[New Year, New You] Day 17: How to Overcome Overwhelm

We’re nearing the end of our 21-Day New Year, New You Challenge! The last two posts were pretty juicy and action-packed, so I thought this one might be coming at the right time. It’s easy to feel burdened by things to do, and overwhelmed with everything on our plates. Our reactions to this sense of things “slipping out of control” or “being too much to handle” can vary, but feel something like standing in the middle of a heavy storm with things moving all around, but you don’t know how to grab on or where to start.

Once you know this simple fact, you’ve got the first and most important piece of information you need to handle any amount of confusion or overwhelm! Whether you’re trying to handle yourself, or trying to help another person you care for, this blog article has some powerful basics for lifting people up from the bottom of the bucket so they can get perspective and get life back on track.

A Little Disclaimer

First of all, I would like to make it clear that I am not a trained or licensed therapist, psychologist or medical doctor. This information is not intended to replace qualified health care practitioners. However, should you choose to consult “qualified” health care advice, you should know the following;

There are no biological markers to determine the presence of most psychiatric conditions.
No psychiatrist or mental health care practitioner has ever claimed to understand the “cause” of depression or most psychiatric conditions.
No psychiatrist or mental health care practitioner has ever offered a “cure” for such conditions.

What many mental health care practitioners have done is silence the symptoms and remove the burden that depressed, anxious, bipolar, schizophrenic, etc. people have become to the rational-minded people around them.

This “silencing of the symptoms” has taken the form of the form of straight jackets, electroconvulsive shock and other acts that can only be considered human butchery. Even the head of the task force assigned to create psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (their catalogued list of “illnesses”) has now revolted against the system and denounced what he considers the “medicalization of normal.”

Direct-to-consumer advertising has contributed to a whopping $76 billion annually in antidepressant sales, and they are now being prescribed by general practitioners, and even osteopaths for everything from diabetes, heart disease, non-specific pain symptoms, anxiety, panic, obsessive compulsive conditions and even eating disorders! There’s a much better way to address problems of mental overwhelm, confusion and high stress.

Let’s take a look:

What Overwhelm Feels Like

My husband tells a great story about his flight years in the military. The “Hercules” is an aircraft used by the Royal Air Force, and named after the famous Greek guy. 😉 It carries about 100 passengers or three land rovers and is often used to transport cargo, passengers or both. Craig was doing regular flights from UAE (United Arab Emirates) into Baghdad and Iraq at the time of this event.

Because the aircraft was sometimes fired at from surface to air missiles, and because these missiles worked on tracking the heat of engines, their plan was to put the engines to idle up at 20,000 ft, make up a random pattern each day (that they made up every day at the time so as not to be written, tracked or predictable) then spiral down in different places to land in different spots on the runway, and avoid being easy targets for gunfire. The pilots found this a lot of fun, because they got to throw the big aircraft around with steep banks, curves, dives, etc. and all in the dark with the lights off!! There was also the added challenge that you couldn’t use the engines, you had to glide in.

One time, just after landing, Craig walked back down the aircraft from the cockpit, feeling triumphant and excited to have saved the day and safely landed, and saw that a whole lot of his passengers (soldiers who were being shipped in for duty in Iraq) had thrown up all over themselves or peed their pants. Then he realized it was probably not as exhilarating for them and a whole lot scarier and a much more difficult ride being in the back of the aircraft. This made him stop and realize that even though they were in all in the same aircraft doing the same things, because Craig could see what was going on and knew what to do and had a lot of control over the situation, he LOVED it and found it totally fun. For his passengers, who couldn’t see what was going on, didn’t know what was happening and didn’t have any control of the situation, it was scary, confusing and even sickening.

From the front of the aircraft, where you can see, predict and understand what will be happening, the ride can be fantastic. And yet, if you’re in the back of the aircraft–where you can’t see, cannot predict or know what to expect, you can easily end up hurling all over yourself.

That’s a lot how life looks when we fail to have good control over our lives. This can even happen by failing to be properly informed and supported by our loved ones through transitions and everyday experiences, even from the time we came into the world! We can easily feel stuck in the back of the aircraft–confused, disoriented and out of control. (I believe this, is one of the biggest reasons children act out in protest against our ineffective leadership and control. This is part of the reason for spilled milk, feverish nights and unpredictable temper tantrums. The more you work to consistently and predictably inform your children of what to expect, and the more you keep good control of your life’s aircraft and navigate with your attention on where you’re going, the better things will go.)

How to Overcome Overwhelm: What Not To Do

When a person is overwhelmed, it feels a lot like being stuck in your head, doing way more thinking than acting, you’re in the back of the aircraft hurling all over yourself. If, when this happens to someone, you tell them how wrong they are for hurling on themselves or being in their head, you’ll only push them down further. If you’re the one feeling overwhelmed and you’re busily beating yourself up for how you feel, it’s not any better.

You need to bring yourself up into the cockpit–physically, even. You need to see the view, and take notice of what there is to see and observe. (If you’re helping someone else, you shouldn’t do this with too many words, as when someone is truly overwhelmed, words are often wasted.)

Regardless of why anyone feels confused and overwhelmed, the first step to getting out of it is to get oriented. You need something to grab onto, and sometimes that is literally a mop, a broom, a dust cloth, a jacket and a pair of shoes before you head out for a walk. Going for a walk, taking space, and just stepping away from the scene, or situation for a few moments is a fantastic way to get perspective and untangle confusions.

While modern mental health practices tend to get more invasive and dramatic the more confused and overwhelmed a person gets, I believe the more a person is struggling and overwhelmed, the simpler the solutions MUST be if you really want to help them. Most mental health treatments are not directed at helping the individual nearly as much as they have been directed at quieting the symptoms and making the individual someone who others are more comfortable being around.

Before assigning wild labels or dramatic diagnoses to a person’s state of mind, before taking any drastic actions, see if the basics are in place. Even the sanest of saints can be made to feel crazy when any of the following are not in place:

#1) Sufficient Rest and Sleep

Are you getting enough sleep? If not, why not? Since when? How many hours a night of deep, restful sleep are you getting? What are the barriers to sleep that you’re aware of? Find out! If something that can be easily corrected, put discipline in place to correct it so you can get a couple good night’s sleep. Often this will change everything about your perspective.

(Most people need between seven and eight hours of sleep, and you should have at least two nights of sleep in a row to be considered well-rested.)

#2) Sufficient, High Quality Food

This is my opinion based on my personal observations having worked with thousands of women all around the world who had varying degrees of overwhelm and emotional upset on their plate in life.

Anyone who has had a history major illnesses, accidents, surgeries, pharmaceutical drugs, or emotional trauma of any kind often needs more protein to be well than someone who has not been exposed to these things. This is because the weight of these memories and experiences are of a physical/energetic nature. They really do carry a “weight” that demands energetic attention, and if the body is not given enough fuel to support that demand, then it can cause the “pictures” of the past to move in on the person and they will feel more pressure, more confusion, pain and emotional upset.

Anyone prone to digestive upsets (stomach, bowels, etc.) and major emotional/mood issues should be off gluten, sugar and dairy. There’s a lot of work and research that has been done here, but remember that getting a person stuck in their head about food, also isn’t helpful. This is not the time to get obsessed about the perfect, pure diet, or wondering if you’re eating too many carbs.

Having been a vegetarian for at least twenty years, I would be the first to hunt down a wild animal and serve it up as dinner to any person I felt was in crisis. Without intending to offend anyone’s dietary preferences, a person who is honestly struggling to the point of overwhelm, or who is at risk of causing harm to themselves or others NEEDS sufficient, high-protein food to hold up against the pressures of life, and I would not, will not and do not tolerate obsessive dietary preferences as a justifiable obstruction to helping someone who needs it.

When you are overwhelmed, chances are your world feels small, almost as if it is caving in on you. The pressures upon you are greater than the pressures you’re able to exert on life and it feels like a collapsing in of life. The way to counter this effect, is to reach out, get up, get out and take up space. You need to get our of your head and into LIFE! So this isn’t about coming up with a strict and impossible-to-follow diet regime. This is about getting SOME kind of high quality protein and nourishment into the body so it can withstand the pressures of life and hold up in the face of stress. Make sure that you, or any other overwhelmed person you are trying to help is eating sufficiently, or you will not be able to honestly help them.

#3) Exercise and Time Outside

There’s certainly no secret to these three things I’ve listed, and yet their influence is not to be underestimated. Exercise is often necessary to restore a person’s appetite and ability to rest. Make you are getting daily exercise and physical activity. This stimulates all aspects of health, digestion, and brain function, etc.

Now this doesn’t necessarily mean a complicated aerobics class, or pilates, hot yoga, weight-lifting. It just means you get that body moving. A walk is a perfectly acceptable cure for mild to moderate clinical depression!

One of the best ways to do this is to bring them outside for walks. Lots of walks. Long walks. Not walks where there’s too much talking and thinking, or staring at the pavement. Walks where there’s a lot of noticing and looking and orienting a person to their environment. If you did that one action consistently, and ensured all the basics were in, you would start to get an improvement. You would start to hear a few comments about what the person is thinking, about what’s taking up their attention or what’s on their mind. This offers a doorway into conversations and taking the situation to the next level. The more a person is permitted to bring their attention OUT from inside the hamster wheel of their heads and onto life and what’s happening in it, the better they will feel and the better your chance of understanding and helping them.

A perfectly acceptable action step to help someone who is really struggling would be daily walks, healthy meals and sufficient sleep. Those three things kept in regularly would start to shift the tides in your favour–in the favour of bringing a person back into life and willing to take up space. All manner of physical activities can be helpful–things like cleaning, gardening, walking the dog will all require a person to put their attention on what they’re doing. That will bring them less in their head and more into life.

I hope you found these tips helpful, and of course if you ever need a little more support, reach out, let us know, we’ll be happy to help you get back in the cockpit of your life feeling clear-headed and confident again! You can check out the podcast to accompany this blog post here.

Love,
Tera