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Being Overwhelmed, or What to do When all the Balls are Threatening to Drop at Once

Fiona Muir

Whether you are for the most part a planner or someone who prefers to ‘go with the flow’, there are times in all our lives when things happen which are seemingly out of our control and it can feel as if we’ve been put through the spin cycle on the washing machine a couple of times, dropped on a treadmill at fast speed and been chucked 100 balls to juggle in front of a watching crowd.

The first thing we have to do once we recognise that we’re in a situation like this is metaphorically step off the treadmill, put down the balls, turn our back to the crowd and get our balance back.

So, what can you do today, right this moment, to help combat being overwhelmed?

As being overwhelmed can be experienced as a physical, spiritual and psychological state, it helps to do physical, spiritual, and mental and emotional exercises in order to become unstuck and move forward.

Physical Jump-Start Exercise

Firstly, centre yourself physically. Just take a quick moment to observe where your shoulders are at the moment. If they are somewhere around your ears, consciously drop them down and take ten deep breaths from your abdomen, breathing slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Spiritual Jump-Start Exercise

From a spiritual point of view, if you have a belief in a higher power you’ll probably find it helpful to take a short time to hand over the things you know are out of your control to your higher power through prayer, freeing you up to concentrate on taking action on the things that are within your control.

Psychological Jump-Start Exercise

If you find you have a problem that keeps running through your thoughts and taking over your headspace and draining your energy, take control. And if there is nothing you can do immediately to solve it, make an appointment to allow yourself to think about it for half an hour at a future allotted time e.g. 10 o’clock tomorrow morning. Make a promise to yourself to consciously put the situation out of your mind until that time, and concentrate on taking action on things you can change or move forwards today.

Watch your ‘internal chatter’ very carefully at this point. This is the things we say to ourselves. These can be very destructive and add to the feelings of being overwhelmed. For example, be observant for thoughts such as “I can’t believe you’ve got yourself into this mess again, it’s your own fault, you’ll never learn, you’re always letting people down”. These thoughts are counterproductive. It might seem strange at first, but make an effort to change your internal chatter to the kind and supportive way you’d react to someone you love who came to you with the same situation e.g. “I’m sorry you’re so stressed, I know you don’t like being in this situation, it’s not ideal but you will get through it and learn from it, I love you and have every confidence in you. Who and what will help you the most right now?” This takes time and practice but is deeply empowering and there are many coaching tools to help you observe and change your negative self talk for the better.

Examine the Juggling Balls…Are they Needs or Wants?

Next, it helps to look at each of the balls at our feet and decide which of them you absolutely have to pick up. To do this, it is important to examine them and to differentiate between the needs and the wants.

Wikipedia defines a need as, “something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as food, or they can be subjective and psychological, such as the need for self-esteem. On a societal level, needs are sometimes controversial. Understanding needs and wants is an issue in the fields of politics, social science, and philosophy.”

With clients I’ll often use a wheel of life tool which helps them break down their life into its component parts, to find out what is and isn’t working for them in their lives. Your life’s component parts might look something like this:

My Life: What matters most today?

 My body

 my mind and emotions

 my soul

 my children

 my home

 my finances

 my vocation

 my hobbies and interests

 my partner

 my relations

 my friendships

 my community.

If you take a short time out to identify your needs for today in each area it will pay dividends. Fast forward your mind to the end of today and identify what actions you could take today to make the biggest difference to your peace of mind and quality of sleep.

“What” questions are sometimes referred to as ‘wisdom access’ questions in coaching. For example, concentrating on your physical body ask yourself:

 What am I feeling right now?

 What does my body need?

 What four things can I do today that will have the greatest positive impact?

Then write down the answers in your action list. Do the same for each area and you will have a list for the day.

In might seem counter intuitive when you have so much on and are overwhelmed, but it does help to take time out to do something that energises you and/or meet up with someone who energises you. Also, the opposite is true; when you’re operating in crisis mode, gently and kindly avoid situations and people who are a drain on your energy until you’re back on track.

As always, prevention is better than cure, so take time to write down your observations from this case of being overwhelmed and jot down what worked for you and helped you through it. Use this information as the start of a crisis plan so that you can be as prepared as possible for the next time you have too many balls to juggle.

Becoming aware of your strengths and weaknesses, your needs and wants, and what does and does not energise you, will help you when you’re overwhelmed. You might want to consider working with a coach or attending a coaching workshop to work on your own personal crisis plan. Also perhaps consider one for your family so that, when something big happens in your life that you can’t control, you have something to refer to or to refer others to for supporting you in physical, spiritual, mental, emotional and practical ways.

I hope you find some of these techniques useful as you juggle the various balls in your life right now.

Fiona Muir is the founder of Fab Life Coaching, part of Fab Communication. Fiona is a fully accredited coach with over 20 years’ corporate experience devising and implementing marketing and growth strategies for a wide range of individuals and organisations; from sole traders and starter SMEs to blue-chip organisations across all sectors. Prior to launching Fab Life Coaching and Fab Communication, Fiona’s corporate experience was gained at a variety of levels, including: student, executive, manager, director and co-owner of a successful SME. www.fablifecoaching.co.uk