Understanding & Addressing The State Of Being Overwhelmed

Being overwhelmed can be a normal reaction to an overload of daily stresses, obligations, or especially difficult circumstances, such as being a doctor during a pandemic. However, underlying psychological causes can make challenging situations appear far more paralyzing than they really are.

Transcript

Feeling overwhelmed is,

Of course,

Common in modern life.

There's a sense of being bombarded,

Too much information to make sense of,

Too many responsibilities,

Obligations,

Feeling swamped,

But most of all a sense of being unable to cope,

Associated with an accumulation of stressors.

And when people talk about being overwhelmed,

They're generally pointing in two different directions of physiological states.

One would be when we're really anxious,

When we're flooded with intrusive,

Repetitive,

Fear-based thoughts,

Where our heart rate soars,

We can't sit still,

There's a sense of needing to act immediately,

There's a sense of ongoing threat detection.

Or the other state is collapse,

Shutdown,

Dissociation,

Known in Polly Bagel's The Dorsal Dive.

That's not the sympathetic nervous system,

That's anxiety and high levels of stress.

That's actually the state of switching off the ancient parasympathetic nervous system.

And in many ways,

The physiological state is the opposite.

It becomes very difficult to focus attention.

One's heart rate doesn't soar,

One feels disconnected,

A state of brain fog,

A tiredness,

A heaviness,

A sluggishness,

An inability to move,

A sense of just giving up resignation and so forth.

So those two different qualities,

When we talk about overwhelm,

We can in short be talking about the state of anxiety and sympathetic activation,

Hypervigilance,

Or we can be talking about a state of depression,

Shutdown,

Overwhelm,

Just cannot cope.

So,

Of course,

We've been living through an historical period that's unprecedented,

Certainly having a novel pathogen that's deadly,

Essentially creating a health care crisis in the country,

Along with an extreme downturn in the economy.

And,

Of course,

There is,

On the good end,

There has been a degree of social upheaval due to confronting racial injustice.

But all of this can create a sense of being overwhelmed with stimuli.

And certainly there are absolutely impossible circumstances,

Such as doctors who work during a pandemic,

Or people who are underemployed single parents of multiple children facing mounting bills,

Especially during a time when it's very difficult to find work.

And this talk is not to in any way diminish the fact that some people face very,

Very real,

Often at times insurmountable,

Stressors.

But the talk I'm going to focus on is how the feeling of being overwhelmed is not,

In most cases,

With people that I work with in counseling,

Not invariably or entirely caused by external stressors.

But actually there's a significant emotional,

Psychological factor that leads to some people becoming,

To varying degrees,

More susceptible to the state of being overwhelmed than others.

In short,

Lots of studies show that if you put two people side by side in very similar circumstances,

For many reasons,

One might become completely overwhelmed,

While the other,

Facing the same stressors,

Might not.

And why is this the case?

Why is it that some people can face extreme obligations,

Responsibilities,

Myriad of pressures,

And yet perform well,

And while others can,

Under the same similar circumstances,

Can find it overwhelming and no longer be able to cope,

Work with one issue at a time,

And so forth?

So why is that?

In my experience,

15 years of providing counseling,

If it's too much to cope,

Very often,

To put it simply,

Its feelings from the past are flooding into the present.

There's something about the present that is reminding us of a similar experience in childhood,

A setting during which we couldn't understand what was happening or why bad things were happening.

Very often,

It's a present situation that evokes a period in our early family system where our families couldn't cope.

For some of us,

It'll be finances,

Or the possibility of a conflict,

Or the possibility of being abandoned by someone,

Or the possibility of having to move or changing jobs.

All of those in our parents' lives might have caused them stress,

And so what caused stress in our families felt terrifying to us as children.

Some people facing financial unknowns can deal with it with a sense of confidence,

Because in their early family system,

Finances or money was never an issue or topic that was associated with stress in their parents.

Whereas others can be financially very,

Very secure,

And yet can still constantly worry and become easily overwhelmed by even the slightest downturn in income,

Because in their family system,

Finances was a constant,

Regular source of stress between their parents,

Or at least one parent was constantly dysregulated by that topic.

Now,

Before we get into the particulars of how early experience can actually trigger overwhelm,

I'd like to note that there's three separate ways in general that the nervous system can be switched into a state of either threat detection,

Hypervigilance,

And anxiety overwhelm,

Or can be switched into a shutdown.

The first is environmental cues.

The right hemisphere of the brain is very,

Very influenced by the settings we surround ourselves in.

Places can evoke either feelings of security or vulnerability,

As can sounds,

Aromas,

Times of year.

If,

For example,

During a specific time of year we experienced an early trauma for the rest of our life,

At the same time of year can activate a feeling of being overwhelmed and vulnerable and unsafe.

Likewise,

Certain aromas,

Certain sounds,

Certain places,

And so forth can activate a feeling of overwhelm.

One of the easiest ways to address this is to either switch a setting or to change something about a setting when we feel unsafe.

So sometimes people who are constantly feel overwhelmed at work find that by changing something about the lighting of where they work,

The arrangement of the furniture,

Change the access so that they can see a window,

And so forth,

Can actually play a significant role of deactivating or reducing the amount of overwhelm.

People who are in relationships where they are constantly triggering each other,

Very often can find by changing the setting of where they have difficult conversations,

Walking outside,

Sitting by a river,

Going to a park,

Talking in a different setting than where they've had in the past a series of blowout arguments,

Can actually very often,

Their nervous systems,

Neurocept a different setting,

And that can be associated with less feelings of vulnerability and so forth.

So it's one way that people can address feelings of overwhelm simply by changing something about a setting,

Changing the aroma,

Changing the layout,

And so forth.

Now a second significant trigger of feelings of overwhelm are known as nonverbal cues.

Other people's facial expressions,

Body language,

Tone of voice,

Are constantly being observed,

Monitored by very fast regions of the brain,

Like the fusiform gyrus and so forth.

And we are,

Because our species' entire history,

Our sense of security was primarily either attained or threatened in contact with other humans.

So within one tenth of a second,

The fusiform gyrus in conjunction with the right amygdala,

Midbrain regions,

And so forth,

Will determine whether you feel safe or not,

Depending upon someone's facial expression,

The tone of their voice,

Or the posture they're in,

Or the gestures they use,

Because that in the past,

The bulk of human,

Our species' history was actually spent pre-verbally.

So we would determine our safety or lack of safety by looking at people's nonverbal states.

So one easy way,

Of course,

In situations where like meetings or interactions with people where we find ourselves triggered into a state of overwhelm is to focus away,

To disconnect from staring at the facial triangle,

The two eyes and the mouth,

Looking above,

Looking for space,

Looking for windows or doors,

Visualizing resources.

In fact,

I recently read a wonderful study by four neuropsychologists,

Including Amre Gilev,

Called Moving Towards a Secure Attachment Style Through Repeated Priming,

Something like that title.

And they noted that there's three ways you can prime someone to feel safe and to not become overwhelmed or triggered.

One way is to subliminally or consciously expose them to security-related words.

So you have on their wall,

So that's consciously priming them words like hug,

Kindness,

Support,

Care.

Or you might literally subliminally prime them by having a screen on that very quickly flashes those words.

Or you can prime them by having images of pictures representing security,

A mother holding a baby,

An individual grooming a dog or a cat,

Someone taking care of another human being and so forth.

Those,

Just being primed by those images can deactivate people's,

Essentially restore to homeostasis.

And then,

Of course,

There's encouraging people to recall times in their life where they felt loved and supported right before they go into difficult meetings or into settings where they're triggered.

This is known in psychology as resourcing,

And resourcing has been shown to be an extremely valuable technique in helping people who have phobias or avoidance,

Coping and so forth,

To resource an image of either ourselves or someone being securely cared for.

But we're going to now talk about the big topic,

Which is the way that early childhood experiences can create feelings of overwhelm.

And I'm going to be talking about it quickly from two perspectives.

The first will be from this perspective of attachment theory,

And the second will be from early Buddhist.

So,

From an attachment perspective,

Our first two to three years of life when the right hemisphere is being formed,

We develop what's called a sense of internal working models.

Essentially,

These are unconscious emotional beliefs about whether I am lovable,

Whether I'll be taken care of,

Whether other people are interested in me,

Whether I can expect relationships to last or be abandoned,

And so forth.

In general,

Attachment theory breaks down individuals into four categories,

Secure,

Anxious,

Avoidant,

Or disorganized.

In adult life,

It's sometimes known as anxious or preoccupied,

And avoidance are also known as dismissive.

In general,

In stressful situations,

Each individual,

Depending upon their attachment style,

Will switch into a different physiological state.

Their nervous systems will change,

And they'll develop different unconscious beliefs and behavioral patterns.

And some people will fare very well,

And others will struggle.

So,

Roughly 50 to 60 percent,

Apparently,

Of the world are secure.

Secure individuals have parents who are reliably available,

Attentive,

Emotionally mirroring and soothing.

And these people develop an internal unconscious belief that other people,

You can expect the best from others.

And because of this,

When they're around other people,

They will relax.

They will feel inclined to disclose their feelings.

And so they will be regulated the moment they start to get into any level of feeling overwhelmed or shutting down or becoming stressed out.

They will feel an impulse to disclose that to friends,

And their friends,

Because they've chosen people who are secure,

Will help them feel secure and relax and so forth.

These are people who also have nervous systems,

Autonomic nervous systems,

That can be self-soothed easier than people who have insecure attachment styles,

Because they spent more of their childhood feeling secure.

That shapes the right brain.

That actually reduces the gray matter of the amygdala,

The threat detection structure of the brain.

So,

By the time they are adult,

They are less prone to switch up into anxiety or switch down into shutdown,

Dissociation,

And so forth.

The general,

If we could summarize the secure individual,

It's,

I'll be okay,

Because other people are available and they will help me deal.

And that's why,

In short,

Secure people are less likely to become overwhelmed.

They seek help.

They don't seek help from one person.

They seek help from a wide variety of people in a close group.

And they also have nervous systems that are less prone to the wild swings of insecure people.

Now,

In the insecure category,

There's three,

The anxious,

Avoidance,

And disorganized.

Anxious people are parents who were not reliably available.

They were unreliably present.

These were parents who at times failed to mirror or understand the emotions of the child.

They failed at times to repair the relationship after there would be an argument or a conflict.

These are people who might have grown up in a family where there was divorce that was never explained or that a good relationship was maintained in the family dynamic.

And so these individuals grow up,

Anxious people grow up,

To be semantically excited,

Physiologically excited,

By an unreliable attachment figure.

They will find someone who will reproduce the attachment dynamics of their childhood.

They'll often fixate on people who are essentially not available,

Who don't live in the same place,

Who are only sporadically attentive and so forth.

They therefore are also more prone to hyper activate their nervous system,

To constantly need to up regulate their affects or emotions to be seen as children when they felt abandoned or not seen.

They learned to seek attention by becoming more demonstrative.

And so they essentially are more prone to become overwhelmed through states of anxiety and hyperactivity and hyper vigilance and threat detection.

If we could summarize the anxious person,

It would be no one else but one this one person can make me feel safe,

But they're not available.

And so I don't know how I'm going to cope.

Other people won't be able to help me.

Again,

Anxious people do struggle when they are activated to find other people are available,

They will become preoccupied with the one attachment figure who's not present for them.

Avoidance are people who are who in early life had parents who are either emotionally dysregulated or overbearing.

And so they feel they felt as children impulses to seek distance,

Especially when other people experience negative emotions.

They learned to deactivate awareness of their bodies and are to essentially not pay attention to their bodies.

It's known as sub cortical blocking and they seek soothing through solitary endeavors through workaholic exercising.

Virtually every long distance runner I've ever met has had a tendency towards avoidant attachment,

People who are artists who work all the time and studios can have at times avoidant attachment people who always feel an impulse to disconnect.

Now that's not saying it's always but those are some tendencies.

These are people who essentially in stressful situations will not reach out for help will try to deal with it entirely all alone.

And when the stressors become too much,

They completely shut down.

So they don't become overwhelmed by going into the hyper state of anxiety,

They become overwhelmed by shutting down feeling just I can't cope.

They will go into a state of brain fog dissociation checking out.

Disorganized finally are those people who in childhood were frightened or terrified of one or both of their parents.

The child was in an impossible situation.

The very person who they were wired by evolution to seek security from was the person who was creating a feeling of fear or terror.

And so the child is stuck can't move forward can't retreat.

And so the child survives by dissociating completely checking out entirely of their around the surrounding stimuli.

These are people who are by far and away the most overwhelmed by life.

In fact,

In many ways they go through life in a almost regular state of overwhelm.

They will constantly seek relief from overwhelmed through self numbing tools heroin,

Alcohol,

Or trance behavior some will get into cutting or other self harm to essentially check out of awareness of their environments.

And if we could summarize this underlying belief,

It's emotions are unbearable.

I must not feel whatever it is I'm experiencing I must check out.

To summarize these internal these models were set very very young in life.

And they convey the emotional beliefs largely through somatic markers.

And it's a little bit like if I could compare it.

If I can run a landmine after,

You know,

Even many years after war it can blow off blow up.

Well,

A trigger works in the same way.

After a childhood of unreliable attachment or engulfing attachment or scary caregivers.

All these experiences that turn into little landmines or time bombs or time capsules.

And when something in the present reminds us of a similar experience.

It goes off.

And what does it release not images,

Not thoughts,

But feelings in the body movies almost invariably try to convey triggers as things you can see.

So if you're showing a soldier who's been in a war being triggered and PTSD what will happen is they will you'll show them seeing visuals from the war,

But that's not really the way triggers work.

You don't see anything.

You don't even hear anything.

You might not even be aware that you're being activated.

What will happen is suddenly your right hemisphere in the body is suddenly feeling tense.

Tight,

Your stomach will contract,

The throat will tighten,

Your eyes will start to look down will go into the shape of a child that is unsafe and from that physiological state,

All of the feelings of overwhelm and the behaviors of vulnerability associated with vulnerabilities stem.

Now,

From a Buddhist early Buddhist perspective,

The insights are very,

Very,

Very,

Very similar to what we just talked about.

The Buddha in a famous teaching the Patichasamuppada said that in early life.

There's this phase of development called Nama Rupa,

Where our key perceptions of the war,

The world are shaped.

And even in the early the teachings.

It said that in this state,

These early,

Early years are key facets of personality are formed and in the Buddhist canon the Dharma there was four there people were lumped into people who are confident,

People who clung to central pleasures for safety people who are versive,

And people were delusional.

And I've given talks in the past,

Don't have enough time tonight,

How I consider these four categories to be very similar to the attachment styles.

This confident is very similar to secure clinging is very similar to anxious aversion very similar to avoidant and delusion.

Very similar to disorganized attachment.

In the Buddhist perspective,

When we contact stressors depending upon those early phases of life and our core personality,

It will trigger feelings,

What is known in Buddhist canon is Veda now.

In this,

The Dharma there's three different kinds of feelings there's positive feelings.

When you experience a positive feeling,

It makes you want more,

It makes you want to do anything to get more of whatever you're experiencing.

On the other hand,

If you experience negative feelings dukkha vedanam,

It makes you want to do anything to make what you're experiencing to stop.

It'll make you become excited and do anything to make something come to an end.

The third kind of feelings is neutral feelings.

And in the canon is said that most people ignore those feelings,

They don't have any repercussions on the way we act.

So if you wind up in a positive feeling,

What's known as sukkha vedanam,

It will give you from those positive feelings it'll give you positive obsessive thoughts.

If you on the other hand have negative feelings,

It will trigger negative frantic thoughts.

And so this is in the Buddhist perspective how overwhelm happens.

It's not so much the environment or the stressors we face.

It's actually that we in certain situations due to childhood experiences that shaped our personality,

We are prone to have at times negative feelings and from negative feelings,

We'll have a whole host of negative thoughts,

Which are in psychology known as cognitive distortions and Buddhism known as didi upadana.

So what are some of these negative thoughts that the Buddha lists and is also classically known in the Dharma?

Well,

When we're in a setting and it triggers negative thoughts,

Then the brain,

The left hemisphere through mood congruence will start to list all of the challenges we'll face in the future at once,

As if we are expected to figure out and solve all of our life in one moment.

But with negative vedana,

It creates,

The Buddha said,

This sense of the story of I have to figure out everything right now.

And so it'll be listing all the stressors that are coming up.

I have to,

How am I going to pay my taxes next year?

What am I going to do when I retire?

Where am I going to move?

What am I,

How am I going to pay for,

If I have a child,

How am I going to pay for their college?

How am I going to pay for a wedding?

I might not even be in a relationship.

But in other words,

We will think at once about all of the different stressors and obligations we need to deal with in the future.

And because the vedana,

The feelings are very,

Very tight and uncomfortable in the body,

These lists of all the upcoming stressors in our life will feel very,

Very real and very,

Very threatening,

As real as a threat that's actually present.

So when there's these negative feelings in the body,

The thoughts that explode from them,

All the lists of things we have to do and deal with,

And you know,

That now it seems like I have to deal with all of them.

I don't know what I'm going to eat tomorrow.

I don't know where I'm going to go for the weekend.

I don't know about,

I have to deal with it all once.

And then it becomes all too much.

Another tendency from negative feelings is catastrophizing.

It's essentially visualizing or representing in words a what-if scenario that no one could possibly solve.

So,

For instance,

What if the entire economy collapses and I can't get a job and there's no jobs to be had?

Well,

Frankly,

No one could possibly solve that.

That's impossible.

That's a dilemma that has not happened,

But it's an impossible dilemma to solve.

So obviously,

Triggering a catastrophizing thought on top of feelings of tightness and insecurity and tension in the body can make a catastrophizing unlikely scenario seem likely.

And so people can literally jump to the worst possible outcome,

But believe that that unlikely,

Almost,

You know,

Astronomically unlikely scenario is somehow likely because,

Again,

The body is tense.

The breath is hyperventilating.

There's this physiological state of discomfort that makes the catastrophe seem real.

Sometimes it will make us jump to conclusions.

For instance,

If you write a friend a text message and you don't hear back from them,

If your body is relaxed and calm,

You might just chalk it up to the fact that they're busy.

But if you have already been activated by something in the world or something you've neurocepted to feel tight and tense,

Then what will happen is you will essentially jump to the conclusion that your friend no longer likes you,

Cares about you,

Wants to have anything to do with you.

It had nothing to do with the external stimuli.

It had everything to do with the fact that your body primes you to jump to the worst conclusion.

On the other hand,

If your body was feeling very positive,

You had confident,

Soothing,

Excitory states in your body,

You might jump to the exact opposite conclusion.

Again,

All of these,

What the Buddha called dhiddi-upadana,

These hosts of thoughts and ideas that are triggered by underlying body states or vedana,

Essentially feel very,

Very real because the physiological state beneath them creates the sense that the catastrophe or listing all the challenges of the future or the conclusions we've come to,

It makes them seem as if they are true,

Actual threats.

So knowing this,

It's not surprising that the Buddha taught that the way out is not by changing the thoughts,

Is not by challenging the thoughts,

But is by addressing the feeling state beneath whatever our cognitive state is.

Vedana,

It said in the Dharma,

Is the way to deactivate ourself when we are constantly feeling a state of threat or overwhelm.

What that means is to develop an ongoing mindfulness of the body,

How you're feeling,

Especially the key areas of the vagal nerve cluster,

The wandering nerve that runs down the back of the brain stem,

Through to the front of the neck,

Up to the face,

And then down the chest and to the belly.

Key ways to deactivate is one,

To try to get back into a state of neutral vedana.

That's the state that most of the time we don't pay attention to.

Neutral vedana is when the belly is relaxed,

The chest feels open,

The breath,

The out-breath is very long,

Where the shoulders are dropped and relaxed,

Where the facial expression is neutral,

Not tense.

There's no clenching of the jaw,

There's no furrowing the brow,

And so forth.

So the key in the Dharma is before we act or in any situation where we feel overwhelmed,

Instead of focusing on trying to figure out or solve or immediately address or immediately try to cope,

Of course if there's secure people around you who can help you,

You can always reach out to them first,

But if you don't feel that's available,

The next strategy is to develop mindful awareness of what's going on in your body,

What's going on in the breath,

And to get to a place where we get the body as relaxed and neutral as we can.

That doesn't mean we make it feel exceedingly comfortable,

It just means we find the areas in the body that have essentially determined our state of mind,

And we address the overwhelm through the body.

So what we're going to do now in our meditation is we're going to actually practice how to do this,

And what we're going to do is first approach a state of calm and soothing.

Once we do that,

We're going to purposely introduce a triggering concern that might,

Or concerns that might normally leave us feeling overwhelmed,

And to a state of where we can't cope.

And then what we're purposely going to do is while we hold these triggers in mind,

We're going to bring our mindful attention to the body,

And we're going to step by step,

Relax the body,

So that we can deactivate the overwhelm,

The frantic cognitions,

The catastrophizing thoughts,

And all that.

That was a long one.

So,

I never know how,

Whether these will be long or not.

So,

Let's practice and see if we can actually put all this,

These ideas into actual,

Employ them.

So we're going to close our eyes.

And we're just going to let our awareness be retrieved from the world around us.

If you don't want to close your eyes,

You can just look down at the ground in front of you,

Or you can just unfocus your eyes.

And,

Of course,

You can do this meditation in any posture you want.

In the Buddhist tradition,

There's four postures,

Lying down,

Sitting,

Standing,

Or walking.

So whichever of those are most appealing.

And the first thing we're going to do is just start scanning down the body from the top of the head.

Imagine that your awareness is like a flashlight,

And we're going to very slowly,

Like the body is a very tall building,

We're going to start walking down the body with our flashlight and pay attention to different areas and just ask one question,

Does this area feel relaxed,

Or does it feel tense,

Or activated,

Or numb?

So what we're going to do next is,

If we encounter any area that feels tense,

We'll focus the out-breath on relaxing that area.

But if an area of the body feels numb,

We'll focus the in-breath on bringing life and energy to that area.

So starting with the forehead,

Just noticing if the brow feels furrowed,

Or the skin feels very tight,

Or does the forehead feel smooth and pliant?

Do you feel any tingling,

Or do you not really feel anything there?

And if you felt a sense of tension,

Then you might breathe in to the top of your head,

But then the out-breath,

Which is long and smooth,

Imagine you're breathing out through your forehead.

And each exhalation is releasing,

Smoothing,

Softening any tightness or tension.

And then moving down to the eyes,

Doing the same.

If the muscles around the eyes feel tight,

Or the eyes feel like they're bouncing around,

That they're not settled,

Then again we would use the exhalation,

The breath,

Releasing very slowly,

Encouraging the eyes to float in the eye sockets like they're two warm baths.

And we could move awareness to the nose,

And again just notice if the nose feels soft and relaxed or tight.

And again,

If there's any area we encounter that feels very numb,

We can use the in-breath to bring life and vitality to that area.

In my experience,

I don't generally experience any part of my face as numb.

Most of the time I'm using the out-breath and soothing awareness.

I might even offer a gentle phrase,

May you feel safe,

May you feel secure,

May you relax,

And just send a very soft phrase to an area of the body that feels tingly,

Tense,

Activated,

Jumpy.

We can bring our awareness to the throat,

And the throat sometimes I can feel rather numb.

And so what we might want to do is,

In an area of the body that feels almost absent,

Is imagine we're breathing into it,

And the breath energy coming in is just making the flashlight of awareness a little brighter,

Adding a little bit of action potential to that cavernous area of the throat,

Maybe just breathing into it just to become a little more aware.

Bring awareness to the shoulders,

The shoulders feel slightly clenched,

Just roll them up and just back,

Rolling them back and just dropping them to open up the chest.

An area that many people do feel numb or hollow is in the chest,

The heart center,

Especially when we're shutting down.

So using the in-breath to really inflate and bring so much energy to the chest,

Making it feel so ready to receive more oxygen,

Enlivening the lungs.

So just continue either working down the body or just trying to become acquainted with the overall feeling state of the body.

Does it feel really good and comfortable?

Do areas feel uncomfortable or neutral?

And really focus on any area of tension,

Discomfort,

Trying to create that neutral state.

Okay.

So at this point we can shift to the practice where we employ some of the tools we discussed.

So at this point,

If there's something that recently in life feels like it's too much to cope with,

Too many moving pieces,

Too much to get a handle on,

Something that whenever we bring our attention to,

It creates a feeling of,

As it were,

Overwhelm.

Literally we start focusing on everything that can go wrong,

Where it seems like we have to solve everything at all at once,

Or we just can't even pay attention to it because it just triggers a just resignation.

I can't,

I don't know how to deal with it.

So see if you can bring to mind something that feels too much to unpack,

To work with,

To resolve.

And while you hold the image or the anything about it,

You're trying to get back to that place of a bit of overwhelm.

So allow yourself to start thinking of all the things that have to be dealt with or all the things that could go wrong.

In this case,

We actually want to activate the underlying feeling.

We're going about it in reverse.

We're not waiting for the feeling to trigger the thoughts.

We're using the thoughts to trigger the feeling.

So think about something that's too much to cope with.

See if you can get in touch with that state of repetitive or just a slight overwhelm,

And then bring your attention down into the body and see if you can locate an area that starts to feel really clenched and tight,

Or on the other hand suddenly feels really cold or hollow or uncomfortable.

What we're looking for is the somatic marker,

As it's called,

The feeling tone in the body that lies at the very root of being overwhelmed.

So when I think about often planning a journey or a travel plan,

It can be at times overwhelming because at times that would trigger some overwhelm in my parents.

And so when it comes time to make plans,

I have to find the tightness in my belly and in my shoulders and just relax them,

Breathe into them,

Soften,

Keep my body in a really neutral state.

Once it's in a neutral state for a while,

My nervous system returns to social engage.

I can start instead of trying to solve everything all at once.

I can just focus on the very first task,

But it all starts with the body.

So how do we deactivate the body?

If you find any tension in your stomach,

Chest or shoulders or throat,

You might want to repeat a very soothing phrase,

I care about you.

I'll take care of you.

I'll be there with you.

I care about my suffering.

Essentially,

Once again,

We are connecting with an overwhelmed inner child and we're just sending it a really comforting,

Nurturing thought,

I care about you.

And we breathe into and we soften.

We might want to pendulate,

Bring awareness into an area of the body that feels relaxed and then back into the area that feels tight.

We might want to spread the calmness from another area of the body into a place that feels tight.

So if the abdomen feels really tight,

You might want to imagine that you can take the calmness in the palms of your hand and flow them up the arms and then down the torso,

That calm,

Relaxed energy of the palms going into the belly,

Releasing,

Softening.

You'll know your body is back in a neutral state when you no longer feel any need or inclination to move,

To act,

To figure out,

To solve.

When we're in neutral,

There's no inclination to do anything just to be with.

And from that state,

We can begin to address,

Break down big challenges into smaller,

Easier solved ones.

So in a moment,

I'm going to ring the bull.

When you hear the sound,

Take your time and open your eyes whenever it feels appropriate.

Reviews

Insightful and easy to understand. Thank you.

Very helpful and educational, I will return to this. Thank you!

Thank you for helping me attempt to cope and understand my feelings of being overwhelmed, my extreme anxiety and tenseness. I am a work in progress and trying constantly to relax and keep living in the present moment.

Really enjoyed this talk, thank you so much. very insightful and especially appreciate the Buddhism application. 🙏🏼✨

Fascinating and so helpful. I really needed to learn this

Helpful as always you are amazing thank you

I found this very insightful and the guided meditation at the end was truly helpful.

Exceptional talk, thank you! Your clarity and concise definitions have really cleared up some questions regarding my current state of overwhelm. I've done a lot of work and was reluctant to connect reactions to my past but I understand how my past can indeed still inform my current state. What a gentle yet thorough reminder to take care of those still broken (? my words) places. I feel more connected to myself right now than I have in months. Thank you for your time and the kindness of sharing your knowledge.

Amazing talk!!!!!

Thank you🙏

Josh,
I’m gonna memorize this talk over and over.
I can’t believe I found neutral thank you.

Learning alot

Josh Korda is one of my TOP THREE ALL-TIME favorite teachers! His teachings have helped me understand difficult topics, gain new perspective and hear those hard-to-hear messages in new ways. Without exception, I gain new insights and greater depth of understanding with each topic and each episode that I can apply to expand a life very much worth living. I have experienced epiphanies that have electrified my entire being and forever changed my neural network.
Also,
Josh’s teaching style—well-spoken, knowledgeable, intelligent but down-to-earth, compassionate, humorous—is very relatable.

I listen to all his podcasts and regularly contribute to his support (monthly) through his DharmaPunx NYC website. I’m not wealthy, it’s not much, so I give what I can because I share Josh’s passion to contribute to the well-being of all beings and this world we share and navigate together. I benefit from all Josh’s teachings and am confident you will, too.

BTW: I am not affiliated with Josh Korda or DharmaPunx NYC in any way at all, so I feel free to remind you that his entire life’s work as a Buddhist pastor of nearly 2 decades teaching weekly and counseling has always been free of charge. He relies solely on the support of those who freely give. It was the support given to him by others before me that made it possible for him to rock my world now.

Josh has a gift of knowledge that helps me calm my body when in a state of panic and overwhelm from traumatic nightmares and noise sensations. The best knowledge of trauma recovery I have researched. Thank you Josh.

Excellent talk and meditation namaste

Thank you for this incredibly informative and insightful talk. The meditation at the end was so illuminating as well! You have given me so much to reflect on and such great tools to use! Thank you! 🙏

great talk. intellectually engaging, full of practical knowledge, and a really useful meditation.

A fantastic talk. Thank you for sharing this valuable information and for sharing the technique too. Namaste

Incredible explanation and even your talk about overwhelm seem to relax me before the meditation begins.