In her book, Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown talks about overwhelm. She says “Stressed is being in the weeds. Overwhelmed is being blown.” She goes on to say that when we’re blown, or truly overwhelmed, we can’t make a dent in the thing that’s overwhelming us without help, or at least a break.
Oftentimes the experience of overwhelm is linked to:
- Over stimulation
- Lack of direction
- A manufactured sense of urgency
The good news is that these are all things we can address. This is often where I jump in to support my clients.
The other day I sat down with a client who was feeling really stressed by all of the tasks she felt she had to complete. She has a lot going on in her life and doesn’t want to neglect her business and balance has been feeling elusive. She was nearing burnout (aka ‘blown’, aka true overwhelm), her body was run down, her brain was jumbled and she simply didn’t know where to start.
I took the client through my 4 steps for minimizing overwhelm, but first I want to acknowledge the first two, very critical steps that she took.
- She acknowledged that she was nearing (or had neared) her limit
- She asked for, and accepted, help
Sometimes asking for help can be direct, as in “will you help me sort through my life?”. Other times it may be indirect, as in “can you make dinner so I can go for a walk and self-soothe?”. Asking for help is an often underestimated strength.
Step 1: Get grounded
Before we could do anything else, we needed to address her overstimulation. I guided her through a breathing exercise that allowed her to engage her parasympathetic nervous system and notify her brain and body that she is safe at this moment.
Step 2: Get it out of your head
Once she was feeling a bit more grounded we got to work on her lack of direction. We did a brain dump of all of the things in her mental space. Getting it all onto paper is often comforting, because now it exists somewhere in reality, not just in your brain.
As we reviewed her list I gently pointed out that many of the things she was considering a task were actually goals that contained many tasks to accomplish. When it comes to setting goals there are 7 pitfalls that I see people make time and time again, so I’ve created a free mini-workshop where I outline these pitfalls as well as how to avoid them.
Step 3: Get organized and prioritize
With her list out of her head and onto paper, we began to assess urgency. Many of the things on her list had a manufactured urgency, meaning that they don’t actually need to be on her list right now. However, because her brain couldn’t realistically hold all of the things in a prioritized order it was like a pinball game in her head with all of these ‘tasks’ bouncing off each other, never able to settle on one thing to work on. Again, it feels good to have things outside of our heads, so we moved the less urgent things to a ‘parking lot’ so she could come back to them later.
Step 4: Get into action
Over the course of our hour together we were able to translate her list into goals vs tasks, we ensured each task or action felt manageable and not daunting. Then we mapped those actions onto her calendar so that she had only a manageable number of things to consider day-to-day and on a weekly basis.
Are you ready?
To take this full circle, the best way to find the light at the end of your tunnel of overwhelm is to ask for help. If you’re ready for this step, I volunteer as tribute. It would be my honor to hold space for you to step out of overwhelm and back into flow with your life.