switch can flip. If we don’t have a clue what’s going on in our day, but we have a fear we won’t get it all done… you guessed it. Stress hormones. The cycle begins.
These aren’t actual emergencies, but the amygdala doesn’t care. It is here to make sure we survive whatever is being perceived as stress. While you might need to weed through your priorities, take some things off your plate, and align your life better to your purpose and personality, I’ll let you work that out with your therapist.
Disclaimer: I am not a mental health professional. However, I believe that awareness and simple tools in the hands of normal everyday people is just as necessary as diet and exercise are to physical health.
What I can do is tell you how to interrupt the stress loop. You can bring your mind and body back into harmony and flip the perspective of stress to one of fun, excitement, joy, and gratitude for all of the things YOU choose to include in your life.
So, what do we do about it?
1- Know what the stress trigger feels like in your body.
Where do you start to feel it first? Does it start in your chest as tightness? Do you feel pressure rising up in your head? Do your neck and shoulders go stiff? Do you feel anxiousness and worry in your stomach or get twitchy and fidgety? Do you hold your breath or sigh loudly?
2- Become aware of your thoughts.
Sometimes they zoom through our heads so fast, we don’t even notice them. Learning to catch them as they are triggering the stress is POWERFUL! What was the thought? If you become a pro at this, you might even catch the thought BEFORE it triggers the loop to continue.
3- Analyze the thought/feeling.
You walk in and see a messy desk or kitchen (that you didn’t clean the day before). Do you think “Agh. I’m such an idiot for leaving my stuff out! I’m so lazy!” or at least have the equivalent feeling of that?
Did it have a tinge of blame or self defeat or judgement in it?
Is it true? Is it helpful?
Does it motivate you to blame yourself or criticize yourself?
Does it make you feel overly responsible for everything and everyone and keeps the cycle going?
4- Refocus.
What is the truth? Without the exaggerated feelings of defeat, blame, judgement, or over responsibility, is the truth that you might just need to set a timer or work your routine around a little differently? That might not happen overnight because we don’t change habits instantly, but you can begin to change the habit of the self criticism that keeps you in stress mode.
PS… if your flavor of stress sounds more like blaming others, that’s still a way that your mind is playing victim to the situation. We are in full control of the help we ask for, the routines we set, and the way we let people treat us. Again, no self judgement.
Just notice… what needs to change?
What is it that I WANT to feel in this situation next time?
5- Begin to anchor the new thought or feeling.
You might have a decision to make or habit to form before you can change a situation that tends to stress you out. You might need to get better at using a calendar, making smaller to do lists, or just learn to say no to others’ requests that aren’t in alignment with your priorities. So have patience with the actual situation. What you can do is decide what you want to feel instead and let that feeling marinate in you. You need to create a stamina to hold that feeling. Your body needs practice to operate in a new way and undo the stress response.
You can do this easily with essential oils. “What fires together, wires together,” is a common expression in neurochemistry that means a thought and feeling that happen simultaneously wire together to form proteins and pathways in the brain. Once those pathways are well worn and practiced, you go there effortlessly. This is true for positive and negative patterns.
Coupling the power of the sense of smell and the limbic system with your new awareness of your cycle of thoughts and feelings is sure to dissolve negative patterns and quickly rewire new patterns.
How to use essential oils to Anchor a new response:
Choose an oil that feels like peace and calming to you.
The Serenity, Balance, and Adaptiv blends are some of my favorites. But you don’t have to get fancy. Something simple like Lavender or Peppermint can work too. Check out this article on the different categories of oils and how our bodies respond to each.
Put a drop (or roll) in your hands and inhale slowly for at least 30 seconds.
The sense of smell instantly triggers the limbic system and signals the brain to send calming or uplifting neurotransmitters to the body. Rub the rest on your chest or back of neck.
Use this opportunity to practice awareness.
What is the thought? Is there unnecessary, demotivating judgment in it that’s triggering stress?
Let the thought go.
Focus on breathing slowly for at least a minute and focusing on how you’d rather feel about this situation and yourself. You might follow this up with setting an intention of a new habit that solves this problem in the future… but here’s a shocking newsflash.
Your overwhelm response is 100% about how you allow yourself to feel about this situation. Maybe your day would go better if you came into a clean desk or hired someone to do your laundry, but is it at least possible to come in to a messy desk and not have demotivating, stressful, defeating thoughts about it? Yes, it is.
You get to decide how you want to feel!
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