Get Out of the Rut - Episode #
7
Five-Steps to Process Overwhelm
Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited to be recording one more episode. And this week when I went and talked to you, it's something that really helped me back last year. The very first, I would say three or four, maybe five months of the year, I was feeling an emotion that I wasn't very used to feeling before, and it was surprising to me when I associated the name.
With the actual emotion, right? Like with what was feeling in my body, I was like, wow, is that what other people feel all the time? Because I have coached so many of you feeling very overwhelmed in your life. And when I really realized what overwhelm felt for me, I was like, this is miserable. How are you guys living with this emotion at all times?
So I like to say that we all have our favorite negative emotion, right? Things that it's so used for us to feel that maybe it's our baseline of life. We're so used to feeling that one specific emotion that it doesn't even feel like it's something different. And For a lot of people, I know that it's this overwhelm, right?
The sense of busyness at all times. And for other people could be you feeling very anxious and you don't even realize that anxiety is an emotion that In theory, you should come in, stay there for about 90 seconds and get out of your body. But we use some of those emotions for so long that that becomes your baseline of life.
And you think that that is how you're supposed to be. So after I really worked through my overwhelm that I was stuck on last year, I, of course, I experienced every now and then I will experience the emotion, the feelings of overwhelm, and it gave me so much compassion to all of you who has the overwhelm as your baseline.
Okay? So that's what I would like to talk to you today because when we are in overwhelm. When we have the overwhelm controlling your lives, we don't even know what is wrong. Like we don't know what is the problem. We just feel like things are coming at you and you have no way of getting out of it. Right.
We really do. And I'm saying we, because last year, that's how I felt. And I was getting coached on where my coach was literally telling me that the things in my life could make feel overwhelmed. And I was like, no, no, no. Yes, it does. I have three jobs. I worked 75 hours a week. I have three small kids. I have a husband, I have a big house.
I have, you know, I got into a car accident that I need to take my car in. And all of those things make me feel overwhelmed. And this coach, bless her heart. It shows the whole time is like, Oh, interesting, right? Because now as I think that my life is overwhelming me, I have no power at all, right? The power is over those things that's causing me to feel the way I feel.
It's not until you take responsibility to really understand that I am creating that reality. I am creating the way I see the reality, I'm creating the way. I feel by this, I like to say in with my clients, I like to say that's the glasses that I'm wearing. If I wear glasses of overwhelm, everything that I see around me causes me to feel overwhelmed.
And it's not easy to just shift those glasses, right? But that is the way I'm seeing it. That's the way my reality is being filtered and through the lenses of overwhelm. And I did what I would teach you guys today. It's something that I have been doing now for very consistently whenever I feel this overwhelm.
So, I will give you by the end of this podcast, you'll come out with this five strategies, this five steps strategy to really process the overwhelm, because what I have noticed is not the same as processing sadness or grief or anger, right? The overwhelm is a little bit different because. We really believe that when you are in overwhelm, when you let the overwhelm control you, you really believe the things outside of you, it's causing you to feel the way you're feeling.
The overwhelm comes from the sense of, I have too much going on. There's too much happening in my life, right? I don't have time to do everything. And typically the response we get from the overwhelm. So when you have. The overwhelm in your body, what we typically do is that we look at everything and you don't do any of those things, right?
We might go from one place to the other. I Even had one client once we were coaching, she was feeling overwhelmed with self care. There was so much for her self care list that she felt like she didn't have enough time to do it all. So the overall doesn't necessarily need to be the bad, right?
Quote unquote bad things, but it's like when you feel there's too much going on at the same time, there's too much happening at the same time, and you don't know where to focus. The little problem here is that we tend to think that the solution we need for the overwhelm is a better planner, is a better time management, it's a better right strategy of how to do all the things that we need to do.
And I want to offer you in this episode today that, that's not the practice that you need to fix the overwhelm. We really need to process that in your body first. So believe me when I say that it's not a new planner that will fix your overwhelm. Because last year when I was, Acting from overwhelming, like consistently basis that that became my baseline for six months or so.
I bought a couple of different planners thinking that that would help, right? Thinking that if I were able to manage my time better, I would be able to achieve all the two do's that I had to do and. It turned out that that wasn't what worked. It turned out it was your mindset that needed to be fixed, right?
That needed to be shifted. And how can I look at these things in a different lenses? But before we even change how we look at things with different lenses, I really want to show you how we process overwhelm in your body.
Before I go through this, I do want to point out one more thing that it's very important for this whole thing to work.
We need to understand that the emotions that you have in your body, the feelings come from your thoughts, what you think drives a way for you to feel. And again, the overwhelm, the story you tell yourself that generates the overwhelm in your body is that there's so much to do, there's too much going on.
There's too much that I have to get done. And that's where you don't do anything, right? Like not doing anything is the action that comes from the overwhelm.
So as I walk you through these five steps, I would like to share the experience that I went through when I was able to really feel these five steps and feel the power of it.
I woke up one morning and I was feeling overwhelmed. As soon as I opened my eyes, I felt like, wow, there's so much for me to do today.
There's just so much, I have those emails to send, I have social media to approve. I have a class that I'm teaching that I have to finish the slides. I had like a list of 10 or 15 things, items that I had to do with that, like in the morning, before the day started. And as I was feeling this overwhelm, I came up to my office.
And I just looked at everything that I thought I had to do, and I thought that those things were causing me to feel overwhelmed. I noticed that I was looking at my office, just standing up right there by the door, just looking at things and not knowing where to go first. What would be the first thing that I needed to do?
And I know you have done somewhat the same thing, because I've talked to so many women that feel that same experience, right? You're literally like sometimes in your kitchen, standing up there looking at everything and have no idea where to start. And the overwhelm just takes over. And either you freeze, like in this situation in my office, I froze.
I was just looking at everything. And I was like, crap, I don't know what to do from here. Right. And sometimes when I feel this overwhelm, I flee, I get out of there. I was like, you know what, I'm not going to do anything. But in a sense of escaping, I wanted to escape my need of doing things. So it was just a way of buffer, a way of not doing what I knew I was quote unquote supposed to do.
So, let me walk through what I did on this morning and how much that helped me and my productivity for the rest of the day.
The very first thing that I want you to do is to start feeling the overwhelm in your body. So when I got up here and I felt that I was paralyzed, I almost got like myself out of my brain and start watching, right?
Watching me standing there, just freaking out. And I start feeling what the anxiety felt in my body, because I want you to start feeling so much compassion towards yourself, but you don't find this compassion unless you understand yourself.
So, it's hard for you to find that compassion when you are in overwhelm, because you don't understand, right? Like you don't know what is happening. You're just paralyzed and you're just typically judging yourself for not doing what you need to do. Remember the overwhelm, the voice of overwhelm is telling you to go, go, go. That's why it feels so hard because you're like, I don't know what to do to go, go, go.
And the overwhelm, I imagine this little person inside of you yelling at you. It's like, go, go, go. And even if you try to sit down and do one thing, the little voice is like, no, you should be walking, no, you should be journaling. No, you should be writing this email. No, you should be recording this podcast.
It's from one place to the other where you don't do anything. So I want us to start really understanding that little voice. Okay. So sit down in a place. Where you're like, okay, let me just feel what overwhelm feels in my body. For me, it felt like a heaviness in my shoulders. And then it felt like on my stomach was a little bit kind of like an empty stomach, right?
That was the feeling that I got in my chest was empty was, you know, it had a shallow feeling. And my chest, that's how I was feeling the overwhelmed. And then I could hear the little voice telling me to go, go, go. But because I was just observing it, I was like, wow, interesting. Look how this voice is really telling me to do things.
And then I feel all those, right? The heaviness in my shoulder, the pit on my chest. I feel all of those things because it's coming from this thoughts that the little voice, the little the person, the overwhelm is telling me to do to go, go, go. And just as you're sitting right there, you're able to see that, right.
The overwhelm is a response from your primitive brain. So when the, your amygdala in your brain, the little tiny button in your brain, when it opens up and it takes over your prefrontal cortex has no chance. Like we need to calm ourselves down and really ground ourselves. So the amygdala can call me down and then you get your prefrontal cortex, that the part of your brain that really thinks right.
That makes it different than all the other animals. We need that part back in control. So again, when the overwhelm is in control of your body, You just keep moving from one place to the other. What we want is to ground ourselves. So when I was sitting down and I was just feeling all the overwhelming my body and what it felt like, and I was listening to the little voice, it's like, Oh, okay, that's it.
Right. My amygdala took over for five minutes or so, and I was completely out of control. But now as I'm sitting here, I can show my brain that I am in charge. That it's okay for it to freak out, but I'm safe. I'm here. Okay. So that is the very first step. Sit down or lay down or write whatever you feel like you need for you to calm that down, to calm the screaming, the feeling of overwhelm.
The second step is that. When you're feeling those things, it's for you to actually like literally sit down or go for a walk or do something, because what your brain's telling you is to go, go, go, you don't have time to sit down. You don't have time to stop. You have so much to do. So you need to go against what that voice that is so loud and the feelings, right?
It's telling you to do. So you need to ground yourself for a couple of minutes. You need to. Sit down as you hear your voice telling you to go, go, go. That's the second step for you to calm down the overwhelm and really process it. And again, you can process the overwhelm. If you're going with it, you need to be in charge again.
And I'm not saying that it's easy because it's not, and it's not until you, you do this, that you can see what it feels in your body. So as you're listening to this and you might be thinking that like that would never work, that doesn't, right. It's, I used to say that the coaching, this strategist for coaching was like a Pinterest.
So it's just something that you'll hear, but it would never work in real life. And I really challenge you to try it. Yeah. Right. Try to observe the voice, observe how he feels, sit down and ground yourself as your brain's telling you to go, go, go. You sit back and it's like, let me just observe how this works.
Let me just see if I can get all this emotion, that heaviness in my chest, right, the heaviness in my shoulder, the pit in my chest. Let me see if I can calm me down to really process it. So that is done by grounding yourself.
Now, when you ground yourself. So remember you felt how it. It feels in your body and now you're sitting down. I want you to start listening to the words the overwhelm is telling you. I literally imagined this little person. She has a short hair, the short, straight hair, and she's like, like really, you know, with her little finger pointing at me and she's screaming, she's really loud.
And I imagined that little person inside of me, because I want to hear the story she's telling me. When we feel the overwhelming and we're responding from the overwhelm. It feels so unsafe. It feels so unsettling. And when you start hearing the words, the overwhelm is telling you, you're like, Oh, that makes sense.
Why I was so afraid. It makes sense. Why I wanted to run back and forth because as I sat down that morning and I was listening, my little voice was like, you're lazy. You're just not doing it. That's why you're sitting down. You can't even do the work you said that you were going to do. What would other people say?
You're going to get fired. That's it. Your boss will never want to talk to you again. She's going to hate you forever. And I was like, Oh, look at this, isn't this so interesting? So now when you're listening to all of those things, your body might feel that unsafeness. And what do you want to say? It's, and that is the fourth step is for you.
As you were listening to the story, you can say how unrealistic that story is. It's just not true. There's no way my boss would be upset at me because I didn't respond to an email or because I haven't finished one little, like, no, we have a great relationship, we will talk, we will discuss, we will understand each other.
And at the end of the day, I always finish it anyways, right? So, it wouldn't even have the possibility for her to hate me, but that is your subconscious. So when you were listening to the subconscious and you don't even know what is actually saying to you, that's why you answer and it's so unsettling, it's so crazy.
So when you listen to the voice and you can really tell that, Oh, that's not even true. That's not what is happening at all. My boss and partner, she loves me. We do great work together. We have a great chemistry. No one's getting fired here, right? My business is doing so well. My clients are not going to leave me because I didn't record a podcast.
My clients love me and I over deliver in every single possible way. Why would they not want to talk to me, right? That's how I'm speaking to the voice and really bring the safety back to me.
Now, as the step five, I want you to speak back to that little person inside of you. I want you to use that love and compassion and respect and emotional intelligence, right? And that's how I see the emotional intelligence. It's when the little emotions, the little people inside of you yelling and getting so upset and so angry, right?
We're so sad. They're not controlling everything is prefrontal cortex, you are actually able to speak to your emotions and understand it. Cause remember those parts of you, it's you. That little overwhelm is a part of you that I don't want you hating it. I don't want you being so upset and angry and overwhelmed over the emotions that you're feeling.
I want you to love every part of yourself. When you're able to speak to that part and seems like, wow, I can see how much you are afraid for me. I can see how much you want to protect me. You want me to have this job that I love so much. And you want me to keep this business that I love so much. And you want me to have a great life with my family that I love so much.
Thank you. Thank you for bringing this up to my attention. As you're sitting down and as the little voice is yelling at you, right? And that's how you're like, slowly you're coming down that side of you. You're coming down that part, that overwhelm where I don't need to feel freaked out. I don't need to be afraid.
I'm okay. That's you closing the amygdala and putting the little overwhelm where it's, you know, supposed to be not taking over your life. Right. It's calm and you are calm and now you can do things. But let me just point out one last thing before I let you go. When you feel this calm, I don't want you to go right up to work.
I don't want you to get back to work and doing all those things again, because the overwhelm will come right back up. Instead, I wanted to go do something else. So when I was feeling this overwhelm in the morning that I told you about, that I was paralyzed in my office, and then I did, I walked through this five steps.
I felt it in my body and then I grounded myself. Then I really listened to the voice and I saw how unrealistic the story was. I noticed like that, that craziness that the voice was saying to me made no sense. And then I made sure to feel safe. I made sure to explain that I am safe. I feel safe. And I start to speak to this imaginary.
Little person inside of me, the overwhelm, all of this. I felt empowered again, I felt even love towards myself. I started understanding myself so much better. I went for a walk, I got out of my house and I really let my body sink in this groundness, this new calm and love towards myself.
When I came back, then I was able to really open up my journal and my planners and see what I would need to do first, but you need to give the little time for your body, not to just calm down, but to bring it back to the normal natural state. You need to leave it sometime for your overwhelm to understand that she doesn't need to be screaming at you, that you are back in control of your life.
I hope this makes sense to you. This was really helpful and it has been helping me every time I feel overwhelmed. And again, overwhelm is an emotion like any other emotion. There's no bad or wrong or good emotion. There's the right emotion for you to feel. It's whatever your body. It's feeling, and it comes from the story you're telling yourself.
If you tell yourself that you are so busy, there's so much to do, I have no time, or let's say that you were in a program and the program is almost over. It's like, Oh no, I can do everything that I want to do. All of those things drives you to feel overwhelmed. And as we take responsibility that I am creating that.
Now you works to do this five steps for you to really feel what it feels and process it through and then leave it a couple of minutes. And by a walk, I mean, five, 10 minute walk, take a little break, let your brain be calm and be grounded. Now you can keep up with your work with confidence. Your prefrontal cortex with you in charge of what you need to do.
And I need to tell you, since I start doing this process, I haven't felt as overwhelmed as I felt before and also my productivity level is way high because I know I am not going from one place to the other acting from an emotion like overwhelm. I can calm myself down and then I act from calm and from confidence and from the certainty that I can do everything that I told myself I would do in this day.
I hope this helps you. If you have any questions, feel free to email me or go to my Instagram. I'm always there answering all the questions you'll send me. I love sharing those things with you. I hope this one helps and I can wait to see you again next week. Much love to you. See you then. Bye bye.
