What to do when you feel overwhelmed

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Let’s talk about overwhelm. Overwhelm doesn’t just happen to us. It’s an emotion our brain uses to communicate important questions. When we see overwhelm as a sign to stop and talk to our brains about what is causing the overwhelm, we can learn how to leverage it, instead of feeling bogged down by it. In this episode I will walk you through the 3 steps to leveraging overwhelm so you can feel more free, confident, and energized (ya, know…sort of the opposite of overwhelmed).

Topics in this episode:

  • Here’s why everyone feels overwhelmed

  • 3 important facts about overwhelm

  • Why motherhood is an overwhelming season of life

  • What not to do when you feel overwhelmed

  • 3 steps to getting yourself out of overwhelm

Show Notes:

  • Ready to lessen the overall overwhelm in your life and learn how to use it to propel you forward? Book a free breakthrough call and I will walk you through the process: www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book

  • Don’t forget to leave a rating and review to help spread this resource to other working moms!

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Transcript

Intro

Hey working moms, in today’s podcast I’m talking about overwhelm. Overwhelm is one of those emotions that feels like it just happens to us. Like we don’t have any control over it. But I think overwhelm is your brain’s attempt to talk to you. It’s trying to tell you, “hey, you have a lot of things going on, a lot of decisions to make…can you tell me what’s most important?”. When we see overwhelm as a sign to stop and process through the outstanding questions we have, we can leverage overwhelm, instead of feeling bogged down by it. In this episode, I will walk you through the 3 steps to leveraging overwhelm so you can feel more free, confident and energized (ya, know…sort of the opposite of overwhelmed). You ready? Let’s get to it.


Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it!


Hey working moms, I’m coming to you today as I write this podcast on day six of our family in quarantine. So that’s six days of being trapped together in a house, where no one can go anywhere, where my husband and I are trying to keep screen time to a minimum, where we are each trying to recover ourselves, where kids are waking up in the middle of the night, where constant meltdowns are happening and ultimately where we are not just surviving this time but trying to make the most of it. There have been some very sweet moments that actually remind me of some of the earlier times of sheltering in place, when Covid first started and for sure there will be some memories that will come out of this time. 


I came down with Covid first and I am sure I got it when I was on my trip. I didn’t know I had it for many days. I had come home from the trip with a sore throat, but the night before I had danced my heart out to this amazing cover band and belted out all the songs, so my assumption was the sore throat was from that, but then the next day it didn’t go away and the next day and I started to just not feel well. We had tried our best to keep everyone safe at the event, my coach had brought in an entire covid team to test us every single day - so I had tested negative for 5 days in a row. Anyway, I finally tested positive, and because my son is under the age of 5, he had to stay home from preschool for at least 5 days. My daughter ended up testing positive two days later along with my husband and now my son has finally started showing symptoms, so we’re expecting a whole nother week of being in quarantine together.


Now, there are a lot of emotions going on around this. There has been an avoidance of getting this virus for the last two years, so much so that our entire lives have been in an upheaval in an attempt to NOT get covid. Childcare, schools, activities, all of it disrupted to attempt to stop the spread of what is a very deadly virus for some that get it. 


So there's this moment of coming to terms with the fact that we have it…there is a lot of emotion there. There is a lot of emotion, watching your kids feel sick, and there’s a lot of emotion that comes with feeling so helpless because none of us can go to the store. None of us can go anywhere, and we need friends to pick up groceries and medicine. There’s a lot of emotion as we canceled plans that we have made, including my folks being in town for a week. There’s a lot of emotion as my husband and I try to navigate the bare minimum of what we need to do for work and childcare, and there’s a lot of emotion as your brain questions over and over again, are you doing the right thing? Are you handling this correctly? Am I managing all of this ok?


Today as I write this podcast it is Monday morning and there is still lots of uncertainty around how this week will unfold and if either kid will get to go back to school, and we have to make sure everyone is feeling well, and we have to justify the sick time my husband is taking with his employer. And then for me, I am trying to justify the amount of time I am working, or NOT working and trying to sort out what expectations I should have for ourselves and our work time…


It’s overwhelming. 


And justifiably so.  


Today, we are going to be talking about overwhelm. Because we as working moms describe life as being overwhelming all the time. Not just in the midst of Covid, but in the midst of managing work and home life. Many people would say it is overwhelming.


Ok, let’s talk about the experience of overwhelm. 


First, being overwhelmed is an emotion that every human being feels on a fairly consistent basis. And I think for a lot of working moms, it can almost feel like a go-to emotion.  


What is overwhelm?

Overwhelm is an emotion our body goes to whenever we can’t wrap our heads around something. Where we can’t see the end, where we aren’t exactly sure of the outcome. It’s an emotion that comes with uncertainty and doubt. Where we don’t exactly know what to focus on or what to do. It is an emotion often associated with decision making, whether that is deciding something big like: should I change jobs? Or maybe something little like, what task should I do first today? Or, should I pick up my baby when she cries or let her cry it out? 


Overwhelm comes with a lot of decision-making.


Just being a mom is overwhelming because there is no rule book. There is no real certainty around parenthood…particularly with your first, every little and big decision feels like an “I don’t know”? So you just have to hope and pray. And there is a lot of overwhelm as you go through the process of weighing all the pros and cons and all of the possibilities and decisions that are out there, right? Just motherhood itself can feel like an overwhelming experience because of the amount of uncertainty.


The first things I really want you to hear around overwhelm is:

  1. It’s normal, it is a very human experience.

  2. It tends to come about when there is uncertainty, doubt, and decision-making.

 

Overwhelm is a safety emotion.

The second thing I want you to know about overwhelm is it is a safety emotion. Your brain uses it whenever something doesn’t feel comfortable or safe. Remember, your brain’s primary function is to keep you safe and alive. And that is both in a physical sense and in an emotional one. 


Let me give you an example, Monday morning is often an overwhelming part of the week. You have a long list of tasks to get done and unless you are super on It, the list is probably not organized by importance. When you look at everything that needs to get done for the week, how do you feel? Overwhelmed, right? So what do you do when you are looking at this list and feeling overwhelmed? Likely one of two things: you picked the simplest thing for an easy checkmark or you don’t do any of it and busy yourself with checking email or something like that…doing the easiest thing on the list…this is the safest thing to do. It doesn’t expel too much energy, you don’t have to worry about maybe working on the wrong thing or doing something that is hard….you do what is easy and safe. 


Let’s take a big decision example – deciding if you want to start looking for another job. Making a definitive decision on this has a lot of implications on both you and your family (or at least, your brain thinks so) and you want to make sure you make the RIGHT decision. Needing to make sure we get something “right” almost always makes us feel some form of overwhelm. And when you are thinking about making a decision about your job, feeling overwhelmed, what do you do? Likely keep weighing the pros and cons, casually browse jobs – but not really commit to leaving, maybe ignore the decision altogether and decide to decide later – all of these things are a lot safer than actually deciding and committing to what you decide. 


So…overwhelm is an emotion your brain uses to keep you safe.


Third, it doesn’t feel good in your body, emotions have a physical effect on our bodies, all of them do. Stop and try to describe the feeling. For me, when I feel overwhelmed, my heart feels really fluttery, there is a lot of movement happening in my chest, my breath feels a bit faster. The actual sensations in my body, associated with that feeling don’t feel good. And when something feels physically uncomfortable, our usual response is to end the discomfort as quickly as possible. 


The problem is how I see many women handle this uncomfortable feeling…which is what we are going to spend the rest of this podcast talking about…how I see a lot of women handle it, is by not handling it. Ignoring it, pushing through it.


Ignoring feelings of overwhelm leads to more overwhelm.

And whenever we ignore or push through emotion without actually dealing with it, it doesn’t really just go away…it gets stuffed and will pop up later, usually more fiercely. Or, it just becomes an undertone to everything. Things that aren’t usually that overwhelming all of a sudden are. Days feel harder and then you come home and you are even more exhausted from the day and less present. 


So…we don’t want to ignore or push through. I want you to leverage the overwhelm. 


I’m gonna walk you through what are the things I do when I feel overwhelmed and I actually did it this morning before sitting down to write this podcast in order to really feel, process through and then leverage the overwhelm that I was experiencing.


How to leverage overwhelm.

The first thing I want you to do when you’re feeling overwhelmed is to write everything down. Get out a piece of paper and a pen or you could take notes on your phone or computer, and write everything down that is in your head. I call this a thought download. The point is to purge every little thing. The point is to air out everything going on inside of your brain, so you can actually see what’s in there and deal with it. As long as your thoughts and questions and anxieties feel hidden in your brain, you can’t do anything with them. So go on a hunt and find all of your thoughts and feelings and anxieties, good or bad or ugly. And I like to write the ugly ones down, like I’m really searching for those. I’m searching for those hidden thoughts that sound like, you’re a terrible mom. You never make the right choice. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m searching for these really extremist thoughts, that I know aren’t true, but I’m thinking them and so they’re in my head causing me a lot of overwhelm….so I want to find those and get them out. 


As you’re going about this process, I want you to notice questions that surface. You could even make a separate column on your paper for questions. Here were a few of mine that surfaced this morning during my thought download: Am I working enough? Am I being lazy and entitled? Should I be getting more done? How are we paying for summer camp registrations? Some of them are practical, some of them are deeper or philosophical, but my brain had a whole bunch of questions that it was asking me as I went through this thought download.


I want you to write all of these down because these questions are the roadmap out of overwhelm, so you want to capture them all. The answers to these questions are going to calm down your brain. And your brain is actually offering them up to you as a clue as to what is overwhelming you…so in the next step you are going to start answering them. 


Sometimes I like to answer the questions, quite literally one by one. Ok, first question - Am I working enough? What do I think? Yes or no? Why do I think that? You might literally take each question and sometimes you can see there’s a theme to the questions, like there was today. There was an overall theme that said “are you doing it wrong?” – so I answered my brain as it asked me this question with no, I am not doing it wrong. 


Then I want you to notice something, more questions are gonna start to arise. When my brain asked me, am I doing it wrong? The next question that popped up into my head is how do you know that? So then I answered that one. I listed out all the reasons why I knew the way I was handling this quarantine and juggling working and tending to my family, how I was doing it right. 


After writing for just a few minutes, the next natural question surfaced which was how do you want to approach this upcoming week of quarantining? 


After writing down the milestones that I wanted to hit this week while balancing being home with the kids. Then another natural question surfaced, which was how do you know these are the right things to focus on? And so I answered that question.


It’s almost like I’m having a conversation with myself and I am just writing it all down. 


By the end, the overwhelm will have subsided. Maybe it won’t be completely away, but it won’t feel so in control of you. It just can’t, because you’ve answered all of the questions that had been piling up in your brain that were causing you to feel overwhelmed. 


I’m gonna be honest and say this process really isn’t all that hard, and it didn’t take me all that long to do. The hardest part is doing it. Because it’s not going to feel productive to you at first. If you sit and do this Monday morning when you’re feeling overwhelmed, your brain is going to tell you that spending time getting more things checked off your list would be a better use of my time. But in reality, the energy you have coming out of the overwhelm, the clarity, your ability to problem solve…you will be SO much more productive at tackling whatever questions or tasks that are overwhelming to you when you have a clear brain and when you’re not feeling overwhelmed. You will get so much more done. But what it is going to take, is for you to stop and regroup with your brain first.


For me sitting down to do work, when I have not worked over the last six days, my brain said answering emails and connecting with my assistant was the most pressing thing to do and I have this podcast coming up that I needed to write, and what was I going to write about! My brain put up a fight…and I had to intentionally sit down despite all the fighting going on in my head and do what I know works. 


Your brain still puts on a fight to do this type of work, but you are an ambitious woman…juggling the demands of your career and being an amazing mom…so I know you can do hard things. 


Conclusion

Ok, so quick recap, next time you feel overwhelmed. I want you to stop. Do a thought download (that’s step 1). Note all the questions your brain brings up as you do the download (that’s step 2). Then start answering each of those questions and if your brain brings up more questions, answer those too…until there aren't any more questions. (that’s the last step). 


Ok, working moms you can do this… and as a result, not only will the overwhelm go away, but you will feel powerful and in control. You will start making more productive and confident decisions because you aren’t responding out of overwhelm. 


I can’t wait to hear how this works for you. Alright working moms, let’s get to it.


Rebecca Olson