Overwhelm Isn't Something You Wait Out

I used to feel like it was almost hopeless when I was overwhelmed because the feeling of being overwhelmed masks your ability to logically or rationally move through the experience of being overwhelmed. It’s like this double whammy where because you are overwhelmed, it’s like that’s the moment where you need to be rational with yourself.

That’s why we ask for help or get help from other people. But in that moment, you can’t think rationally, you can’t speak to yourself. And so I always felt a little bit hopeless with that when it was happening in the past and just kind of as if like I was just leaving it up to chance.

It’s like, all right, well, I guess I’ll just catch myself whenever I catch myself,

For example, when I was in college, I remember certain exams where I would push them back to the latest possible time to start studying. I would procrastinate, and then I would get super overwhelmed. And basically, the only thing that would snap me out of the state of overwhelm of this test in the future that I was worried that I wouldn’t do well on, and the fact that I was procrastinating it, and that overwhelm of that, of that whole experience, was the fact that the deadline would show up, like the next day.

And I do remember, I didn’t pull a lot of all-nighters, but I do remember pulling a couple of them, and it was because of this experience where I allowed the overwhelm to induce procrastination and scrolling and all that kind of stuff, because I was kind of at a loss as, as far as how do you identify when you’re in the overwhelm?

and something that helped me later on overcome this feeling of almost helplessness, as if, like, when the overwhelm strikes, I’m just, like, there until I, you know, resist it effectively, or the deadline shows up or whatever the thing is that was causing the overwhelm ends,

But it’s very, it’s a very passive take on life because there’s no control in that. It’s basically just random chance on if you are resilient enough for a thing.

but one of the key ways that I figured out how to overcome this was I did this exercise where you look at a past experience of something. In this example, it’s overwhelm. And you really dive into detail. Where was I? What time of day was it?

What are all the emotions I was feeling? What was I actually doing? Who were the people around me? What was it like? Like really live in that experience. And an example would be I’m in college, I’m in the study hall down the hallway from my dorm room freshman year. I’m listening to “Bound 2” by Kanye West as the sun rises, a vivid memory, and I’m studying physics, and there was a physics exam coming up. And I remember feeling overwhelmed because I couldn’t properly remember some of these algorithms or these formulas that I needed to be using, and I didn’t fully grasp or understand some piece.

I think it had to do honestly with gravitational pull or something of different bodies exerting force on each other, something like that. And I felt, uh, a bit helpless as far as not understanding the information because it was kinda beating my head against a wall. And so it was this search for information.

I kept researching, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was worried that I wasn’t gonna do well on the test there was probably some cute girl down the hall that I was probably thinking about as well. I mean, there were all these things… And there was, actually.

Uh, there were all these things going on in that moment. That’s the first piece. Pretty vivid experience. I mean, not super vivid. I could paint a bigger picture. The walls were a beige color with a white trim, and there were these horrible shades on the window. That stuff isn’t actually very relevant.

But so that’s the vivid picture of the first experience, and then the second piece of it was: what is the consequence? Well, the consequence of existing in that space with the worry and the overwhelm and the over-researching but not feeling like I’m getting anywhere, The consequence of that was more overwhelm and avoidant behaviors. That’s what kept happening. that’s the state I existed in, is I kept going to my phone because I was avoiding and I was numbing. the eventual consequence was also probably I didn’t do as well on that exam as I would’ve liked.

So that’s step two. Now step three is: what is the desired result in the moment? Not the desired result of the whole equation, of the whole scenario, but like what is the desired way that you would behave in that situation? and the way I would’ve desired to have behaved in that moment, one, would’ve been to act earlier, obviously, to not procrastinate.

Two would be to not scroll my phone, obviously. three would have been to tell someone that I was struggling with something, with this studying. Four would have been to handle the stress or the overwhelm better. I would like to have managed my stress better. And five would have been to identify more effective methods of studying.

I think if I did those things, I would have had a much higher likelihood of finishing that test, of doing well on that test, and also being proud of myself in the way that I engaged or behaved on the path to it as well. So that’s step three, the desired result. Step four is equip. What are things I could have done in order to help myself in that way?

we can equip ourself in preventative ways, in present moment ways, and reflectively. And so a preventative thing that I might have done would have been to go sit in office hours, Or to study in a different location, or to have some sort of routine where I checked in on my emotions on a daily basis, which probably would have led to me understanding that I was overwhelmed far before I was actually just avoiding the overwhelm.

Because sometimes when we’re in the overwhelmed state, we actually don’t recognize we’re in it until we’re actually avoiding. So we can detect these emotions long before. In the present moment, kinda similar thing. I probably would have asked immediately for help. That might have been from students around me that were doing better than me, which would have required me to be a bit more emotionally resilient or maybe swallow my ego and not feel like I was incapable or incompetent of learning the stuff by asking for help.

So asking for help would have been a big one. And then also with the stress, I could have equipped myself with a healthy way of de-stressing. For example, going for walks instead of scrolling my phone, taking breaths instead of scrolling YouTube.

working potentially with a partner that could hold me accountable and I could hold them accountable. or talk to that person about the emotions I was feeling and empathize. They could probably empathize with me if they’re in the same class.

So those are good ones. And then the third one is kind of what we’re doing right now, which is reflectively, we’re looking back at the experience to identify a better way of moving through it. And then lastly, number five is now that we’ve collected this information about this story and possible ways of of equipping ourself better in order to engage in a way that would be more like, more desirable, the last piece of this example is to look into the future and identify what are a couple experiences that might resemble this, and how could I specifically tune those resources to that?

So for example, that data was from a long time ago, over a decade ago in my life. But I can still collect that data from that exercise and look forward. For example, there’s this new 10-part course I’m gonna be putting into my school group on how to overcome doom scrolling.

That has a procedure with software tools and video modules for how to overcome doom scrolling, which is something I support my clients with and and something I want to bring to a larger audience so more people can stop scrolling their phone. That is an experience where I might find myself experiencing similar emotions.

The overwhelm of what people might think or of this is a somewhat large project. I wanna make sure I do all the different pieces right. All these, you know, all these back-end sheets of the software tools have to connect appropriately, and there have to be permissions. All the things that come in. I want the videos to be, look good.

I want the thumbnails. All these different pieces can be comparable. There are a lot of pieces of this where I don’t necessarily know the answer right now. I will, but I don’t right now. That’s the same experience as studying for that physics exam and not knowing how to implement some formula.

Okay. Well, I’ve just identified a series of ways that I could support myself through similar experiences in this future one. and transparently, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Maybe not in this exact scenario, but when I have these things going on, I have people I can ask for help. I immediately talk about these things that I’m struggling with, with people that can help me or with people that can just resonate with me.

But I immediately get it off my chest and into the world. I express my emotions. I have emotional check-ins on a daily basis. I have equipped my toolbox to such a capacity that when these things show up, I am more capable at dealing with them. But to the original point, because I have identified so many of these scenarios that could lead to overwhelm in my life, I have built the muscle of predicting them or identifying when they’re happening in the moment, because I know what the experience is like emotionally, physically.

I’m at a desk. I’m working late. I’m banging my head against the desk trying to figure something out. These are the same experiences 10, 15 years later from that physics exam studying because we’re engineers, or we’re systems thinkers, like we go, “Oh, that might be a pattern.

Those are similar experiences. Maybe I’m dealing with the same obstacle.” And by doing this repeatedly, you collect a bunch of evidence about these scenarios, and then what happens? Your capacity, your competency in identifying the overwhelm when it’s occurring and rationally interrogating the experience and going to tools or resources that you have previously equipped yourself with to handle exactly that scenario are already at your disposal.

And not only are they at your disposal, you’ve prepared yourself to use them. That is increased competency in being aware of the overwhelm even while you’re in it and being able to handle it

And the only thing that I really can say to that is that I wish I had access to that information, that system, that methodology, 10 years ago, because I probably would have done a lot better in my physics exam, and I probably would have done a lot better at other things in my early career

So if you’re in that place, if you sometimes feel a little bit helpless as if when you’re in the overwhelm, like it just keeps happening to you and there’s no way out, it just happens, and then you just have to wait for it to end or for something to happen for you to push yourself through it.

This is a practical measure that you can take in order to start to create competency in overcoming that exact thing.

and I hope that that is something that you can do right now to increase your own capacity to handle overwhelm in your own life. And if that feels helpful, if this is something that resonates with you, please make sure to like this video, subscribe or follow this channel, and follow along because I offer lots of tools and resources just like this to make sure that you are able to overcome consumptive and avoidant behaviors like distraction or procrastination or overthinking in order to pursue your goals and actually trust yourself to follow through again.

I’m Flint from iAlign, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Peace.