EP12 -Overwhelmed? - (Special Guest Clare Downham) : The Thought Trap

Do you ever try to switch off your mind but find it's always racing? Do you feel stressed out, anxious, or just overwhelmed? Are you trying to change something in your life, break a habit, or simply work through a challenge?

And it's really hard.

This is a guest episode, and at times during the conversation, I tap into my old perspective, asking the kinds of questions I used to ask because I know they're likely to be on your mind, too. I'm Becca Gardner, a certified change coach and a guide, because I want to show you how you can move beyond these thought traps. So welcome to the Thought Trap. Today's episode is a cracker. I have Claire Downham, a transformational coach and mentor.

This is episode 12. I have a special guest today. It is the amazing Claire Downham. Now we are going to talk about a topic that I think everybody that lives on planet Earth will be able to relate to, and it is the topic of Overwhelm. Welcome to my studio, Claire.

Hi, Becca. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

So overwhelmed. Goodness me, I just. I don't even know where to begin. But what I do know is I feel very relaxed in this space with you. Can I just say, first of all, you have this presence that makes me just slow right down. I've been listening to a lot of your content and things you share. Those people that are listening, if they want to access any of that, then you'll be able to in the show notes, and I highly recommend that you do that. But you do talk about Overwhelm in a way that is just so ordinary and relatable. No pressure. But you also have a beautiful story around Overwhelm too, if you're willing to share. Because I think when people really understand that not only do you talk about this so eloquently and so relatably, you've been there. And I think that is, you know, as hard as it was, that enables you to come from this space and totally understand. So I'm going to pass the mic over to you, and I'd love you to talk more around Overwhelm.

So that was interesting. As you were sharing that. I felt quite emotional, actually, which I'm good with. I often cry on things, podcasts and videos and goodness knows what else. I guess my story around Overwhelm, that was that without knowing it, I was pretty much in a state of overwhelm probably 95 to 100 of the time in the run up to a significant burnout that I experienced just over 10 years ago. So in March 2015, I walked into my office, my head teacher's office, and I, I kind of looked at my computer and just froze. I couldn't switch it on. That, that was almost like the point of the overwhelm, just, I was full. Just my body just went, we're not, we can't do this anymore. This is enough now. And it felt like my body took me out of the building and somehow got to the doctors, not really sure how. I drove there and at that point was diagnosed with depression, but what had actually happened was a massive burnout and I, I never went back to work. That was it. I was done. 20 year career in education gone. I had a year off sick first, but in the end I, I just couldn't go back. It just didn't. My body just wouldn't let me really. And, and often because I was a teacher and a head teacher, people will say that that was to do with my job and it wasn't. It was to do with my thinking. Surprise. On this podcast that we'd mentioned thinking. But. And it was. I ended up in this permanent state of overwhelm because I was just continually trying to fix the outside world to, I guess, make myself feel better. And I could have never described it in that way as I was going through it. This is all in hindsight, it's all looking back. And so clearly I don't really remember what that experience was like, but understanding what I understand now about how the mind works and, you know, the things that, that you and I both have been exploring, the I, I know now that this, this drive to control the world so that almost that. So that like a game of whack a mole, I could eventually get all the mole heads down and none of them would ever pop up again, and then I would be okay. It drove everything. It drove my. It drove the reason why I was even a headteacher in the first place, because I thought that I could get somewhere in my career and then I'd feel okay, but that meant I was very busy. And then when I got to the. To this point in my career, this amazing place that I thought, you know, you think the fireworks are going to go off and there's going to be ticker tape coming down and it's yay, I've made it. And now I feel amazing. And of course that's utter rubbish. When that didn't happen, I filled my social life with stuff to do to try and feel different. And that just meant I was just continually. I just continually had so much in my head to do and to control and to try and fix. And it's, it's only recently really that I've seen how that showed up. When I started my business as well, it was the same. It was trying always to get somewhere, to be somewhere else. And that just fills your mind with just things to do and things to think about and strategizing all the time about how to, I mean I, I, I, I identify as being a high achiever and I even took that into online data. I say I was a high achieving online data. I actually like was the, the rigor, the rigor with which I did online dating was just not to be scoffed at. It was ridiculous. It was so that was again, my head just continually full of, you know, how do I get these men to reply when I want them to reply and why haven't they replied yet? And what does that mean? And oh, just like, you know, everything was, yeah, I, I actually have to admit, and I'm not afraid to admit this publicly that I was known in the school holidays to go on three dates in the one day. So that's how high achieving online day try was. But the, what we can think is when we're doing all that stuff that we can think that the overwhelm is coming from doing all that stuff. So people look at teaching, oh, teacher's really busy and that's where they feel overwhelmed. But it's not, it's almost the other way around. It's, it's, it's all that thinking that then has us do all those things. And what we're trying to do really is escape the feeling of oh, one that's been created by all the thinking about doing all the things. And it's just like a, it's just a vicious, a really vicious cycle that I guess it's, it's, I can't think when I made my course on insight time about overwhelm, but it was probably about a year ago, maybe a bit more that I suddenly saw, saw it in a completely different way. Yeah, so that's a little bit of my kind of burnout and overwhelm journey. I don't know what that kind of brings up for you.

Oh, I mean it reminds me of when I was doing a job working in corporate. I worked for banks and I remember a call to my husband at the time. I actually don't even think we were married, but we were together and you know, engaged maybe. And I just rang him and I just said I can't do this anymore. I just can't do this. And like you, there was just a movement towards knowing that this is not something that I could keep doing. It was feeling horrible, and it looked like I needed to get a quieter job or a less busy job. It's just so innocent. And I love that you've pointed to that, because it really does look like we need to rearrange the furniture of our lives so we're less overwhelmed. And my experience now, running my own business and being a mom and a wife and a friend and a daughter, I've got so many different hats, but I know that that busy life can't make me feel a certain way. And overwhelm is an inside job. And when I'm feeling constricted or heavy, for me, it comes up in my muscles. So if I've got a bit of a achy shoulder or I'm feeling tired, it's like, what have I got going on in my head rather than my life? You know, what have I got? What's my busy brain talking about right now? Because there's that feeling with overwhelm, isn't there? That it's the. All the things we need to do with the. I think Michael Neal said this. Maybe. Maybe I'm making this up. I apologize if it wasn't him. But we try and do everything all at once, and that's the overwhelm, that feeling that we need to do it all right now. You know, when we have a to do list, we're overwhelmed because we're looking at the whole list as if we've got to do the whole lot now, when we've lost sight of the fact that we're ob. Only able to do One thing at a time, really. So I'd love you to speak more around when you say that. It's all in. In the mind and the thinking. And, you know, I'm gonna come back as old Becca and say, yeah, but my job is really busy. I don't stop. Surely that will be causing the overwhelm, not the thinking about it. Like, how could you speak to that? In a way, if somebody was listening, that they would really begin to consider that it's an inside job, because it looks very outside, Claire. So you're gonna have to, like, really propose this to me in a way that convinces me otherwise.

Yeah, I love that. And the first thing I want to say is that we're not going to spiritually bypass employers who are giving people far too much stuff to do that. That we're not going to do that we're not going to Pretend that doesn't exist because it does. And the physical body has a capacity to, which it can do. And you know, people cannot work 16 hours a day and not, you know, not malfunction as a result of that. So let's make sure we've said that first. But then I'd love to go back to what you said about the thinking about the list of things we think we should be doing. And the irony in a business of course, is that you're the boss. You decide what you're going to do and you put all the things on the list and then you, you think you've got to do them all. And, and how that kind of, that, how that can. And when I really had a big insight about overwhelm, it was just one morning I kind of got up and I did my usual getting ready and I started to feel this. It, mine's like a heavy feeling in my chest. Like somebody's literally sat on my chest. Like really, really, you know, really heavy hippopotamus, let's say, sat on my chest. Can't feel very tight here. Can't breathe, Breathe. Very shallow. And I remember noticing it, noticing this heaviness and then it moves into my whole body. Just feeling like you said, just very tired and very kind of, you know, I can't really do this. And, and, and I noticed that I just, it was so funny because I was, I was planning to make an insight time, of course, about confidence. It was my first 10 lesson course and it was just that, it was just I, I, this course has got 10 lessons in it as opposed to my previous ones that had five or seven. It's ridiculous. It's like 15 minutes more recording time. But somehow my mind had got hold of that and gone, oh, 10 lessons, that's gonna take ages. It's gonna take up, you know, it's gonna take all your morning. You won't be able to do anything else. And what about all these other things that you've got to do? Because of course the mind goes into the list and says take too long making this course and you won't get anything else done. And then you'll, you know, then you'll feel terrible, won't you? Because you haven't ticked things off your list. And I just noticed as I, as I noticed the heaviness, I noticed my mind was just going spare about this 10 lesson course. Just, it just made me laugh because it was ridiculous. And so just because I noticed that and I realize, oh, this awful, this kind of heavy drowsy feeling I've got isn't anything to do with the 10 lesson course. It's to do with my thinking about the 10 lesson course. It's to do with the idea that I've got that it's somehow massively bigger than some other course. It's just nonsense and I in seeing that I was able to just come down and get on with it and, and that's, that's the thing with overwhelm is it's, it's kind of. And hopefully this is helpful to people. It's. It ends up being almost a self fulfilling prophecy because what often happens what I previous if I hadn't seen that in that moment, I'll tell you what it would have done. I would have come downstairs, I would have empty the dishwasher and clean the kitchen bearing in mind I'm actually allergic to cleaning. That's a bit weird. And then I probably would have made some kombucha and then done something else and I would have just avoided. Because we want to avoid that feeling, don't we? Oh, horrible feeling, horrible feelings coming from making this course. So I won't make this course. I'll go faff around, procrastinate, do something else. And the issue is that that then creates. Well then we feel bad so then we feel worse again and then we haven't actually done the thing that we wanted to do. And so then there's an increase of things on our list or less time to do the things on the list and so it becomes like a cycle really. And the most powerful thing I've done recently and it's ended up being a sort of doing is just stop, just slow down a bit. Just pause long enough to, to feel where you are, to feel where you are in your body to just, to just be with those sensations, not, not run away from them, not procrastinate them away. And what I find when I do that is that then the. You sort of refresh reset into. Yeah, I actually really want to make a course about confidence. I'm really excited about this subject and that comes back but we kind of have to see that we're, you know, we've got into thinking about the stuff we're about to do. And so yes, we can have loads and loads of things to do but you're right, we only can do one of them at once and when we settle into that we do that one thing very efficiently because our mind is very focused on it and we're concentrating on it and then that thing's done and then we move on to the next thing. It literally is. Overwhelm is literally thinking, we've got to do it all now. All of it. All of it. And we're. And we're also really rubbish at estimating how long things are going to take. So we either get overwhelmed because we think they're going to take a really long time and they're not, or we get overwhelmed because we think, I can do these 50 things today, look at them all. I'm gonna. I'm gonna get them all done. But then that feels overwhelming because it's 50 things we're think. Trying to think about at once. I was chatting to my daughter about this, and I. I tend to think things are going to take a short time than they are, but my daughter tends to think they're going to take a longer time than they do. So she. She's the other way. But either way, you can end up overwhelmed just by thinking, you know, how long things are going to take, which is future forecasting, which we're really, really bad at. Really, really bad at. I think that maybe answered your question.

Yeah, I mean, I love just going back to the list. Like you said, your mind. Our minds usually make up that list. And then berate us when we don't get everything done. It's like, what if we weren't supposed to get everything done? This is the thing. I know there's expectations and things to do, but, you know, lists can be useful but held quite lightly. And I think what can be quite practical is writing a list but then almost covering up the rest of the things on the list and realizing and remembering that in real time, we're only able to do what we're able to do. And quite often for me, things are definitely like your daughter. The other way around, they're a lot shorter. I had this exact conversation with a friend the other day. She's like, how are you? And I was like, yeah, I'm good. I've just got lots of bits to do. She's like, bits? What bits? You know, bits. You know, like this and that. And I've just got fingers in different pies. And I've got all this to do. I kid you not. I came off that phone call with her and it ended up doing my bits quite quickly. But I'd made such a big deal, or my mind had made of such a big deal, and I actually really owned it. It was like, oh, I've got a lot on. And actually, it's being curious around that, isn't it? It's being really curious about that and just observing what you're doing in your day. Because, yes, admittedly, if we were given this huge list as we got out of bed of everything we do. I mean, let's be honest, you know, as. As a parent, there's a lot that I do that isn't on the list. Like, if I had to do a timesheet, you know, occasionally, you know, when you get in your head and you're like, I, oh, you've been busy today. And then I. I feel inclined to say to my husband, yes, and you take it from the top. So I got up, I made the sandwiches, empty the dishwasher, like. And he's looking at me thinking, wow, you know, sometimes I'm justifying my. My feeling of why I'm so busy, but he humors me. But it's just. Just so interesting how that list does come from that mind space of what we think we need to do. But I just want to go back as well to this feeling. I love how your. Your mind wants to distract you from that feeling. And so it gives you a couple of things to do, like empty the dishwasher, make some kombucha, which I'm really curious around the recipe for that. So if you can just let me know, because I get mine from Aldi, and if you can make it, that'd be great. And it's so good for your gut. Right? Anyway, I digress. And obviously your mind would be saying, you need to look at the recipe of that rather than write the course. That's where my head would go. So sometimes my head tells me that I'd rather clean the toilet than write courses. I mean, that's. Interesting, the mind just coming up with all these solutions to avoid us feeling. It's the feeling piece, isn't it? Like feeling into our body and grounding ourself in whatever way makes sense. And I'm curious, how do you do that? So you're in your bedroom, right? You're thinking around everything you need to do. You've got this hippopotamus on your chest feeling, metaphorically. And what do you do? How do you feel that? Like, what does that look like? Tell me, Claire.

Yeah, first of all, if. If you hear that I've been cleaning the toilet, can you please call the serious, you know, people to come and take me away? Because I finally lost the plot. I've finally gone over the edge. If I start cleaning the toilet. I emptied my motorhome toilet twice that last week. That's the first time in four years. You know, I just. It's just a blue job in our house anyway.

Oh, phew. I thought you hadn't emptied it all those years. I just had this, like, holiday poo in there. Sorry.

Oh, yeah. No, it's because we've categorized it as a blue job. So what do I. So the. I. I came up with a little metaphor for this a while ago and I hope it'll be helpful because when you say to somebody, sit with your feelings, they kind of look at you and go, what do you mean? Like, I've been spending my last four decades running away from them. What do you mean, sit with them, you lunatic? So I often. I say, it's like, you know, when your kids are little and they do like in the. In the autumn in nursery, they do like a collage. So they go into the woods and they collect concha shells and crunchy leaves and, you know, little seeds, pods and bits of moss and God knows what, and they make a little picture, you know, like the conch shells, hedgehog and all that, and it ends up stuck on your fridge. But it's. Of course, it's stuck with Pritt Stick. If anybody doesn't know what Pritt Stick is, it's like really rubbish stick glue. The way everything just falls off after a very short period of time. She's got this white piece of paper and all these like, crunchy bits and bits and it's like almost closing your eyes and you're touching that picture. So there's a soft bit where the moss is and then there's a crunchy bit and there's a spiky bit and, and. And the feet. For me, the, the looking or the observation of the emotion is like that. It's like I look inside and I say, oh, there's a. I avoid all the kind of mental illness language because I don't think that. I don't call it anxiety or call it depression or call it. And just say, oh, there's a. There's a heavy feeling here that feels like a brick. Then, you know, perhaps there's but of angry butterflies. When I was a hypnotherapist, I used to treat a lot of anxiety and angry butterflies. One of my clients once called them. That's quite good that. You know, I've got angry butterflies in my stomach. I. You know, there's a shakiness in my hands. My knees maybe feel like jelly. And it's just like that. It's like literally, oh, yeah, look, there's these sensations and the cool thing about that is that as you're doing that, you see it moving itself. You don't have to move an emotion. We're spending so much time trying to avoid or delete or get, you know, or, or somehow run away from our emotions or, or drink them away or eat them away or, I don't know, watch terrible things on the television. Them away. We, we're trying all the time procrastinate them away. We're trying to get rid of our emotions. And the thing is, when you sit and observe, you see that thing in the three principles that they call psychological immune system. People used to say that and I'd be like, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by. And I. And when you sit and observe your emotions, you, you actually see it happening. You see how it is a movement of energy and you, you literally see it shifting around your body. So. Oh, it's in my chest now. Oh, that's loosening and going a bit squishier and. And then. Oh yeah, there's a bit. Now I can feel a bit in my shoulders and oh yeah, now I can feel and you can literally. It's almost like there's a, a little critter kind of moving. It's moving. The energy is moving around. And I, I like to call emotion energy in my E dash motion. Energy in motion. And when you observe that there's something feels a bit emotional, but it's like there's something so reassuring to see your own body doing that itself. So you don't need to chase that feeling away or try and get rid of it yourself or think it away or whatever else we do. You can be with it, feel it and watch your body move it on through. And that's just the most reassuring thing to see your own innate, well, being in action like that.

I love the metaphor or the example of the picture on the fridge. We've got quite a few pictures on the fridge and occasionally we move them into a different part of the fridge and then they go into a box and it's just a process. But yeah, I like the way you've described that because it really is confusing or hard to know how to sit with a feeling. And I'm quite a visual person, so I love how you shared that, Claire. I really appreciate it and I think people are listening is to invite them to just try this on for size. Like it's not something we. It's just to play with it, right? It's just to have a go and like you Say we eat it away, drink it away, talk it away, whatever. And even with this work, I notice and episode six was around, you know, feeling. And I love how we're just expanding on this in ways that people hopefully can relate to because we have learned to not feel our feelings. Right? We just. And it's so innocent and it wasn't obvious to me. And I think because life is getting busier, right? We're always doing and we don't. I notice I can sit there on my phone, drinking my coffee in the morning, just scrolling and then I'm like, what am I even doing? And what I've done recently is using that five minutes to just be with my body and checking in where my body, how it feels. We don't do that. I've never done that. And what I notice is there's just a sense of grounding. I don't know, I feel words aren't doing this justice. I think that's why it's really useful if people just try, try this on because it is unique for us all. But I guess my question that's coming up is, okay, so how, how does that help then? Like, so you've talked around it being amazing seeing that recalibration, I guess, of the body doing what it does, which is incredible really. It's almost like we don't have to actively digest our lunch. It just happens. We don't have to really go to sleep. I mean, that's a whole different subject for another day. But sleep just comes to us now. It really looked to me for many years that I needed to get to sleep and I needed to make sleep happen until I realized it's just like digestion. It just comes to us and it's the resisting of sleep that causes a problem because we think we should be asleep anyway. But I forgot what I was going to say now, Claire.

So yeah, where, where does that get us to? You said where.

What's up for grabs? I want to know that if I was to try this on for size, what's. What's my prize?

I love it. Try it on for size and get a prize. So for me, the result of that is deep, deep presence. Like the mind, the time traveling mind is always somewhere else and in overwhelm. It is definitely way off into the future whilst beating us up a bit for yesterday's miscreant. Not doing of the list, you know, so. So there's a lot of heaviness. Most of our thinkings in the future, when we bring our awareness into the body below the neck. I often say we come into presence because our emotional energy, that energy moving our body, is really what's happening now. The mind is never what's happening now. It's just, yes, the observation of the thoughts can be what's happening now, but the actual thinking is generally not now. So coming into the body brings us into a deep state of presence. And the, and the irony of that is that when we come into that place of presence, action I find comes from that place. So the, the. The inspiration to move, the inner knowing, guidance, all of that comes. And for me, that is because. So when we're not connected to our emotions, we are not listening to intuition. Intuition is in those emotions. Those emotions are there to say, watch out for your stinky state of mind. It's a bit off right now. And that's what they're there for. And when we ignore them and busy ourselves doing something or anything or nothing, we're ignoring inner wisdom. And I almost feel like when we sit with our emotions, I like to call it inner knowing. Our inner knowing goes, oh, you're listening to me now. So here we are. Here's a presentation of all the lovely things you could do to move your life and your business forward. Off you go. Like, it's almost like that. It's almost like. It's like this deep connection to presence, this deep connection to inner knowing. And then from there, the guidance as to what to do next. Or almost just like this, resetting to your path, your values, what you actually deeply want to be doing in the world that you reset back to there.

And then.

And then it's action like that, you know, having a list of things to do. And what we're talking about today, it's not about not doing things. It's about where we're coming from, when we do those things and when we've sat with our emotions. I think. And when I say, like, you're not there for half an hour, I think I have a track on insight time as a kind of guy, people doing this. And it's 5 minutes, 55 seconds. It doesn't even have to be that long. It's quite quick when you just, you know, breathe and feel your feet on the floor and feel your emotions. And then it's a powerful pause that just allows you to then move forward really with clarity.

I mean, I don't even want to add to that. I just feel like, all relaxed and ready for my day. I mean, thank you. Thank you so much. It is beautiful the way you describe it. I don't think, you know, from this, this side of the studio, my virtual studio, you know, you think that I'm speechless. There's a few times I've been speechless on this podcast and this is one of them. I hope people take something away today from what we've shared. And I guess my question to find, to sort of finish on would be, if there was one thing you could invite the listener to do, what would it be?

Pause. Slow the chuff down. We're all going too fast. We don't give ourselves an opportunity to connect to that wisdom that's always there because we're going too fast playing like mental whack a mole the whole time. So. So pause like regularly throughout your day. Just check in with yourself, feel what's there. Breathe, pause. We're going too fast.

Well, the only species that kind of does that, you know, if you look at animals in the wild, just say, or on nature programs, they slow right down, don't they? They really lost. Yeah, we go quicker.

We do.

And it doesn't work. Well, I don't know about you, Claire, but I always lose stuff. Like, I literally lose stuff that is in front of me. I'm always losing my keys. And I go into this tail spin. I see myself doing it. It's like I'm observing myself like, slow the heck down. Where are my keys? Where are my keys? Where are my keys? And I remember once I had this client and I needed the keys to get in the clinic where I see my face to face clients and I couldn't find. I couldn't find my keys. They were literally in front of me because I was going so fast I just couldn't see them. So that is amazing advice. And the thing is, the illusion is that if we slow down, we won't get stuff done. But I think we're clearer. We have more clarity and we do things with more conviction and knowing and our system loves the slower pace. So it doesn't mean, listener, that we don't get stuff done if we slow down. If I'm honest, when I go really fast, I end up making more of a mess.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

So thank you for being here. I will pop all your information in the show notes so people can find you. But it's been an absolute pleasure, Claire and I've been Becca Gardner and this is the Thought Trap. Have a good rest of your day.

Thank you.