What Is Overwhelm?
Overwhelm in the simplest terms is a state of intense emotion that is difficult to manage. It happens when the intensity of the feelings takes over and it overpowers your ability to manage and it can affect your ability to think or behave rationally, because overwhelm is basically a flood of emotions.
It’s a flood of feeling, so of course, that’s going to automatically make you feel like you’re drowning and start to break up your ability to think and behave. It short circuits everything, and so, the more we did not learn how to manage our emotions, feelings or get our needs met as children, the more likely we are easily overwhelmed.
Why Are You So Overwhelmed?
The more you understand why you get so overwhelmed, the more you can get to the bottom of it and fix it. Your overwhelm is nothing more than you being hard on yourself. It starts there. Second, you have too much on your plate. Why do we, as high performers and high achievers, constantly put too much on our plate? Well, we put too much on our plate because of scarcity mindset, because we don’t think we’re good enough, because we’re too hard on ourselves.
So, we constantly think that the more projects we have, the more commitments we have, the more things that we’re working on, the more stuff that we’re constantly putting our hands into, the more valuable we are and then we end up overwhelming ourselves. Everything else is just a side effect of that.
Overwhelm Is Information
Overwhelm is information, it is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign and an indication that your five layers are being hit with too much at once and you need to simply take care of them. It’s an opportunity to look at your patterns and your self-sabotaging ways. If you are feeling overwhelmed, the first thing you should be asking yourself is “How is this an opportunity for me to break the cycle right now?”
Ease is the natural state before we experience trauma. If you are going into overwhelm, then that is an indication that you are out of your natural state. We automatically go into overwhelm as a stress and drama trauma response. So, the more we heal, the less we will get overwhelmed.
Practice Ease As A Lifestyle
Overwhelm comes from scarcity. Overwhelm comes from survival mode. Overwhelm comes from being hard on yourself, and the antidote to that is self compassion and self love. Self compassion and self love is the medicine for all things oppressive. Ease was our natural state before trauma, and with that said, ease is a practice and a lifestyle. We have to practice this because our old narrative tells us we have to be stressed out.
We have to work for it, we have to prove ourselves, we have to prove them all wrong. We have to hang in there, we have to fight, survival of the fittest, but the thing is, that’s not true. Ease is supposed to be normal, it’s supposed to be yours, but because of all the trauma, but because of all the things that happen, we have to now practice it and we have to turn it into a lifestyle.
Narrow It Down & Get Help
Narrow everything down to one thing. Your brain is not meant to multi-task. We’re not supposed to multitask. That’s what stresses us out more. That is what makes our brain go on overdrive, so narrow everything down to one thing. One core desired feeling. One primary need. One primary habit that you want to change. One primary intention. One primary action.
Also, what is the one way that you can get help? What do you need help with right now? What do you know that you don’t know? So, for example, if I start getting overwhelmed with a bunch of shit that I need to do for my business, the first thing I do is I reach out to my team, my consultants.
What’s the first step? One thing at a time. Get the help you need, know what you don’t know and that’s how you now go and get that help.
When You Feel Overwhelmed Just Stop
When you start feeling overwhelmed, just S.T.O.P. That’s an acronym. Slow yourself. Trust yourself. Organize yourself. Prioritize yourself. Just STOP. Super simple.
Keep it simple. Just slow down. Don’t be hard on yourself. Trust yourself, you got this. Organize one thing, make a list. You got this. Prioritize you. If you are burned out, you’re not gonna be able to do anything.