Feeling overwhelmed?

Hi, this is Dr. Nicole from Northern Michigan and I'm sitting outside under this lovely awning and I wanted to say hey and check in and see if any of you deal with feeling overwhelmed, because I can tell you that I totally deal with feeling overwhelmed. In fact, when I woke up this morning and got on my computer, I had like 65 emails that had time sensitive requirements to respond to and it was incredibly overwhelming. And I got a message from one of my warriors about that question. She said, what do I do if I get sick overwhelmed? That I feel like just shutting down. I feel like I can't do anything. Oh my gosh, I've totally felt that way before, dudes. Does that resonate with you at all? If it does, then I'm glad that you're here and we're going to talk about that a little bit today. If there are questions that I can answer for you, then just pop them in the comments because I want to have a little bit of a opportunity for Q and A if that would be valuable. If you're not catching the live, then don't worry, you could just leave a comment or send me a DM and I'd be happy to answer them for you. And so we're talking about feeling overwhelmed. We're talking about why do I feel overwhelmed and what do I do when I feel overwhelmed. And telling you that love, you are not alone in the feeling of overwhelm. We live in such a complicated world where we're being inundated with information from all sorts of different sources, whether they're from all these people doing lives, from blogs, from social media, from the news, from the people around us, from emails. We're constantly being inundated with all these different sources of content that oftentimes demand a response from us. And it can create a huge sense of overwhelm, it can create anxiety, and it can activate a lot of parts in ourselves that respond by making us want to shut down. And that's what I feel sometimes when there's lots of things coming at me. And that's what my warrior was asking me about. And so she was asking, what do I do when I'm feeling completely overwhelmed and I want to just shut down? And the first thing, thing that we have to do is figure out, well, why are you feeling overwhelmed? Because by identifying the root cause of the way that you're feeling, it's going to help us address that root cause. Because anything that doesn't address the root cause is palliative. It's like, if I have A garden full of weeds, it's like cutting them with scissors as opposed to pulling them out by the roots. We want to help you get to the root of why you're feeling overwhelmed. And so number one could be, are you feeling anxious and anxiety? Symptoms of anxiety might be beyond just day to day worry. It could be feeling of racing in your heart, it could be restlessness, it could be, have you ever dealt with thoughts that just feel like they race and they race and they race and they're going too fast and there are too many? That's a sign of feeling anxious, it's a sign of being overwhelmed. And so the question is, is, is anxiety underneath this feeling overwhelmed or is what's being asked of you causing anxiety? And so if that's the case, then we want to have a two fold approach. We want to deal with the overwhelming situation, but we also want to help you navigate your anxiety. And I have a ton of resources that are free to help you do that. One is the Anxiety Freedom warriors group. And so we'll make sure the link is in here and that has a ton of free information on how to help anxiety. If you're feeling totally overwhelmed and it's stopping you from doing what you need to do and just causing you to shut down. So that's the first, first thing. Another thing could be a lack of clarity about what needs to be done. And I know that oftentimes and I'm feeling totally overwhelmed, it's because I've been given this big monumental feeling task and I don't know where the beginning is, I don't know where the end is. I don't know how to start, I don't know where to stop. It just feels so big. And then my brain's like, I can't compute, I can't handle this. I'm just totally overwhelmed. I'm totally done. And so sometimes we may be feeling overwhelmed, we may be feeling like shutting down because we don't have enough data. And so acquiring data and asking for clarification can be a total game changer. Between you feeling like just giving up and not doing it and being successful and doing what you want and what you need to do. Another thing is love. Do you have the actual ability to do what's being asked of you? Sometimes people perceive us differently than we perceive ourselves. And, and so do you see yourself as someone who can achieve what is being thrown your way? And is it a matter of confidence or is it a matter of I just simply don't have enough training? And so Looking in at the situation and saying, okay, what is going on? Am I able to do this? Or is this a confidence issue? Is this something that's coming on that's within myself? Because if I have somebody who's emailing me and I feel overwhelmed, I want to look at that email and say, okay, what about this is triggering for me? Do I not have enough data? Do I not feel equipped to manage it? Do I feel like it's too big and I don't understand what's being asked, what's actually underneath of that? And then a lot of people, I don't know if you resonate with this, but one of my biggest things is perfectionism. And so I feel overwhelmed when I feel like I want to do something right. And if I can't do it perfectly, then it's like, why even bother? And so if that's something that you resonate with, then looking at the perfectionism and figuring out, is the perfectionism a sign of my high integrity and how can I work with this? Or is the perfectionism something that's holding you back from being able to be successful and do the things that you want to do instead of just shutting down? Oftentimes, perfectionism can be on a pendulum swing where I do all of the things and I do them perfectly and I burn myself out, or I just shut down and I'm not able to do the things I want to do. And the other thing could. Could be a toxic do it yourself mentality. Where I have. I have a lot of. A lot of friendships like that where they feel like they have to do everything and they have to do it themselves. And they don't solicit feedback from other people. They're like, I can do this. If I'm worth my weight in gold, then I should be able to do this without the help of other people. And, babe, I'm here to tell you that that's just not the truth, that we need community. We thrive in community. And by soliciting the support from our helpers, that's how we thrive. That's how we get things done. I can't move a dresser in my house without my husband lifting the other side. How could we possibly do the big, amazing, wonderful things in our lives that go beyond that complexity by ourselves? And what if there's something that you're missing that could be enhanced and perfected by the perspective of somebody else? And so if you're feeling really anxious and you're feeling really overwhelmed and you're feeling like you want to shut down, then maybe you just need a little bit of support. So find somebody in your life that thinks similarly, that can support you, that gets what you're trying to get at and can help you get there. So let's talk about, well, what can we do about overwhelm? And one that we've talked about is just getting to the root cause of why we feel the way we feel, trying to identify the feelings that are coming up. And then the other thing is to notice, when am I anxious because I'm stepping out of my comfort zone, and when am I anxious because of another reason? And there's this research by Scott Miller, and he talks about the zone of proximal development, and that is the zone just outside of our comfort zone. And he's actually shown in the research that people tend to get distressed, they get anxious, they get symptoms. They may get irritable or angry or have heart palpitations after being in that zone, outside of the comfort zone for 30 minutes. And so if you're in a career where there's a big learning curve or where you're raising a new kid and you feel like you don't know what you're doing half the time, as do most all parents, and if you feel like in life with a pandemic going on, you just don't have the right answers, whatever it is that you're dealing with is you're in that zone of uncertainty. You're outside of the zone of your comfort. You're in the zone of proximal development. And so reform framing that feeling of overwhelm to being a symptom of, like, okay, I'm growing right now. I'm super uncomfortable and I'm super overwhelmed. And that's a sign that I'm growing. And that's amazing. And making a choice deliberately, like, what am I going to do about that now? And sometimes that means just stepping away, stepping out of it and taking a breather. Other times, it's just rolling with the punches, faking it till you make it, and just doing what you can with what you have. The other thing that I want to talk about, if you're feeling completely overwhelmed, if you're feeling like you just want to give up, that you just want to stop and not try. What you've been asked to do or what you've been wanting to do is to look at your thoughts and do some reality checking, fact checking. I call it the Sparkle Method. And so I'll post about that more on my Instagram later. I do have a post up There with me and Shiva and I talk about the Sparkle method. But there is something with anxiety and overwhelm and stress that is based in what our brains are telling us. And so the most important thing is to fact check and to figure out where is that data coming from, because that is something that might need to be returned to sender. That's something that you don't need to necessarily own. And so if you had a thought that came in and it says, I'm being asked to do this speaking engagement and they're all going to laugh at me. So what you want to do is you want to look at that statement, they're all going to laugh at me, or I'm ill equipped, I don't want to do it. And you want to start to break that down and fact check that. And we have a ton of resources in the one week anxiety Freedom challenge of exactly how to do that, to fact check, to break it down so that you're not being hijacked by false thinking narratives, that you're telling your brain the truth and making a decision from your best, highest self. The other thing is, if you're feeling like there's a big monumental task and it feels totally overwhelming, sometimes breaking it into smaller pieces makes it feel more manageable. So, for example, one of my objects right now is that I want to write a book. And I'm trying to think of like, what do I want to title the book, what are all of the things I want to talk about? And then suddenly writing a book feels like a huge task. But what's actually smarter is to just start outlining what's important that I want to say. And it doesn't have to be organized in any sort of a material fashion. Just start throwing some ideas out on paper. And then that whole first part, that whole first thing is just throwing ideas, brain dumping, getting it out there and then moving on to the next step. An example of this is I have an Ivy League student that I work with. I do consulting with her on how to help her achieve her goals. And one thing is that she's in academia and that requires a lot of papers. And she is totally overwhelmed by writing papers. And so when she looks at it, she thinks of, I have to have 35 pages, I have to have APA formatting and I have to have this many references. And then I'm going to have to present it as a thesis. And she gets completely overwhelmed and it makes her want to shut down and stop. And what we're doing with her is we're doing actual post it note strategizing where she figures out each what she's going to do. So day one she's going to have a red post it note for self care activities. She's going to have a yellow post it note, find three references and then she's going to have a green post it note that talks about other things in her school and her life that she needs to do. So coming up with ways to get yourself organized can be a real game changer between feeling overwhelmed and giving up and allowing yourself to be successful. So as we finish up here, if you have any other thoughts, please questions or even strategies that help you when you're feeling overwhelmed, I would love to hear them. I am by no means perfect when it comes to organization and you know, filibustering the overwhelm process, but I would love to learn from you. And so if there's anything that you do that's super helpful, leave it in the comments. I'm sure you'll bless somebody else. Or if you feel like you would rather DM it to us and have us share it, we're happy to do that too. But to get you some really good resources, I actually did a podcast on this topic and I have a blog on this topic and I use the language in this topic on procrastination because oftentimes what happens is we feel really overwhelmed and then we put off doing what it is we're overwhelmed about. And that's what procrastination is. And so even if you don't deal with procrastination and you're just freaking overwhelmed, I think it would still be valuable information. And so we'll make sure to include that for you in the show notes here. And so go check out those resources. Make sure if you haven't joined the Anxiety Freedom One Way Challenge and get that download, get the videos and let's get you started on feeling like yourself again and sending overwhelm backstage so that you can live your life the way you want it. This has been Dr. Nicole, I honor you. I love you. You can learn more about me and my practice and all of the free resources we have by going to my website, www.dr. nicolecane. I'm here every Wednesday and Friday and so I look forward to seeing you guys this coming Wednesday. Take care. Thank you for being here. Bye. Love.