Overwhelmed? Here’s What to Do Instead

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're gonna be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi, and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor. I am also known as the Geeky Girl, and today we're gonna talk about the truth about overwhelm and what to do instead. Let's be honest, a lot of us get overwhelmed and Yeah, the neurotypicals do too. We handle it a little different, so let's dig in, okay? We're gonna talk about reframing that overwhelm and think about it as an internal signal rather than a personal failure. Because a lot of times when we feel overwhelmed, we take it on ourselves, we shit all over ourselves, and instead of thinking about it as a personal failure, let's look at it, reframe it as a signal. A signal. Okay, this is something we need to listen to. So we do experience the overwhelm frequently. It's possible that you do as well, that you are feeling this regularly. And we often blame ourselves and say we should handle this better. If you're watching, if you're listening to this, you can't see the air quotes, but we do try to say all the time, oh, I should be able to handle that better. I should, I should. We're shitting on ourselves. Okay? So let's explore what overwhelm might actually be telling you. And then how you can reconnect with clarity, and then to create a powerful journaling prompt, shift from scattered to steady. That's what we're working towards. We wanna shift from this overwhelm, blame thyself because we're such failures, to actually bring clarity into our lives and to move from scattered to steady. You know, we don't wanna be scattered. We wanna be steady and to be as steady as possible. Now, so let's talk about overwhelm and what it feels like. I know for myself that there's lots of times when I have felt overwhelmed, and sometimes it's small overwhelm and sometimes it's big overwhelm. So there's overwhelm where it can impede everything, where I literally can't do anything. I've had situations where I've been so overwhelmed, I just can't leave the house or I can't do things. I've peopled too much, right? The air quotes come out again. There's been too much going on and my energy reserves are just depleted so much that I need to find a way to recoup. And sometimes that means that I may be at home, but I'm in my bedroom with the door closed and I'm doing my own thing and not being disturbed. That's a bigger overwhelm than, oh, I have this task I don't know what to do with. And I'm overwhelmed and I can't move forward with the task. Okay, so there's different levels of that overwhelm, and I've certainly felt them all. I have felt overwhelmed to the point where it literally knocked me on my butt for 5 days. That, you know, that's a massive, huge overwhelm. And that was, of course, before I learned how to manage some of my energy and to really look out for myself. So there have definitely been times When I have said yes to too many things, or I have been working outside of my own strengths and ignoring the fact that I needed downtime, ignoring the fact that if I didn't stop, my body was gonna make me stop, that's when the big overwhelms start happening. So, you know, instead of waiting until I got sick, taking the time ahead to say, hey, I need to look after myself so that I don't get sick. When I pause and reflect, The quicker I can catch that, the sooner I see that happening, the better off I'm gonna be, the less time I'm gonna need to recover, all of those things. So the turning point for me was being able to see it sooner, was being able to actually acknowledge, hey, the reason why I'm leaning to burnout right now is because I'm doing these things that aren't in line with what I'm trying to accomplish, or these things are overwhelming because I haven't made it clear why I need to do them or how I need to get them done. Those are some really important pieces that have really given me some strength and ability to see that overwhelm a whole lot less these days, okay? Now, there are some definite reasons why neurodivergent people specifically have some stronger feelings around overwhelm. First of all, that sensory and cognitive overload that we talk about, not just Sounds, sight, smells, tastes, whatever, the way their clothing feels, but also having too many decisions to make, or there's too many demands on you, or there's too many notifications happening. Those can all— that sensory or cognitive overload, which will of course lead to being overwhelmed in a specific time place. Task paralysis. I talked about that briefly already. When everything feels urgent or when you have A task you just don't even know how to get started on. It's a huge task, but you just can't figure out how to get moving, or you've started it and then put it aside and now you can't remember where you were. All of those things can cause task paralysis, which then leads to feeling uncomfortable. There's overwhelm because you can't get going again. We start shitting on ourselves. All of those beautiful things that happen with that task paralysis. Are people pleasing and boundary blurring Letting people take advantage. You know, we say yes sometimes because there's a fear of rejection, there's some guilt there, and those things will lead to burnout, specifically if you're saying yes to things that you really need to be saying no to, or if you're saying yes to too many things. Maybe they're all great things, but you just really can't do all of them. And so being able to pick and choose and choose your boundaries— Remember, Choosing your boundaries is one step. Instilling those boundaries is the next, and then ensuring that you don't allow that boundary to get blurred. So if you've said no to somebody and they keep pushing, it's your job to say, "Well, here's the boundary. You this is I can't get you. This is where my boundary is." And then there's some decisions to make from a relationship perspective. Is this person you know crossing the boundary because they just don't even care about you? Then why are you giving them so much energy? Or do they need to be? Do they not understand? with the boundaries? Do I need to talk to them differently? But allowing other people to come across your boundary is boundary blurring. Don't let them cross your boundary. And when they do, alert them and let them know that this is, this is how it is and this is what I need in order for me to be successful, in order for me to be a full person. This is the things, these are the things I need. Our negative soft talk loops is also something I mean, how many times have you replayed a conversation that you've had with somebody? How many times have you gone over the exact same conversation and thought, oh, did I hurt their feelings? Did I say something wrong? You know, all of those things. You might have done that in your business. Maybe you said, I should be able to handle more leads, or I should be able to do this many tasks per day, or maybe there's some shame around something that you said to a client, or maybe you think you should be able to come up with all the solutions to make things better. That negative self-talk loop is definitely going to contribute to your overwhelm for sure, because now you're in this cycle and you're losing energy to the cycle. Doesn't mean to say it doesn't happen, but it's important to recognize when it's happening. So emotional flooding— this might be something new to you— but feeling so overwhelmed by emotion that logic and planning go offline. Maybe you are emotionally Drained. Maybe you are feeling— maybe, and it could be, I mean, depression sometimes can be part of it. If you are somebody who suffers from depression, then there's definitely that piece of it. If you don't suffer from depression, you can still be emotionally flooded by a negative emotion without being actually, you know, clinically depressed. There's those kinds of things. It could even be that you're super excited and you can't move forward with things. Because that energy isn't allowing you to settle down and do the work you need to do. Okay, so energy, that emotion can be positive, negative, neutral. There's a lot of different kinds of emotions that could flood your system, and for whatever reason, it's going to keep you from doing the things you have to do, which then leads to that overwhelm piece, not being able to move forward. Okay, so let's talk about some actionable steps that you can take. Reframe overwhelm as a signal and not failure. So pause and ask, what is this feeling trying to tell me? There are so many times that this has been really helpful. You just go, hold on a second. What am I— what is myself? What am I— what am I trying to tell myself? What is my body trying to tell me right now? Sometimes I'll even say, is it mine or somebody else's? Because I have a lot of empathy for other people. So sometimes I pick up on other people's needs. But really, what is it that this feeling is trying to tell me right now? And when you start to ask yourself that question, you will start to see those patterns and you'll start to actually see these signals for yourself. So it might be, oh, you know what, it's because I have too many— maybe there's too much noise, or maybe I'm seeing too many things. So there's different reasons why we get distracted as neurodivergent people. Sound is a big thing for me. Hearing something is a very big distraction for me. That's why when I'm working on things, I generally have my earbuds in so I don't get distracted. But visuals can also be distracting to me. If I'm, you know, working here and I can see out my side, my window, and if there's things going on outside my window that are catching my eye, it might catch my attention, right? So if I don't notice what's going on at first, Sitting back and saying, okay, hold on, what is this feeling trying to tell me? It might mean that I need to go change my shirt again. There's been some days when I've changed it 3 times just because I don't like the way it feels anymore. So there's lots of different ways that our bodies are telling us that there's something just outside of happy or just outside of good, and we can ask ourselves, what is that? So sometimes that— a lot of times overwhelm is going to show up when you don't feel Aligned. When you're out of alignment, think about a car on the road. If it's out of alignment, you have to work really hard to keep it straight, right? It's not that you're doing anything wrong. It's simply just because something just doesn't feel right. It could be as simple as the tag on the back of your shirt, or it could be you're hungry, or you have to go to the bathroom, or you need something to drink, or you need some more clarity. I am going to give you my ideal day journaling prompt for free. You can sign up for it and get it, download it right away. And in this, you ask yourself a simple question: what would my ideal day look like and feel like if it was designed just for me? Now, of course, it's a little more complicated than that. We ask you a few more questions, there's some depth there, but the concept is right there in the title. What would it look like if my ideal day was designed for And I'll tell you what, I did this exercise for the first time probably in 2000, maybe 2009, something like that. And when I did it that first time, I thought, yeah, right, whatever. And I did the task because it was a task at the time. I have used this journal prompt, I've used this process many, many times since then because it freaking works. When I did it the first time, I just wrote it down and went, yeah, yeah, whatever, and I tossed it. And then Not that I tossed it in the garbage, but I, you know, wrote it in a book and put it in a drawer. And then I'd come across it when we were moving and I was reading and I went, my God, these things came true. This is so cool. It does work. Putting things on paper does work, okay? So let yourself explore using this journaling prompt, not just what you do, but how do you wanna feel, right? Let yourself really deep dive into what does it feel like to be in part of this day? And it's gonna help you to reconnect with the clarity and give you some insight on what kinds of things you need to shift about your life and your day so that you can actually bring more clarity and find out how you can create a business that is not gonna bring you a whole bunch of overwhelm. So the other thing, the third thing I'd say is using clarity as a compass for your decision-making. It is so awesome to be able to look at a task slash opportunity, again, those air quotes come out, Does it fit into this compass direction of where I want to head? Does this make sense for me? So after your journaling, you can identify the areas of your life that don't match the ideal of where you want to go. You can actually look and see, ah, this thing isn't matching where I'm trying to head. No wonder it's so difficult for me to do. And then you can make one small decision or make one boundary shift, just make a little bit of a change so you can bring it closer to alignment. So maybe you need to reduce your meeting load, or maybe you need to delegate a draining task, or carve out some space for breaks for you. Maybe there's lots of different ways that you can make small tweaks to help yourself to get to that ideal day that you're looking for. Now, when you're thinking about this overwhelm, again, I really encourage you think about it as this is a signal. Rather than a feeling of failure. Okay, think about what is it that's causing this overwhelm for you? What are the things that are needing to be changed in your life? Take those action steps that I talked about reframing the overwhelm. Do that journaling prompt. What do you have to lose? Give it a shot and then use that clarity you get from that to actually make those decisions for yourself. Okay, that's going to help you just Listen with curiosity to yourself. Also use that concept of, you know, what is this trying to tell me right now? What is this feeling trying to tell me right now? So there is a masterclass coming up where I'm going to guide you through this whole process step by step so you can move from scattered to steady. So stay tuned, watch more, subscribe, because I'm going to tell you how you can be part of this amazing masterclass and really you can make some serious inroads to make some changes so that you're less overwhelmed simply because you're gonna be actually working in alignment with what you wanna do, where you wanna go, and things are gonna get easier for you. All right, have yourselves a fantastic day. I'll talk to you next time. Bye for now. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group where you can With overgivers from all over the world. Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.