Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,
A time to feel calm and think clearly.
I'm Claire Downham,
The Queen of Calm,
A Transformational Life Coach.
I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.
The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,
Which is calm and clarity.
Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.
There's nothing else to do.
Now let's relax into today's episode.
So today I am talking about the source of that overwhelmed feeling.
Have you ever had that feeling?
I have it sometimes.
Only fleetingly these days,
I suppose,
But where you consider the weight of things before you that might be the number of things you have to do in your home.
It might be the things you think you've got to get done in your business.
It might just be the size of your inbox.
But in that moment,
For me,
It can feel like someone's sitting on my chest.
Do you know that feeling like somebody is actually constricting your breathing like they're sitting on your chest?
And sometimes when I feel that feeling,
I get the sense that I can't do anything.
It feels so infringing on my ability to move and do things.
And I think many,
Many,
Many times I have found myself therefore not doing anything.
And maybe you can relate to that.
I often felt that feeling.
I feel it less now,
An awful lot less,
Which is wonderful.
But I spent a long time looking for the source of that feeling.
Would it be that if I emptied my inbox and didn't have so many emails in it that that feeling would go away?
Would it be that if I got some people in my life to tow the line and behave the way I wanted them to behave,
That that would make that feeling go away?
Or was it that there was something in me that wasn't okay?
There's something that I needed to look at in my past or resolve or work through or deal with in some way and that once I did that,
That that feeling would go away.
Getting a sense,
I guess,
That there was something in me that was at play,
But really getting caught up in the idea that that was something that I could actually fix,
That I could actually sort out.
But that's what that did really,
Now I look at it,
Was just give me more things to think about,
More things to distract me from what I could have been doing in the world,
More things to fill up my head with noise.
And I guess that's because the true source of that overwhelmed feeling,
Really where that overwhelmed feeling was coming from,
Was not from this outside world I was trying to manage.
It still doesn't come from my full inbox.
It still doesn't come from the number of things I think I have to get done today.
It comes from thought.
And just as I'm saying this,
I'm noticing how that's driving some of my behavior right now.
So full disclosure,
I've really got out of the habit of going for a walk every day and I'm feeling a little bit kind of physically sluggish as a result.
And now I'm just thinking to myself,
It's that overwhelmed feeling that's driving that,
It's this sense that there's a lot to do and I haven't really got time to go for a walk for half an hour or an hour.
So I've had a little insight whilst talking about this.
I was obviously meant to talk about this subject.
We've got the source of our feelings,
Not just the feeling of overwhelm.
We've got the source of all our feelings wrong.
We've been taught a mistake about where these feelings come from.
And it's left us searching and searching and searching for the answer.
But there is within this a catch 22 situation,
A never ending cycle.
So if we feel a feeling and we think that feeling is coming from out there in the world somewhere or from our own brokenness,
Then there's something to do,
Isn't there?
Like I said,
There's that inbox to empty.
There's all,
If I get through all these tasks and tick them all off,
If I don't go for a walk and I spend more time working,
I'll get rid of that overwhelmed feeling.
It'll disappear and then I'll feel okay again.
Or this sense that,
Well,
If I work through my stuff from the past,
If I sort myself out,
If I really fix me,
Then the overwhelmed feeling will go away too.
That's another way to do it.
But what that does,
Because the source is wrong,
It's like you're trying to switch off the hot tap by turning the cold tap.
It's not going to work because you've got the source of the hot water wrong.
It's not coming out of the cold tap.
And so what you do is you turn the cold tap and that just puts more water into the system.
So if you've got a flood going on that's full of hot water,
You've just got a slightly more tepid flood,
Haven't you,
Of water going where you don't want it to go.
That interesting analogy just popped into my head,
By the way.
Because the source is the most important thing.
If you're trying to fix anything in life,
The source is the most important thing,
Isn't it?
Because if it was a flood you were trying to stop,
Then you could be at the end of that,
Couldn't you,
Trying to catch the water,
Trying to mop it up,
Trying to put towels down,
Trying to do everything you could to stop the flood.
But actually,
The most important thing to do would be to go back to the source and switch off the water and stop the water coming out.
When we get the source of something wrong,
We just make lots of mistakes trying to get it all sorted and that's innocent,
Isn't it?
Because if you're not a plumber,
You might not know you need to switch the water off.
And that's why I'm going to be the plumber,
Which is something I've never said before.
I can help you to see this if you're ready to listen and open up your mind to it.
The source of that overwhelmed feeling is thought.
It's overwhelmed thinking.
It's lots of thinking.
So the catch 22 is that if the source is thinking and you're doing some more thinking to try and fix the thinking,
Whether that's outside of you plotting and planning and sorting and emptying in boxes and doing things in the world or whether it is getting you sorted internally,
You're just putting more stuff into that space,
More overwhelm,
Filling your head more and more and more.
So it's self-perpetuating because the source is wrong.
That can be a never ending journey,
Trying to squash down that overwhelmed feeling,
Trying to get rid of it.
And I think to be honest,
That is what led to me burning out.
Just continually trying to get that feeling to go away and doing things in the outside world to make that happen.
Very,
Very tiring.
But once you learn to read your feelings,
Once you know,
I've got an overwhelmed feeling,
Must have some,
I must,
It's overwhelming thought.
I'm overwhelmed with thoughts.
I have too much.
I'm overthinking.
There's too much going on in my head.
It's like a reset button because as soon as there's some awareness,
It just changes how we relate to what's going on inside us completely.
And that really is transformational.
As always,
It's just an invitation to listen with an open mind to listen like you would listen to music and just bring some curiosity to what you've heard.
Thank you so much for listening.
There's nothing to do now,
But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.
Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.
This has been the Calmcast with Clare Downham,
Queen of Calm.
Take care and keep listening.
