What To Do When You Feel Overwhelmed By Life

This is not a podcast about being broken, although you may have been. This is a podcast about strength for women who find themselves in difficult relationships, including that sometimes difficult one with yourself. We'll look at your relationship through a lens of psychology, faith, and a little dash of my own kind of feminism. We're not fixing them. We're fixing you. And that changes everything. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. Save yourself, heal your relationships. Listen in. Hey there, welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today we're going to be talking about dealing with overwhelm in your life. But first up, my win and my fail. I've decided that I'm not going to be requesting that my guests do wins and fails anymore. I still have a couple of guests in the queue that will be coming up in the future, so you'll still hear them for the next couple of weeks. But as I'm adding more guests to my podcast, thank you, Yoko, my amazing assistant for facilitating this. I'm finding that I want to continue to maintain a connection with you. I'm honored that you follow and you listen to my podcast weekly. And part of how I stay connected to you as a human is sharing my wins and my fails. So I'm going to continue to just share that at the top of every hour, whether it's a solo or whether it's a guest episode. And today is a solo episode. And here's my win and my fail. You guys who are regular listeners to my podcast know that I took a couple of weeks off. As I mentioned at the top of probably the last 2 episodes, I attended my mom's wedding and I dropped my son off at school. Although I knew that those were going to be really emotionally heavy events, my father died 8 years ago, I was not prepared for the wave of deep grieving that would overtake me during and after this whole process. And so this is all kind of bundled up as a win and a fail. The beautiful win is that amidst my breakdown, and I won't bore you with the details, and the few many ones that I've had after, I have had these amazing, beautiful, strong women who circled me with love and helped me through it. They reminded me to be present in the moment of spending time with my son before he left or before we left Rhode Island. They commiserated with me in my grief when I came back home. And I want to name these women because our relationships with women are so very necessary. I've talked a number of times on my podcast about the importance of friendships in a woman's life. Our relationships with our significant others are super important as well, but we cannot, we cannot negate the power of a healthy friendship with another woman. So I want to name these women just to honor the role that you play in my life. Julie, Kristen, Brandy, Rosie, Christine, Jackie, and my sister Yolanda, because she is also a friend. Thank you for your friendship and support. And I must say that when I returned from my trip, I received the most beautiful handwritten card and letter in the mail from a listener who was thanking me for what my words have meant to her in her life. But she had no idea how much I needed those words when I came back and how much her words blessed me. So thank you, Rebecca. Okay, let's talk about overwhelm. Is anybody feeling a little bit of that right now? You know, we're moving into fall, the weather's cooling down, kids are busy with activities, and that holiday season is looming. And sometimes that can create a sense of, of, you know, there's a lot on your plate and then there's just life stuff. You may be struggling in a difficult relationship. You might be struggling at work or your career or trying to find yourself. You know that mantra that God will never give you more than you can handle? It's a clichéd, made-up Christian saying. People take things out of context all the time, and I'm sure, I'm sure I'm guilty of that as well. But that concept was specifically about temptation, that God's not going to allow you to be tempted more than you can handle, that somehow you'll always Have a way out. The reality for me is that life has been more than I can handle sometimes. When I was 16 years old and pregnant, when I left my daughter at the hospital, when I was in a difficult relationship in my marriage, when I was tasked with being a mom to my darling Sullivan with all of her special needs, I was in way, way over my head, and I could not handle it in a healthy way. When we can't handle things in a healthy way, we develop coping mechanisms, defense mechanisms, neurosis, and dysfunction. It sounds nice, it sounds good, although I don't think it helps, to say that God won't give you any more than you can handle. But when it happens to you, then you blame yourself for not handling it well. And guess what? Now you've just added a shame burden onto whatever you were already dealing with in the first place. Let's not do that. You don't have to handle it well. You just have to survive it. And you will. And as you get better at surviving things you can't handle, you'll start to learn how to survive them in a healthier way. Because the muscles grow after you've strained to lift something that you can't. It doesn't work the other way around. It'd make sense to me if it did. I wish it did. But the muscles grow after. What we can have is hope, hope that things will change because they always do. I think we can also have knowledge and faith in the reality that nothing stays the same. We can hope that we'll survive. We can hope that we'll grow muscles to be able to handle something that we can't carry in any healthy way right now. So if you're sitting in a situation right now that feels like too much, I want to encourage you to acknowledge it. Say what it is that feels like too much. Speak it out loud. Just say it. Will this kill you? No, not likely. Will you survive this? Yes. Does it hurt? Uh-huh. Does it feel like too much to carry? Yes, because it is. Often, if you take some space and ground yourself in the present, you'll realize that what feels like too much Is all the stuff. It's about what's happening now, plus what you've already projected, for example, made up about what will happen. When you bundle it all together, all of the present and the future and the what-ifs, it feels so very overwhelming. But in this moment, right now, as you're listening to this podcast, I want to remind you that you're safe. You're whole, you're alive, and you're okay. I'm gonna say that again. You're safe, you're well, you're alive, and you're okay. When you start to pile all of the what-ifs and what-abouts, and when you blend the past and the present and the future, it all feels like too much because it is. Maybe you have a chronic illness. Your child might have a chronic illness. You may have lost your job, or maybe you lost your spouse, or maybe you lost your job and your spouse. All of those devastating things may be happening, but they don't happen all in one moment. There's a long trajectory, and all of those horrible things happen over the course of time, and the repercussions of them exist over time. So when we're grieving something or when we're overwhelmed about something, it's not just about the present. It's about all the things in the future too. So right now, take the current space to breathe and know that it's okay if it's more than you can handle. You will not handle it all at once. You will handle it in bits and chunks and pieces. Focus on just this piece of it that you need to handle this minute, this second, this hour, or today. And leave the rest of it. Because this here, this is enough. This is enough. Just focus on this. And remember, things pivot by the minute, and whatever you're spending your precious time worrying about right now might be completely moot tomorrow. I'm going to give you some reminders about how to care for yourself as you walk through the too much. Say no to everything that isn't absolutely vital. I know that you probably know this, but I'm going to remind you. The answer is no, you can't do that. No, you're not able to. No, you can't show up. Say no to conserve your energy. Next, reduce your expectations. After my mother's wedding and dropping my son off to school, my head was just buzzing with so much, and I was at Starbucks ordering a drink, and I could literally hear the barista asking me questions. So I just order a drink. I feel like it's straightforward. Let me order my drink and I'll just wait. And my mind was just racing, and The barista kept asking me questions, and I remember I kept saying, I'm sorry, can you say that again? And as soon as she said it, my mind was back to focusing on my emotional pain and whatever was going on in my mind, and I missed her words again, even though I looked at her and said, I'm sorry, can you say that again? And I immediately checked out. And I had to apologize again and ask her to repeat herself yet again, even though we were both looking at each other right in our faces and she was speaking directly to me. Now, I do have a mild case of ADHD, but that was off the charts. And I needed to reduce my expectation of myself that I could even be present and remain present in that moment. And I kind of laughed at myself and I told her, I'm sorry, I'm just thinking about a million things right now. And of course she was like, that's okay. But it was a wake-up call to me. Zoe, you've got a lot, you're overwhelmed, be present. Next, get some sleep. I can't say this more times. You need sleep to recover. You need sleep to be present. You need sleep to keep your immune system up. You need your sleep. Now, I also know that when things are feeling a little out of control in your life, sleep can seem elusive. Sleep can be elusive. And so you just need to get in bed and you need to turn out the lights and you need to turn off the devices. And if you want to say you're meditating instead, that's fine. You cannot control how much you sleep, but you can control whether you make yourself stay in the bed. And even if you can't sleep, relaxing is a second best. You can use my Aura code in the show notes and get 30 days free of Aura, and you can use the app as a sleep meditation device. Next, cry, girl, cry. Get a good long grief-expelling cry in as often as you need it. The release is so good for the body and your soul. Go ahead and snuggle up on the couch, wrap yourself in a blanket, one of those super soft fluffy ones, and give yourself a hug. Rocking back and forth can also feel comforting while you're hugging yourself. Take time off. No, you're not being selfish. No, you're not being dramatic. You may be worried about letting someone else down. I get it. Your boss, your team, your clients, etc. But what about letting yourself down? Your job right now is to protect you because no one else will. You know yourself better than anybody else does. That's your job, taking care of you. When you've acknowledged what is and you've let it go, go ahead and distract yourself with beauty and comedy. Look at gorgeous pieces of art, go on a nature walk, watch a comforting or hilarious comedy, go on YouTube and watch America's Funniest Home Videos. Beauty and comedy are good for our souls. Allow yourself to be distracted in a healthy way, but only after you've done some of the work of releasing. Now, take action. Take action on one, one thing. What can you do in this moment? What can you do next to tackle, to look at, to dissect, to take care of whatever the things are that you're feeling overwhelmed by? Pick one thing. What can you do to tackle that? And take action. No one gets off this earth without challenges. It's part of being human. No one gets off this earth without grief. No one gets off this earth without loss. No one really gets off this earth without some form of trauma. It's part of being human. And I also wanna acknowledge that some people seem to struggle more than others. It's true, and it's not fair. And that's also part of the reality of humanity. Focusing on the unfairness of life is a waste of time. It gets you nowhere. And I know that might feel callous, But it's actually a very loving thing for me to say because acceptance is the healthiest response to that. You can do this. It doesn't have to be pretty. Remember that the struggle grows you. Just hold on to that for later because I know that doesn't feel good now. And I'll leave you with this quote. Although everything in life may feel like too much right now, don't believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate. You've got this. Thank you for listening to Stronger in the Difficult Places. New episodes go out weekly on Tuesdays. Subscribe to my email list so that you can receive regular encouragement from me and have a strong week.