The Truth Behind Why You’re Overwhelmed

Are you feeling inundated with to do list tasks, responsibilities, and an incessantly busy schedule? It might feel like you never have time for yourself, and when you do have time for yourself, your mind is endlessly swirling with worries, overwhelming emotions, and more. It is possible to get a break from the incessant overwhelm you feel.

And in this episode, we’re going to explore the truth behind why you’re overwhelmed, so you can begin your journey towards calm and clarity.

Welcome to Calmly Coping. My name is Tati Garcia, and I’m a licensed therapist and coach specializing in high functioning anxiety. I help high achievers stop putting themselves last so they can feel calm, balanced, and confident from within. If this topic interests you, then please like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so you would be notified every time I release a new episode.

Thank you so much for tuning in. Our modern lives have become easier in so many ways. Technology has simplified things from ordering groceries or food to transportation to connecting with others across the globe, purchasing items, marketing your business, and so many other things. However, it can also feel like things are more overwhelming than ever because we are in our heads more than living in our virtual world, along with the physical world in front of us.

Imagine navigating the virtual world as similar to using a touchscreen keyboard on your phone. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m trying to type something into my phone or type a text I feel like my fingers are too fat I’m hitting either the wrong letter or multiple letters at the same time and it just feels really clunky and frustrating versus using a typical which I have here if you are watching touch button keyboard what you see is what you get.

It’s much easier to navigate and hit the keys and there’s less confusion. Maybe you can mess up from time to time, but it’s often not as frustrating as the touch screen. So this can sometimes, you know, in my mind, this is the metaphor that I chose for navigating the virtual world versus the physical world, the virtual world, because it lives, of course, in the internet, but also in our minds, it can seem.

Uh, very confusing and vast and frustrating at times and maybe overwhelming versus the physical world where yes, there can be confusion and frustration. However, when you are faced with what’s in front of you in this moment and doing this thing right now. Follow it. then it can sometimes seem more clear.

So I’m hoping that that makes sense. But ultimately that can be sometimes what I think in my opinion is leading us to feel overwhelmed. All of these additional responsibilities, all of these different forms of information that we’re receiving, all of the exposure to people all over the world that we typically have not had in the history of humanity.

We haven’t had it at all, actually. And all of this can result in feeling more overwhelmed, more pressure to do things a certain way, more expectations, more, you know, feeling like you need to always be connected with others or attached to your mobile device. I’m calling it mobile device. It makes me sound like I’m ancient, but you get the idea, hopefully, of what I’m saying.

So, how can we, amidst all of this, become grounded when you’re feeling overwhelmed? Because being grounded, if you think about overwhelmed, it’s like, I imagine that as being in your head, being in a million different places, having a lot of emotions going on, a lot of responsibilities, versus being grounded in is when you can be literally connected to the ground and have a solid foundation to allow you to move forward from, to allow you to be more resilient in the face of stress that comes your way.

And that looks like connecting to the root of what is overwhelming you. What is here? What is going on? So making that swirling overwhelm of thoughts and emotions visible and bringing attention and awareness to it. Because here’s what the cycle of overwhelm can look like. It can look like having more responsibilities, having a busy schedule, high expectations, pressure put on yourself by yourself and others, and this can lead to strong emotions, a fear of failure, a lack of space to process what’s coming towards you, feeling information overload, emotional unrest.

And this can all lead to feeling frustrated, angry, irritable. Maybe you’re avoiding or procrastinating things. or you’re experiencing paralysis by analysis or feeling stuck. And these outcomes are coming from the place of fight, flight, or freeze response that occurs when we’re under stress, when we’re in a place of anxiety or strong emotions.

Fight is that frustration, anger, irritability, maybe getting defensive. Flight is the avoidance, the procrastination, putting things off, avoiding them. Freeze is the paralysis by analysis, getting stuck, feeling like I don’t know what to do, I don’t know where to move forward. And the cycle continues, and it kind of just continues to compound on itself.

Things will continue piling on, and you’re going to feel more overwhelmed, and like you can’t always control this. So let’s go inside. into the process rather than trying to oftentimes we can try to control what’s outside of us and that can help for a short time. However, the internal feelings are still going on there and still need to be processed.

That’s what we can control. You know, you can control how you process your emotions, how you respond to the overwhelm. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re like, things will never get better. I’m never going to get out of this. Then that’s going to ultimately make you feel more stuck and trapped versus having a response of, I can handle this.

I know this is temporary and I will make it through those beliefs can either keep you stuck or move you forward. And being more present can allow you to focus on one step at a time, rather than needing to be a million steps ahead and thinking of all the things and focusing internal shifts, your emotions, your thoughts, and your present moment awareness can then lead to things like setting healthy boundaries, saying no, being more focused in the moment.

So you can be more efficient with your time, connecting your choices with your values and what is important to you and making decisions from a value aligned place. rather than a scattered place of I don’t know where to start. And these changes can lead to sense of calm, increased self worth, and that’s feeling good about yourself, feeling like I’m good enough, and I’m getting things done.

Not only that, but also I am a worthy person. And it can also lead to increased balance and confidence. So ultimately, if you didn’t follow me, when we’re looking at the cycle of overwhelm, it can get you stuck in I need to finish these things and Because I have so many things on my list, I’m getting frustrated and I don’t know what to do, versus getting to the root, which is ultimately yourself.

Wherever you go, there you are. So from the inside, how can you focus on what you can control in this moment? Understanding, recognizing, and processing your emotions. Recognizing how your thoughts, This could be either compounding your overwhelm or relieving it. The beliefs that you have about things like having all or nothing statements like this is never going to get better can compound those feelings of overwhelm as well as your present moment awareness, focusing on one step at a time, being in the moment rather than the million things that you have going on.

So to get more specific with the clients and students I tend to work with who struggle with high functioning anxiety. What is often keeping them stuck in this cycle of overwhelm could be their high expectations and beliefs, the fear of failure, the fear of dropping the ball, your avoidance through procrastination or perfectionism.

So these are some of the roots of what’s keeping you in this cycle of overwhelm. And when you can address these things, then you can clear away the clutter and begin to see things more clearly. You can learn how to reduce the overwhelm through not only practical steps, like I talked about things like setting boundaries and saying no, those are the practical steps, but also by the way that you approach what you are doing.

So with increased presence and awareness. Because ultimately your frame of mind is what can lead to overwhelm or not. And it’s not to say that you can just magically change this and overwhelm is your fault and it’s all on you. Absolutely not. But it is to say that these are patterns that have occurred many times over time, over a long period of time.

And it’s something you may not even recognize that you could be contributing to or worsening in these small ways. And when we get to the root of it, then we can actually have that foundation, have that groundedness to prevent ourselves from getting into that place again. And if we do get into that place, we can know how to address it, how to handle it so we can be more resilient in the face of overwhelm.

So what can you do practically? Transcribed So you can identify the what these are some simple steps to for you to address right now if you’re looking for something actionable. So what is making you feel overwhelmed right now? I will often do this if I’m in a place of feeling overwhelmed, I’ll grab my journal and I’ll do a brain dump, make a long list of Okay, what do I have going on right now?

What’s on my mind? What’s causing me to feel this way? What are the things I need to get done? And that can really help to bring you some clarity and addressing, right, this is what’s going on for me, and this is why I’m feeling so overwhelmed. When you see it all on a list, it can make it clear, like, no wonder why I’m feeling this way.

Then, The next step is to identify the why. This includes the emotions. So what emotions are you feeling outside of just overwhelm? And many times it can be multiple emotions at the same time, conflicting emotions. This can help you to just acknowledge, to begin the process of processing and working through these emotions and just recognizing them.

Sometimes just naming and acknowledging them can be a huge step towards that. Identifying, are there any thoughts or beliefs underneath them? Any worries that you have? Any guilt? So dig into these things and kind of ask yourself, okay, I’m feeling overwhelmed about this presentation coming up. What are some thoughts I have associated to that?

Oh, I’m worried that I’m going to do terribly, or I feel like this is this huge daunting task that I’ll never be able to address. So this is the why that’s underneath that. And then you can identify how to let go. So let go of what is no longer serving you. So this can include the beliefs that you have.

the worries, the pressure, the guilt, the expectations, anything that is on you or anything that you may be assuming or taking on from others. Sometimes we can assume, Oh, my boss expects me to do perfectly. And you can take that on and then feel like, well, if I don’t do perfectly, then what I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know how to handle this. So let go of that, let go of other people’s expectations and just. Set it aside. The process of letting go is a practice, but one way I’ve heard of it referred to is that we practice letting go every night when we go to sleep. Every night when we allow ourselves to let go into rest, that is a form of letting go.

So you can do it and it is possible and it occurs with practice. And it could just be a reminder to your mind when those thoughts and pressures and expectations and guilt and whatever comes up, just remind yourself, I’m choosing to let go of this and And focus on taking action, focus on one step at a time.

So this can be a process to help you to work through that. If you’re looking for more support to help you to feel calm, balanced, and confident from within as a high achieving professional and take you through this, basically this whole process that I just shared in this episode, get you out of that cycle of overwhelm, anxiety, overthinking things, then I have a brand new, well, kind of not brand new.

It’s an updated, recently updated workshop where you can achieve inner calm, balance and confidence as a high achieving professional without compromising your success, losing your edge or dropping the ball. This is my entire three phase process to get you to the root of your struggles. So you can transform from the inside out and get out of it.

Overworking, overwhelm, and overthinking. You can learn more and sign up for free by going to calmlycoping.com/workshop. And if you have any thoughts, questions, or messages for the podcast on this topic or on anything else, you can go to calmly coping. com slash message and leave me a voice message.

I hope you found this episode helpful. Remember that overwhelm is a temporary state and getting to the root can help you to get out of this place and know that these feelings won’t last forever. While you wait for next week’s episode, I have other episodes about calming your mind, improving work life balance, and feeling more confident from within.

You can check out these episodes here. Thank you so much for tuning in today, and until next time, be calm.