Overwhelm #1: What To Do When You Hit A Wall

This post is Overwhelm 101. Any time you hit a wall, reach for this guidance to get moving again.

It happens to the best of us: Things have been ticking over well enough, but then you’ve taken too much on, and then there are a few extra curve balls in the mix. As a result you miss a good night’s sleep, someone gets ill, and suddenly you’re in the shits and can’t think straight. You’re likely to find yourself teetering over this threshold more easily than most people if any of the following applies to you:

+ suffering from emotional exhaustion
+ experiencing burnout
+ a Highly-Sensitive Person
+ you identify as neurodivergent

Transcript

This post is overwhelm 101,

So save this page and anytime you hit a wall,

Reach for these instructions to get moving again.

Okay,

So it happens to the best of us.

You've taken too much on and then there are a few extra curveballs in the mix.

As a result,

You miss a good night's sleep,

Someone gets ill and suddenly you're in the shits and can't think straight.

You're likely to find yourself teetering over this threshold more easily than most people if any of the following applies to you.

You're suffering from emotional exhaustion,

Experiencing burnout,

Which by the way always is emotionally rooted.

You're a highly sensitive person or you identify as neurodivergent.

Overwhelm.

You may be familiar with how this feels,

But did you realise overwhelm actually has two components?

Overwhelm is practical.

It's caused by the sheer volume and nature of what you have on your plate,

But it is also physiological.

Overwhelm changes your biochemistry,

How you are functioning at a body level.

Stress releases adrenaline and cortisol,

Getting you ready for action.

This is great for dealing with short-term,

Short bursts of activity,

Like staying alive in the face of danger or meeting a deadline.

But this injection of stress is really not so good long-term.

In fact,

It's existing in this stress state long-term that makes burnout happen.

You're not going to stay in the stress state.

You're going to get stressed,

Do something about it and then recover and relax again.

The day-to-day problems we face in 21st century life are complex and they require a good level of sophistication to deal with them.

We need to be able to think carefully with a calm head.

This fight-flight state that I've just been talking about,

Where you're in high stress,

Lots of adrenaline and cortisol,

It's not only hard on your body,

It scrambles your ability to tackle this complexity.

I'll talk a bit more about why that is later on in this series and what happens to your brain when you're stressed.

But for now,

Just understand that the fight-flight state gets in the way of your ability to think.

It's designed for simple survival reflexes and is more or less useless for supporting you to find good quality,

Long-term solutions to complex problems.

Adrenaline is designed for simple actions of run and fight.

Once adrenaline is activated in your brain,

It's capable of executing a simple plan really fast,

Like run or fight.

But it won't be able to work out what you should be doing in the face of the usual level,

Usual for us level of day-to-day complexity.

That means for work,

Unless you already have a crystal clear game plan,

Once you're in a state of stress,

You'll be much less good at planning and problem solving.

Adrenaline can induce a horrible rabbit-in-the-headlights feeling when your body wants to take action,

But you're frozen because you can't work out what action to take.

And of course,

This only serves to make the situation worse because the whole reason you're stressed in the first place is because you've got so much to do.

So try this different strategy to get you moving again so you have somewhere to direct all that adrenaline.

Use this when you've got a disaster to clear up in the kitchen,

A project that's late or a big goal that feels too enormous to start.

I use this technique when I'm physically exhausted and that means I can't think straight,

Or I'm in a state of panic because I've been going for too long and I can't switch off.

It doesn't happen so much these days,

But we're all human and we're all prone to this every once in a while.

And I would suggest to say that if you're neurodivergent,

It is likely to happen to you more frequently.

So tick things off as you work through this list.

You'll get a wonderful little dopamine hit,

Your brain's primary reward chemical,

Which will lift your mood a little and encourage you to keep going.

So here's what to do when you're so stressed you can't think or act.

Stop what you're doing and take a break.

You've probably been ignoring your body,

So take a walk,

A bath,

Have a nap.

Eat,

Drink water,

Call your best friend for a cry or a laugh.

And then,

Once you've done that and only then,

Once you've had a little break and you can feel the shift in your body,

Get a piece of paper and a pen.

Don't do this on your computer.

You need to get back into your body and writing by hand will help you do this.

It also helps your left and right hemispheres to talk to each other again,

Which is something that,

Again,

Doesn't happen so much when you're stressed.

So firstly,

The question that you want to answer is,

What am I trying to achieve right now?

Once you've written that down,

So a good example is,

I need to clean the kitchen.

List all the steps involved in achieving this and get very,

Really specific and detailed.

Break it down into more smaller steps.

So for cleaning the kitchen,

You're going to write,

Collect up the cutlery,

Collect up the plates,

Collect up all the rubbish and put it in the bin,

Collect the food waste and put it in the compost.

Empty the dishwasher.

And you might do that again.

The same list,

You might do that for the kitchen surface and for the kitchen table,

For example.

So then,

Once you've got all your steps,

Put them in the right order,

What comes first and what's next?

So keep working on this until you feel like you've got all the steps in the right order.

Then,

For step one on your list,

List all the steps that are needed to achieve this step.

So break it down even more.

So for collecting up the cutlery,

Collect up the spoons,

Collect up the forks,

Collect up the knives.

Be specific and detailed and more smaller steps is better.

Because remember,

When your brain is high on adrenaline and cortisol,

It can't think,

It can't distinguish,

But it can act on really simple instructions.

So you're essentially breaking down what you've got to do into a series of really simple,

Really easy to execute instructions.

So again,

Once you've got all your micro steps,

Put them in the right order.

Now you've got all the steps involved in getting your task done.

All you've got to do is do the first step on your list,

Then do the second,

Then do the third.

And keep going until what you'll notice is that there's a shift in your body,

In your physiology,

In how you feel,

And you'll start getting absorbed in what you're doing.

Your body's going to relax,

The adrenaline and cortisol is going to go down,

And you're going to start getting into flow.

And where you didn't probably even want to start the project or the activity at the beginning,

You now want to keep going.

And that's wonderful.

You've basically moved through your overwhelm and you're into action again.

So,

Let's give another example.

I'm trying to get X amount of money in before the end of the year.

Steps might be call in that loan to Terry,

Follow up warm client leads,

Get Facebook ads happening,

Chase that funding.

Then you might reorder the steps,

Follow up the leads,

Because that will have the most immediate rewards.

I'm going to do that first.

Secondly,

Funding,

Because that's got a deadline.

Third,

Facebook ads.

And fourth,

Terry.

You might decide to order them differently,

But that's just an example of how you might put them in order.

Then you take the first thing on your list and you break that down into all the smaller tasks involved.

So,

Step one,

We said,

Was follow up the leads.

So,

Write a list of all the people that I've talked to who might be interested.

Then make sure I've got everybody's email address or phone number and look up the ones that I don't.

Thirdly,

Email everybody individually.

Fourth,

Tick each person off when I've emailed them.

Fifth,

Block out the first hour of every day to do this.

So,

Some little tips to go with this.

The first tip is the more stressed,

Overwhelmed or resistant you are to doing a job,

The more it will help to break it down into micro steps.

That's why I used the example of clearing up the kitchen.

I broke that down into really tiny micro steps.

I use that example because I have literally had to do that with myself in the past when my kids were really small and I've been on my own and so tired.

The kind of kitchen that is basically a work of art because it's so messy.

So,

Other ways that I've broken down things into tiny steps when I've been overwhelmed is things like open journal or pour a glass of water or find my water bottle.

So,

The second tip to go with this piece of advice overall is to do the hardest thing,

The hardest tasks first.

So,

Hard is really subjective.

You might have a particular block around it even though it's not intellectually taxing.

That means you're going to need a lot of willpower to get it done and just go with your natural sense of what's hard.

Don't second guess it.

If it feels difficult,

Then it is difficult.

So,

Always do the hard things first because you're going to need more willpower to get it done.

You've got a lot more of that willpower at the beginning.

So,

Use it well and use it on the things that are going to need that extra little push.

And that's it.

I personally love this tool for breaking down and making things simpler when you're overwhelmed.

I use it again and again in my own life,

In my personal life,

In my work and I use it with clients.

I've seen people take this to reach a deadline in 48 hours.

I've seen them use it to work towards a deadline far,

Far away that's felt impossible to even make a start on.

And each time it just makes the task feel doable where it felt impossible before.

So,

I would really enjoy hearing how this turns your overwhelm around and any ahas you have in the process.

I will reply to your comments below.

So,

Hit me up.

Okay,

If you'd like support with all this,

To spend 90 minutes mapping out where you want to get to,

Problem solving what's standing in your way with my breakthrough sessions,

Then look them up on the page below here.

These are especially useful if you are a neurodiverse person,

Looking to really unpack your relationship with life and work in the light of your new identity and go beyond the diagnostic process to really look at how your brain works and what your support needs are in the context of really wanting to get things done and achieve great things but without killing yourself.

Next time,

I am going to be talking about ways to support your body so that you're less prone to overwhelm on a physiological level and primed for success over the long term.

So,

See you then.

Reviews

Mind-blowing. You mean there's a reason I am chronically in overwhelm?!? Wow. Loved this and will try it in the morning, but for now, just hearing this talk has profoundly changed my state of mind. Thank you. Looking forward to hearing more!

Really interesting. I couldn’t find any more on this series on your profile but I can see that they are on your blog linked from here

Your comment about so messy it was like a piece of art Really struck home and gave me a chuckle. Thank you for this meditation.

Helpful and makes a lot of sense. Navy thanks Alice 🙏❤️💫

Very positive encouraging sound advice will execute this daily thankyou so much Tania.

Breakthrough stuff. Understanding WHY I feel and react the way I do is so helpful! Thank you!

I really enjoyed this talk and the practical things you gave for further action. Thankyou

Thank you, Alice. That’s a really reassuring and immediately practical rescue system and importantly your down-to-earth, honest and sympathetic approach also got rid of the feeling of being alone with this emotional overwhelm.

Well obviously I am totally biased ;-) but I find your voice super reassuring and soothing… phew!

Really appreciate the kindness in your words…. Soothing and insightful

So happy to see this On insight timer! Even tho I had read it a while back on your blog, I got so much from listening… more ahas.