When Life Seems Overwhelming

If you were to ask most highly sensitive people what their biggest challenges are, I’m guessing that dealing with the feeling of ‘overwhelm’ would make the top 5.

What creates feelings of overwhelm? Basically, overwhelm can come from any stimuli, demand, time pressure or anything else in our midst that’s overtaxed our coping skills in the moment (my own definition). They need not be the big stressors of life - death, divorce, even marriage or any of the other biggies. They can be the smallest things and may be just sensory, like strong smells, loud sounds, a crowded space. Or maybe we have a work deadline or hectic schedule of just too many things - good or bad - coming at us at once.

My own example this week was what turned out to be a complicated replacement of a custom oven, dealing with the challenges of figuring out the situation of my spouse’s elderly relative in a distant state and social and work demands of an otherwise normal week. But to demonstrate how little it might can take to kick off the overwhelm, I think what started it for me one day this week was a stream of texts one morning from two different companies involved in the stove replacement while I was trying to do nothing more than getting ready for my workday.

While I have a friend who probably wouldn’t believe me when I say I’m not fond of texting except for brief exchanges of info (which I think was the original intent), I really don’t like it. Too many of them in a short timeframe makes things that generally aren’t seem urgent. For me, it sets off some kind of hyperalert flight or fight state in my brain and it can even make me feel angry, and don’t even get me started on my thoughts on long group texting (general rule, DON’T). Then I started my day and though nothing all that critical happened later in the day, I arrived home midafternoon and crashed physically and emotionally.

But I also think I did some healthy things in response - I recognized that I was in overwhelm and needed to take some time out by myself and retreated to my HSP sanctuary we’ll otherwise call my bedroom which I have decorated to my liking and with an array of candles lining my windowsill. I also found a brief crying jag brought some relief. It helped me release the overwhelm and I was able to get back into my day. Also, put your phone away for a bit. When we’re in overwhelm, our rational brains have shut down and no communication we make in this state is likely to end well.

As I prepared to write this blog, I Googled “things to say to an HSP in overwhelm” because I’m thinking the people in our lives could perhaps be a bit better at saying ‘I know you’re upset about this (whatever it is) but I feel like you’re experiencing overwhelm right now. I want to talk to you about what’s wrong, but can we do it a bit later when you’ve had some time to calm yourself down?’ or some variation. And if we’ve set a boundary with you, take it as read that we did so because we understand our needs better than you can, so please respect us enough to observe it.

Here’s what popped up in response to my query which jives with my own experience:

“Here are some strategies that may be particularly helpful for HSPs: Accept your feelings of being overwhelmed; don’t fight them. They, too, shall pass. Rewrite your negative story of being flawed or defective because you become overwhelmed so easily. Reframe your coping style as not lack of coping ability but rather a different way of coping.”

Wow. Spot on.

Here’s a few good articles with some good advice for managing the very discomfiting feeling of overwhelm:

How You Can Deal With Overwhelm As a Highly Sensitive Person (www.highlysensitive.org)

How Does Stress Affect Highly Sensitive People? (highlysensitiverefuge.com)

Let’s face it - we’re going to feel overwhelmed at times. We live in a crowded and increasingly complicated and divided world. It’s how we deal with it that matters.

Happy Sunday.

Peace.