Overwhelmed and Anxious? Here’s How Therapy in Wakefield, MA Can Help
Strategies for when you feel overwhelmed: from a Wakefield therapist
The phenomenon of feeling overwhelmed is unfortunately a fairly universal experience, and it’s easy to see it happen even in toddlers. Yet in adolescence and adulthood, feeling overwhelmed can take a really heavy toll on emotional wellness and for people prone to anxiety, can even lead to emotional collapse. For some people, the feeling is fleeting and only arises when preparing for a major life change like applying to graduate school or bringing a loved one home from the hospital. For other people, the sense of being overwhelmed and the physical tension that comes with it is a daily grind. Either way, we all deserve to feel like we can handle things as effectively as possible and feel more secure about what is ahead of us.
For kicks, I confirmed the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of “overwhelm,” which includes: “1. Upset, overthrow; 2. To cover over completely, to overcome by superior force or numbers, to overpower in thought or feeling.” While we easily think of the sense of being overpowered in thoughts or feeling, I was viscerally struck by the definition including “to cover over completely” because that evoked really vivid imagery that we often use to describe feeling overwhelmed, such as feeling like we are drowning. What an awful feeling.
The good news is that even with seemingly unrelenting and insurmountable external demands, we can rally our internal capacity to navigate them and to be strategic about how we handle the demands we can’t meet. That’s right…feeling overwhelming is only part of the solution and the other part is how we handle the things we simply can not get done. Therapy can be extremely helpful with both of these aspects of feeling overwhelmed, so let’s dig into a few ways therapy can help.
Why Do We Get Overwhelmed?
Before jumping into how to reduce the feeling, it is really important to start by understanding why we get the feeling in the first place. By doing that, we can learn to respect the reasons it shows up for us instead of simply being resentful that we have that pit in our stomach again. After all, sometimes we go through busy seasons and yet things feel exciting. Other times, there is a lot going on and yet somehow we seem unscathed. So what’s happening when we get overwhelmed?
Usually, anxiety is associated with being overwhelmed by a sense that there is too much to do, that we need another set of hands or need to duplicate ourselves. Other times, it feels like everything is a priority and nothing can be left unattended. Beneath these common sentiments is that we value all the things ahead of us and we truly want them to be done. Whether we value the compassion of volunteering, value the health benefits of good sleep, value the connection of showing up to a kid’s sports game or value the prowess that comes from studying harder, the things that overwhelm us usually deeply matter to us. Otherwise, it would be easy to let the responsibilities fall to the wayside.
Sometimes it helps to take a quick moment and reflect on a thought such as “wow, it makes sense I’m feeling this way. This is all really important to me.” Feeling as if our feelings make sense can often allow us to start to give ourselves grace, which is so important. The last thing we need when we feel like we are unable to keep up is a voice also telling us that we are foolish for feeling anxious about it.
You Are Not Alone
Not only does it make sense that you get overwhelmed, but you are not alone in dealing with it. Feeling overwhelmed does not mean you are incompetent or a failure. It does not mean you are foolish, weak or dumb. What does it mean instead? Generally, you are a person who cares deeply about multiple things at once and are stuck managing life when the things you value demand too much of your time and attention at once.
Most people I meet with in therapy bring in concerns about feeling overwhelmed at some point in the therapy process, whether it is why they started therapy or not. It is SO common and I can assure you I feel overwhelmed myself at times! Why are we so plagued with this? Again, it’s because we care deeply about things, and sometimes things collide in a way that feels unmanageable. For someone with attention challenges, this can be even harder to navigate. When you add in demanding bosses, competitive school environments, comparisons on social media and more, sometimes I am amazed that we don’t feel overwhelmed even more often.
Certain phases of life are often particularly prone to feeling overwhelmed, such as starting at a new school, starting a new job, becoming a parent, navigating a medical diagnosis or becoming a caregiver. Again, each of these phases is marked with something which you value deeply, but toward which you might really struggle because there are simply too many things you value happening at once.
For example, as I am writing this, I have to chuckle that I am in the midst of dealing with a sick kid, and needing to up-end my schedule accordingly. When I sat down to make edits to this post I realized that I was feeling overwhelmed with the cascade effect of a sick kiddo on all the things I am already feeling behind on and need to do now. I can feel the sense of being overwhelmed rising in my body and showing up as pressure in my chest. Yet I can recognize that I feel this way for good reason…I want my munchkin to feel better, I don’t want anyone else in my household to feel sick, I don’t want people who rely on me at work to feel let down and I want to be consistent with the activity plans I had for myself the next couple days. Some of that is not going to happen, and it’s only natural that I feel a bit overwhelmed by it. I have to cancel things, reschedule things and the next couple days simply have no chance of looking the way I had initially intended. By allowing the feeling though, I can make room for disappointment to take the place of dread, which, while also uncomfortable, is easier for me to accept and move forward with, and also be more focused in its presence.
Common Signs You Might Be Too Overwhelmed Too Often
It is really helpful to learn your personal patterns of how you try to cope with feeling overwhelmed so you can catch the feeling early and try to intervene. For some people, it’s really obvious and for others, it is more subtle, but I can assure you, there are always signs. The signs are really similar to anxiety in general, but are likely to be slightly specific to feeling overwhelmed specifically.
Common physical signs include:
Difficulty sleeping
Appetite decrease or increase
Fatigue
Nausea
GI changes (think: poop changes, more or less) or reflux/heartburn
Common thoughts that arise include:
I will never get this done
I am going to let people down so much
I can’t believe I keep getting myself into these situations
Why is everyone else able to do this more easily (or other comparisons)
I’m so stupid for not being able to figure this out
Common internal feelings include:
A sense of doom
A vague sense of fear
General worry
Irritability
Common behavioral signs include:
Urges to engage in behaviors which restore control
Snapping at other people
Struggling to make decisions
Distractibility
Coming back to the example of my sick kid and disrupted schedule, when I was getting overwhelmed by the fallout I was definitely feeling a sense of dread and even frustration. I would say a bit of nausea too, though I’m pretty sure that is vicarious concern I’m getting sick too! I had tightness in my chest developing and a lump in my throat. My thoughts were of the variety, “I don’t know how I can make time for this today and later this week. There just isn’t time. It’s just not there.” There was a vague sense that somehow things would be spiraling out of control (in Cognitive Therapy, this style of thinking is referred to as Catastrophizing). Recognizing that instead of compassionately and methodically strategizing the adjustments, I was thinking and feeling all these icky things instead was really helpful to me recognizing I needed to pause and tweak my approach.
How Therapy in Wakefield Can Help You Feel Calmer, Clearer, and More in Control
While I do not have a magic wand to make the discomfort of feeling overwhelmed disappear, therapy can still be extremely helpful to living better even amidst seemingly crushing demands on your life. First, simply being able to share what you are finding overwhelming can be helpful for a lot of people. Actually putting words to the thoughts swirling in your mind can reduce some of the associated anxiety and bring some relative calmness. Therapy doesn’t stop there though, as therapy is about more than validation and really gets into building adaptive mindsets and behaviors.
When I work with people feeling overwhelmed, I like to start by supporting them to define the values that they worry will be compromised if they drop any of the balls they have in their air. That can really help provide some initial clarity on why they are so worked up about what they are facing. Then, depending on the situation, we will work on trying to move out of the sense that everything is of similar and dire importance and into developing a bit more nuance. This isn’t as simple as deciding what to ignore and where to focus, as someone would have already done that if it was that easy. Instead, it’s more about giving oneself understanding and forgiveness for why they are taking the approaches they choose, so they can be more comfortable with what they cannot do.
We will also explore a lot of potential barriers to approaching the desired tasks, as a lot of the time, we complain and fret about things but don’t actually work on them…I know I am guilty of this myself! Going back to my example of juggling a sick kid, I found a lot of gratitude that it started in the wee hours of the morning and no one else was awake for me to rant to about all the things I had to do, as that’s a go-to maladaptive trend for me…I will get stuck in it instead of getting to work. The isolation helped me focus, but if I hadn’t had that constraint, I would have needed to catch when it was time to let off steam and when it was time to focus.
What is an Example of How Therapy in Wakefield Helps?
I had someone share in therapy that she was overwhelmed by the end of her graduate school semester while needing to work on final papers, find a new apartment and deal with stress at work while also feeling really guilty about not visiting home more often. She felt like she didn’t have time to go home to visit when there was so much to do, only to then feel guilty for spending a lot of time with friends socializing on weekends and spending many weeknights doom scrolling or binge watching comfort shows.
We worked to understand how she really valued the learning she was doing in grad school and valued friends, family and the necessity of a new living situation. So while it seemed like feeling overwhelmed was well-founded, as she did indeed value everything she was doing, she also identified feeling burnt out after work a lot of days and not studying because she was numbing out in front of the tv or on her phone and not getting to schoolwork. When she would finally get to papers, she would feel so behind that she would procrastinate and justify doing so by exercising or going for walks in the name of self-care.
In a couple sessions, we were able to identify more adaptive ways of resetting after challenging work shifts so she could engage in more authentic self-care that was actually relaxing and gave her more stamina for meaningful activity instead of numbing out in the evening. This allowed her to focus more on schoolwork and the apartment search. We also worked on breaking down her schoolwork into more manageable chunks, which made it much more cognitively approachable to her not-yet-diagnosed-but-likely attention deficit disorder, as otherwise she was avoiding the feelings of helplessness we identified as a barrier to actually engaging with her schoolwork when she had time for it.
She was also able to identify that her parents were the ones demanding her to visit and she felt secure about waiting to visit until after finals, so was able to communicate more clearly to her family when she would visit instead of making vague promises. This allowed her to feel she could honor family on a reasonable timeline while keeping time to secure her next apartment. With these adjustments, she still felt the pressure of the demands, yet was able to navigate them much more effectively, efficiently and calmly. She upheld her values, yet made adjustments where she needed to push through the crunch in a way that felt very satisfying and in line with what was most important to her.
Looking for a therapist in Wakefield to help you feel less overwhelmed?
Whether you are feeling overwhelmed by daily stress, feeling overwhelmed with a major crisis or transition in your life, struggling to sleep, or just craving more peace in your life, I’m here to help. You do not have to keep pushing through on your own and there are real solutions that can provide you with lasting relief.
I offer in-person therapy in Wakefield and online sessions for young adults and adults throughout Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. Let’s work together to help you feel more calm, present and fulfilled.
You can read more about the benefits of online vs in-person therapy here.
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Interested in learning more?
Check out this fun article about “The Overwhelming Overwhelm” from the Columbia Journalism Review.