Overwhelm

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:08  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy, while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:30  

Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. Thank you for being here today. So in this little solo mini series that I've been doing, I've been talking about thoughts and how our thoughts impact our lives. Last week, I talked about all or nothing thinking. And today, I want to take that a little step further and talk about overwhelm. Because the too often go hand in hand, when we kind of get into that state of overwhelm. And often, we may start thinking, there's so much on my plate, I need to do it all, all at once, or like nothing at all. And so I'd like to talk about that a bit more today. Because I know overwhelm is something that many of us feel at different times. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:16  

So what is overwhelm? I looked it up in the dictionary, so that I could have an official definition. So according to the Googles overwhelm means to bury or drown beneath a huge mass to defeat completely to inundate or give too much of a thing to someone to have a strong emotional effect on or to overpower. I think the way I would describe being in a state of overwhelm, it's like feeling like there's just way too much on our plate, too much to manage, it feels very heavy, and it feels like either the weight of it all is going to just crush us, or we're going to drop a lot of those things on our plates. And both of those feel like they're not options and very scary options. You might remember, I did a few episodes back in November and December around burnout, and I really think of overwhelm is kind of a precursor to burnout. So overwhelm happens, where we feel like we're carrying too much. But as high achievers, we just continue marching on, we figure out how to deal with it. And after we've been carrying that heavy load for a very long time, that's whenever we get into burnout. So kind of avoiding burnout, I think, starts with recognizing when we're in a state of overwhelm, and finding our way through it or out of it. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:56  

Have you ever experienced overwhelm my assumption that literally every human has, especially those of us who have achieved success, and especially those of us who are parents, I could be wrong, but if this topic sounds completely unfamiliar to you, please let me know your secrets of never getting into that state. But if you have, I'm curious if you've ever taken some time to notice how you respond or react to overwhelm. I'm gonna share just a few examples of how we might typically respond to overwhelm and see if you relate to any of them. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:33  

So I think one of the most common ways that my clients respond to overwhelm, is to just put their heads down, and go, and just keep on marching forward. Don't stop for anything, and just keep on going and going and going. And often ending up in kind of a state of irritability, being a little bit more short with our partners, or our children or our loved ones. But it's just like, we just go and try not to think about it not to let it get to us because we have this fear that like if we start to think about it, then we'll just start to crumble. And it's just like, we just need to get everything done. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:21  

Another way we might deal with this is to kind of withdraw or escape, go take a nap. Just say like, I'm just going to get out of here, maybe break down crying, maybe procrastinate. A lot of times whenever we're in that state of overwhelm. We have a tendency to say like, I can't handle this, if I can't do it all right now like I'm not going to do any of it and just push it down the road. And then another way we might deal with it is just to feel very paralyzed and just kind of feel frozen or stuck. And so that idea of there's just so much to do. It's pointless to even start. And sometimes we might even start piling on more. It's like we're so stuck in that then we start to pile on more thoughts and feelings that create more anxiety, and worry and heaviness. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  5:15  

For me, I honestly do a combination of all of these. I'm definitely I can see myself in all of these. But I know some people have more of a tendency toward one or two of those responses. What's actually happening in our bodies, is our brain is getting overwhelmed trying to process too much at one time. So maybe there's a huge fire at work. It's our partner's birthday tomorrow, and we haven't even planned anything yet. Our kids are fighting and asking us for 10 million things our friend is going through a crisis or a parent or grandparents or family member is in the hospital. And oh, yeah, we have to figure out what we're eating for dinner tonight. And it's just like, we can handle each one of these things individually, no problem, like, we've got it. But all of them coming at us at the same time. That is when our brains are like processing error, too much shut down. So our brain kind of like throws that error and then feels threatened. And so it jumps into survival mode, which means fight, flight, or freeze. So those examples that I talked about before of how we might deal with it all kind of fall into those categories of fight, flight or freeze. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:35  

So we might like yell at the kids, because we are fighting, we might freeze up and do nothing, because we don't know what to do first or where to start. And we just feel completely flooded, we might go lay down because it's too much. And it's totally normal. It's not unusual for some or all of these things to happen at the same time. Unfortunately, that's the way that life is. But what usually happens is in addition to these circumstances happening, and us responding in whatever way we might respond, we also start judging ourselves, we think I should be able to handle all of this, if I were stronger, I'd be able to. Other people handle way more than this, and they're fine. And why can't I handle this. So we kind of pile on extra layers, add to that heavy load that we already are carrying. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  7:40  

And if you've been practicing what I've been teaching about noticing your thoughts, and recognizing that thoughts and circumstances are different, and that you have a say in what your thoughts are and choosing your thoughts about those circumstances. This is where we tend to use thought work against ourselves because we have the knowledge that we get to consciously choose our thoughts. And so then when we don't choose a perfect one, that makes us feel good 100% of the time we start judging ourselves. And we can be really, really hard on ourselves whenever we believe that we're doing it wrong, or we should be doing it better. I talked about that a bit in my episode a few weeks ago about shoulding ourselves. And this part is definitely where we are making it worse for ourselves and harder in the overwhelm. I'm going to give a recommendation here for in the moment, when we start judging ourselves because we all do it. It's normal, it's human, it's okay. But if we are able to take that judgment down a bit, if we're able to maybe not do it and only focus on the heavy loads were carry and not actually piling more guilt and shame and judgment on top of it, then it becomes a little bit easier to manage.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  9:04  

So my suggestion is first to take a breath, I always recommend taking deep breaths, and then acknowledge what we're feeling kind of be like a sportscaster or like a narrator. I'm feeling overwhelmed right now. And I have a belief that I should be able to handle it. When really I just want to curl up in a ball on the couch and push the pause button on my life for a minute so I can catch my breath. So just notice what's happening, notice what thoughts are there and just narrate what's happening. Sometimes I tend to be a little bit sarcastic, so I kind of will make myself laugh when I do this. Because I'll be sarcastic about it. Bringing in humor or sarcasm or anything that kind of helps to lighten the load a bit can be a little bit helpful I find and then the next thing to do is to notice where you're feeling it in your body and be curious, what does overwhelm actually feel like, in my body? Where is it? What kind of sensation is it? So is my breathing any different? Is my heart rate any different? Where do I feel something? And what does it feel like? Is it a tightness? Is it a pounding? Is it a holing? What is the feeling, the physical sensation is it in my chest is it in my stomach is it in my head is it in my shoulders, my neck, my hips? Where is it, and actually notice and paying attention to this and tuning into this helps us to regulate our bodies a little bit better. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:47  

Remember that we cannot control all the circumstances, all of the things that I said earlier that might be going on at the same time, that might be our reality, we might have all those things or handful of those things on our plates at one time. But we can control how we talk to ourselves about the circumstances, and about our very human reaction to the circumstances. The other thing I'm going to strongly recommend, when you're feeling overwhelmed, is to sit down for five minutes and just start writing, get a pen and paper or a computer and just start brain dumping all the things that are in your head. Just get it out onto paper, your circumstances, your thoughts about the circumstances, all of it, just get it all out. There are no rules, you can make a list, you can draw a picture, you can paraphrase, you can write everything word for word, just whatever you need to do in that moment, and then kind of just see what happens when you write it all down. And then choose one thing on there to do, the one thing might be to lay down and rest or it might be to take an action toward getting something done. And then when you finish that thing, go back to your notes and choose another thing. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:06  

I think the key here is really something that I said earlier, I can handle each one of these things, but not all at once. So do that handle one thing at a time handle each one, or maybe two or three things at a time if you have kids, but just not like 50 at a time when we try and handle 10 or 20 or 50 different things at a time. That's when it feels so so heavy and so, so overwhelming. I promise this helps so much. And it's honestly what I always do, especially when I have a coveted 30 minutes or an hour free of unexpected alone time and my brain's like oh, I should fold that laundry, oh, I should go write a podcast, oh, I should go and do something in the house. I should watch that parenting video, like, my brain wants to do all the things in that short amount of time. And so I start to feel anxious, like how am I going to get all of these things done. And so if I just let that play out and continue spinning, then I'm not going to get anything done, that 30 minutes or an hour is not going to be a good use of my time. So what I do is I just take five minutes and just start writing. And then something always happens. And I can't quite tell you what will happen when you start writing because it's been different for me every time. But something about writing it down gets me more focused, makes me feel like I have a handle on things. And it gets me into action, usually, or it helps me decide that I want to take a rest. So I highly recommend trying out this practice. I would love to hear if you do how it works out for you. But just remember in those moments, when you start to feel notice what you're feeling. Notice that tightness usually, or heart racing or shallow breathing, or whatever it is that shows up for you physically, whatever it is that shows up for you mentally where your head's like spinning and you can't quite focus on one thought, then start writing. I'd love to hear how it works out for you. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  14:19  

One thing I really want you to remember is that feeling overwhelmed is normal. It is a normal part of the human experience. It doesn't mean that something has gone wrong. It doesn't mean that something is wrong with you. So when you're in it, just remind yourself of this. Remind yourself that you're having a normal human experience. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing is wrong with me. I acknowledge it feels really heavy right now and nothing is wrong with me. Okay, so I hope that helps because I know at some point or another in the next week or month or year ever anyone listening to this, myself included will experience overwhelm in some way. So I hope that some of the things I've shared will be helpful for you. Thank you so much everybody. Hope you have a great week. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:17  

Thanks so much for tuning into the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.