You may have been experiencing feelings of overwhelm recently – a sudden feeling that you can’t cope with what life is throwing at you. We can also be overwhelmed with joy, gratitude, sadness, anger, bliss. Everyone experiences overwhelm at some point in their lives. I felt overwhelm for about two months before I left England to go on my pilgrimage, and last month, so I can empathise.

Nowadays the speed at which the earth and our lives are changing is unprecedented so it’s not surprising that an overload of things on your To do list, or requests or demands from your nearest and dearest can take you to your tipping point.

Put your hand on your belly and feel it rise and fall as you take three deep breaths. Continue until the overwhelm passes.

Do this exercise from my You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEmULFew85U

 

Overwhelm usually comes from our inner child, so firstly, remember that you are not a child and you are not a victim. You are an adult and a sovereign being so you can regulate the demands coming towards you to a level you can cope (most of the time).

Check, have you been triggered into a childhood memory of a situation that you couldn’t control? Acknowledge to yourself that this feeling is coming from the past when you could not deal with the situation but now as an adult you can.

Take care of your inner child – acknowledge your child’s distress. Use self-soothing techniques to calm her/him down, self hand massage, stroking your face, cuddling a teddy/soft fabric, listening to lullaby music. And reparenting yourself is very important to stablise a dysregulated nervous system yourself.

Get enough sleep – sleep deprivation makes us more emotionally vulnerable and life feels harder. Longer term, balance your circadian rhythms, by aiming to sleep at the same time each night.

Eat regularly – Eating regular meals is not only nourishing it’s grounding and keeps your blood sugar levels even so you are more physically and emotionally stable. Eating something approximately every four hours.

Get out of your head and into your body – do some exercise, dance, walk on the grass in bare feet.

Be present – use meditation or an activity that’s fully engrossing to come fully into the here and now.

Empty the Stress Bucket – If you already feeling anxious, wobbly or irritated it doesn’t take much to bring you to the edge. Take responsibility for your emotions, e.g do emotional release – pillow beating or pillow scream, use a punch bag, swim fiercely and scream underwater. Go for a run. I’m sure you can add to this list.

Get grounded and embodied – e.g stamp your feet, receive a massage. Even self massaging your hands or your face for example can bring you into your body. It’s empowering to have an embodied knowing that you are capable of soothing yourself and life isn’t spinning out of control. It’s your mind.

Take time – to get out of the house and into nature. Bring your attention to the plants the colour of the trees, sky etc. If you can’t get out, even looking at a restful environment can help.

Allow yourself to cry (calmly as a release not dramatically in a way that escalates alarm in your system. Try to be as kind to yourself and your body as possible.

Pace yourself and focus on one thing at a time. Do NOT multitask if you are feeling overwhelmed. If your to do list is making you feel overwhelmed, just do the most important task and forget about the rest if possible.

Use continuous writing in a stream of consciousness let everything pour out onto the page without lifting your pen.

These are just some ways of dealing with feeling overwhelmed.

If you’ve experience overwhelm, what do you use to calm down?

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