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3 Stages to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed Right Now

Acknowledge, change your focus, change your thoughts

By Sally HPublished 4 years ago 8 min read
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Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Stage 1. Acknowledge what is happening

Acknowledging something is more than knowing that something is happening and more than being aware of your feelings.

It’s about acceptance and understanding, but not necessarily in terms of agreeing with or liking something.

Take a moment to say to yourself “I know that I am feeling that this is too much for me right now and I need to calm myself and re-focus.”

This is helpful acknowledgment, necessary to still your mind, which drives your emotions. Control is an important trait of resilience in terms of self-awareness.

An emotion is a physiological state, generated as a bodily response to certain external and internal states. A feeling can be a subjective experience of an emotion, driven by conscious thoughts and reflections.

For example, you may experience the emotion of fear when you receive a large bill or invoice, and experience the overwhelming feeling of being hopeless, because you colour the emotion with conscious thoughts of not being good enough or not being able to do anything about the situation.

What overwhelms you may be different from what affects another person, so don’t compare or downgrade how you feel. Your feelings are yours.

Tell yourself “Stop, take a breath and think this through.”

You need to separate your feelings from your thoughts, and to write down or think about or speak aloud all of the thoughts that have led to your feeling overwhelmed, for example, a thought could be “My manager doesn’t like me” and the feelings behind it are I feel disrespected and angry.

Think about what you need, in this example, understanding and respect, and work toward getting these, by moving onto stages 2 and 3. The thought that led to you feeling overwhelmed may produce more thoughts related to it, which overwhelm you. Acknowledge these with self-care or by being gentle with yourself.

2. Change your focus

Take a deep breath, close your eyes for a few seconds if you want to, then, if you can, literally walk away. If you are at your computer, or have been talking to someone, or looking at your expenses or bills, get up and away or out of that room.

You can do this in order to clear your mind in the present moment, allowing room for clear rational and helpful thoughts.

This is literally called “turning the corner” whether you walk away for some breathing space or meditate or go and do some gardening or other activity for 5 minutes of breathing space.

Psychologists say that when you turn around or get up and turn around or walk away from something, you are opening to new opportunities. You need to move from problem to solution.

If it suits you, go outdoors for some fresh air, or do something pleasant and healthy for five minutes or longer, while keeping in mind that you still must process your feelings.

Now may be the time to think about and concentrate on something different, for a while, that doesn’t involve or include the source of what overwhelmed you.

You are not escaping from the source of what overwhelmed you, but are acknowledging that there is a bigger context to Life, and are simply giving yourself the space to rest with or absorb your feelings behind the overwhelm, and / or to realise that other aspects of your life may need attention.

When you are ready, change your focus from feelings to thoughts.

Remember that feelings are not thoughts.

3. Change your thoughts

Some of our thoughts are habitual or automatic, like assessing whether it’s safe to cross a street.

Some automatic thoughts reflect worries and concerns.

For example, you may think or say “I feel that my partner doesn’t appreciate me” but, you think that your partner doesn’t appreciate you and you feel hurt.

Change your thoughts. Have you thought about whether you have told your partner how she/he can fully appreciate you? Is this the only issue concerning you at the moment, or could your feelings of being overwhelmed be caused by other things going on also?

You need to tease out or distinguish the different threads of thoughts going on.

Remember to ask about a thought or a situation or judgment:

Is it true?

For example, if your partner or someone complains that there are dishes once again in the sink (implying that it’s your turn to wash them) perhaps remind him/her that each of you does your bit to help run the household (for example, you do all of the laundry), and ask him/her if he/she is implying that you couldn’t be bothered doing the dishes.

Tell your partner that you’ve been busy and will do the dishes soon and that you feel unappreciated when they speak to you like that, if what is implied (in this example, that he thinks you couldn’t be bothered doing the dishes) is true. Your thoughts can change from feeling unappreciated to feeling understood and respected.

Revealing your thoughts, especially to a loved one, by understanding and communicating your thoughts behind your feelings, can take courage and practice, and can be done within the following framework of changing your thoughts to helpful thoughts.

Isaac Robledo in his book “7 Thoughts to Live Your Life By” provides 7 categories of thoughts to changing your thoughts to helpful ones, in an extract of his book on Amazon.

free preview from "7 Thoughts to Live your Life By"

The 7 are both focuses and thoughts. The focuses tell you what type of thoughts are helpful to reduce feelings of overwhelm.

Continuing with the example above, applying Robledo’s 7 categories works like this.

1. TAKE CONTROL: I can control my thoughts, so I will step back, clear my head and think this through. What really is the issue here?

2. BE POSITIVE: My partner usually is appreciative of me, it’s just that this time he/she wasn’t. As well, I have been feeling upset because of something that happened today at work, but I know that time will clear that up, so that’s great.

3. WHAT I CAN DO: I wonder why this happened; I can work this out. I can talk to my partner about it.

4. WHAT I HAVE: I am glad that I do have my partner and that so much else is okay. I have my best friend and other support whom I could talk to about this.

5. BE IN THE PRESENT: We need to work this out now or very soon, otherwise this will continue to upset me and will bubble in the background and cause trouble.

6. WHAT I NEED: I need him/her to understand how I feel, and I need to share my thoughts. I need support from my partner. How will I get this? (Relate this to Step 3: What I can do – go to page 4 to see what you could say to your partner)

7. WHAT I CAN GIVE: It will be great if not only he/she gives me the support that I want but if I continue to appreciate him/her, then we will both be supported because appreciation goes two ways.

Photo from Shannon McLaughlin Unsplash

Climb every “mountain” one at a time

These 7 categories of thoughts to re-focusing your thoughts will help you clear your mind and be logical or rational and plan your priorities and action steps toward not feeling overwhelmed.

Each thought category feeds into the others, for example, say you have a large bill to pay and you don’t presently have the money for it, you are aware that you need the money by a certain date (thought 6) and use thoughts 1, 2, 4, and 5 to brainstorm what you can do about it (thought 3), as demonstrated below as examples.

• Ask if you can pay the bill later or by instalments

• Borrow from someone you know

• Sell something to raise some funds

• Take money out from your mortgage surplus

• Re-arrange your Budget to pay the bill, and then perhaps later use some funds for what you may have wanted to pay for right now

If you need to repeat Stage 1 (acknowledge what is happening) and Stage 2 (change your focus), before, or among coming up with your options at Thoughts 3 and 6, under Stage 3 (change your thoughts), then do so.

At Stage 2, exercise or stretches may help you because this gets the fluids in your body circulating, for your whole body-mind benefit.

Remember, practice makes progress.

Once you are not so easily overwhelmed (yes, feeling less overwhelmed over time does happen), thoughts based upon Robledo’s thought category number 7, being “focus on what you can give”, will come naturally to you in all sorts of ways, and will reinforce your feelings of well-being and strengthen your relationships.

In Summary

If you are feeling overwhelmed, accept how you are feeling, and give yourself some breathing space or calm yourself, in order to go through your thoughts.

Ask yourself “Is what I am thinking about true?” and for all true thoughts, change your thoughts about being overwhelmed to “what is going on here, and what can I do about this”, while being positive.

The 3 stages to stop feeling overwhelmed which apply to all situations, great or small, are summarised below.

  1. Stage 1 acknowledge what is happening and acknowledge all of your feelings
  2. Stage 2 change your focus to moving from problem to solution
  3. Stage 3 change your thoughts from what overwhelms you to solutions and to learning how to cope and to create the best version of yourself

Commit yourself now to making Life’s challenges more bearable through calm or centred acknowledgment and positive changes.

self help
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About the Creator

Sally H

I love reading, writing, researching, and supporting others. I run several WordPress blogs and have an academic background in the Biological Sciences and in Social Research. I also review non-fiction books.

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