On emerging from the overwhelm hole.
An insight into where I've been for the last couple of weeks, plus an exploration of what overwhelm and how to shift it.
So I have fallen into an overwhelm hole recently.
[I take this second to apologise to my friends or family reading this here instead of me telling them, even when you’ve asked how I am. I am a) overwhelmed, as you’re about to read, and b) writing is a therapy. I’m sorry sometimes that comes first. It doesn’t mean I love you any less. I promise.]
I knew it was happening as it was happening.
I heard the little voice in my head saying “this is too much”, as I continued to say yes to everything and refused to pull back on anything that was there before.
I have a ‘flexible’ part time job you see, plus my ‘flexible’ coaching hours, so as I was moving house and the bulk of the packing was already done, I assumed that I could just flex my jobs around the moving of furniture to storage units, and the cleaning of my rental house. I pushed that flex to breaking point. Leaning my laptop on boxes and replying to emails in the van. I was neither one place or another. Doing no job well. I knew it as I was doing it but, you know, it was ‘flexible’. I could be flexible too.
Side note: I wonder whether the move towards more flexible working schedules is only encouraging us to take on more, and cram everything we can into tiny slices of time, rather than encouraging spaciousness. Or maybe that’s just me.
But yes: I knew the signs.
Retreating from people and things I enjoy: check.
“I don’t have time for this”: check.
Breathlessness: yup.
Racing, nonsensical thoughts: absolutely.
Ridiculously short fuse: nice to see you again.
Increasingly harsh self-talk and spiralling negativity: fantastic.
Maybe yours are similar, maybe they’re not, but we know - don’t we - when too much is too much. And yet we push on. For a greater reason, perhaps. For the big goal. Or for the short term. Or because the money is worth it. Or just necessary.
We ignore that voice or that sensation telling us we need to slow down. I certainly did. And here I am one step off the bottom of an overwhelm hole, wondering what I could have done differently.
To be clear: it’s okay. Our nervous systems are designed to deal with these things. As I moved from fairly neutral, to stressed, to overwhelmed, my nervous system responded. My personally preferred nervous system response is freeze, so I tend to spend a lot of time in procrastination, avoidance, isolation and feeling like a hopeless pile of crap. Yay for me.
Yours might be more activated than mine, and you might lean more towards fight or flight, which can look like anger, anxiety, panic, an inability to stay still, and seeking control. But typically we all experience both branches; freeze tends to be the escalation response following fight or flight, but that’s not set in stone.
These are good things. I know it might not feel like it (it hasn’t to me), but the nervous system’s purpose is to scan your environment and adjust your responses to the information it receives. Number one priority is your continued safety, but it’s not safety in a being-tucked-in-at-night way; it’s safety that puts survival above of enjoyment. If it picks up a stressor, it has the power to alter digestion, circadian rhythms and skin health, all because resources are redirected away to other areas. In a fight or flight response, resources go towards the muscles, heart and lungs so that we’re primed to move. In a freeze response your resources are actually slowed down. Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, depth of breath, and sexual responses all decrease, as well as your ability to attune to other human voices or recognise and mimic facial expressions.
No matter which is employed, it is all perfectly designed. Our nervous system responses are wonderful. So impressive. I see a lot of stuff online claiming that our nervous system responses are broken, because they used to respond to tigers (why always so many tigers?) and now they respond to emails - but they’re not broken. They’re working exactly as they should.
What we have forgotten - or ignored in the name of productivity and chasing those capitalist dreams yay! - is how to recover from a nervous system response. Rather than freely giving ourselves the space and the time required for our nervous system to return to a regulated state, we push on. Worse than that, we shame our natural responses.
I certainly have, over the last two weeks. I berated myself for that short fuse and jumping from task to task. I became the negative self-talk, fully accepting that the voice in my head was accurate. And then hilariously piled guilt on top of that, when I told myself that I should have had a ‘better’ stress response.
Coming out of the hole
So how do we reset?
It’s a cliché, but the first step is to accept and acknowledge where you are. I had no idea I was so deep in a parasympathetic (freeze) state until I had a call with my beautiful friend and coach (you can connect with her on Instagram @emmajaneargent, which I would recommend as she’s wonderful). Not only was she able to hold space for me to show up in that call exactly how I was, but she also lovingly pointed out how hard I was being on myself, and invited me into openness and forgiveness instead. That reflection allowed me to see myself. I noticed my speech patterns and felt the tension in my body even more than I listened to what I was saying. And it was only seeing it that allowed me to take a single step out of it.
Coaching is obviously great for these big reflections (details of a special coaching offer I’m offering this summer can be found at the bottom of this post!) but you can track where you’re at yourself. You might find it useful to set a reminder once a day for you to do a minute of self enquiry. Apps like insight timer or cycle trackers (I use Natural Cycles, but you have to pay for that) also offer an opportunity to note how you’re doing each day.
From there, you can tweak your next steps depending on how your check in goes.
If you’re noticing fight or flight symptoms (see above), you may find benefit in soothing the nervous system. Calming breathwork (eg box breathing: inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, release for 4 seconds), or encouraging stillness through yin yoga or a weighted blanket, may be useful. If it’s available, connecting with simple pleasure can also be important, whether that’s through music, or touch, or anything that produces a pleasurable sensation in the body.
If you’re noticing freeze symptoms, you may find it more helpful to lean towards practices that activate senses and sensation. Essential oils, massage or visual orienting (allowing your eyes just to drift at their leisure around your space) could be beneficial. Grounding practices (feet on the earth, or hands in water) may also help to shift your state.
For both states, being in an unpressured social situation with someone who is either consciously, or unconsciously, in a more regulated state can also help to guide yours in matching theirs.
Following my call, numbness was still my main sensation, so I knew I needed to feel myself in my body again. First, I just sat and breathed. Did a short meditation before bed, but didn’t put any pressure on myself to feel a meditative state, as I definitely didn’t have access to that. I barely even visualised whatever the meditation said. I just sat and breathed.
The next day I felt more of a tug to feel in my body even more, so I did some easy yoga routines and focused on feeling IN the stretch rather than achieving a ‘good’ pose. Another easy meditation before bed, again, unattached to doing it ‘well’.
The next day brought me to this page; to processing where I’ve been. This was a big sign that I was coming out of a stress state because - as you may have noticed - I haven’t written anything for 2 weeks.
Today (it’s Saturday), I wouldn’t say I’m at a consistent neutrality - I’m actually displaying some low level sympathetic nervous system traits. I can’t keep still, mainly, so the way I care for myself today will be different to the last few days. But I’m aware that something has shifted.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are
Tending to our nervous systems - or just tending to ‘ourselves’, as our nervous system dictates the way we experience the world around us, and isn’t that the crux of who we are? - isn’t a one-and-done type thing; it’s a constant commitment. Sometimes we’ll be on top of it, and our schedules or dependencies will align perfectly to allow us to tend to ourselves in the moment. Sometimes they won’t, and we’ll fall into the hole again. Both are okay, and part of being human.
That’s the tough part, isn’t it? The being human part.
No matter how much I learn, no matter how in awe I am of our bodies, our systems, and how they work, I am still floored by them. I don’t take this as a bad thing, or as a reflection on my success as a human (when my nervous system is regulated, of course), but instead it reminds me of the necessary power of human connection.
Our nervous system needs - we need - other people. We regulate ourselves with, and via, their nervous systems. We are this enormous web of overlapping systems constantly providing feedback to each other in ways we’ll never consciously see or appreciate. How beautiful is that? Of course, it can go the other way, and we can dysregulate each other too, but that makes it all the more important. We are all the key. The care we take over ourselves is mirrored in other people.
Sometimes we just need a hand with how being human makes us feel. Sometimes we just need each other.