Does Everyone Experience Overwhelm From Time to Time?
If they’re a human being, then yes. What comes next is a choice.
Human beings were not designed to have overwhelm be our default. But here we are.
It should come as no surprise to anyone. Between billboards, TV, radio, social media, email, the internet, smartphones, and various other media we encounter daily, we’re frequently, utterly inundated.
Odds are, you’re reading this on a phone, tablet, or PC. All of these are devices that were created to better connect us. They’re also meant to make our lives easier on multiple levels.
But software developed for these devices has changed society in unexpected ways. Now, rather than direct interaction, many of us are happy to simply text back and forth. Information once delivered once a day on TV news – from sources with mandated integrity – is now available 24/7 from sources both legit and utterly bullshit.
Everywhere you turn, someone is trying to sell you something. Goods and services are subtly and blatantly in your face demanding you buy them. Then, we’re being pulled every which way by friends, family, so-called leaders, influencers, and total strangers with a virtual bully pulpit of one form or another.
Messages of go, do, be, have, go, make, find, create, go, and never stop are everywhere we turn. Anyone not living up to the idea that we must be doing to get anywhere faces character assassination in various public fora.
Does reading the above make you start feeling boxed in, squished, and overwhelmed, even a little bit? I know that it makes me feel overwhelmed. This is not healthy.
We don’t recognize the danger
Do you keep your smartphone by your bed at night? According to Gallup, as of 2022, 72% of people have their mobile phone with them when they sleep. And 64% of people check it first thing in the morning, whether it was with them in the night or not.
What’s the problem? The problem is that, while you might just take your phone to bed with you to use its alarm to wake up in the morning, it’s still right there. The temptation to be connected – at all times – is like a siren song. The allure is amazing.
But when it becomes rote, routine, and habit, we position ourselves to be easily overwhelmed so easily.
The major downside to the instant, constant connectivity of our smartphones, the bombardment of messages in our environments, coupled with the need for acceptance and human interaction is a potent brew that, unchecked, ferments to overwhelm.
We’ve been increasingly indoctrinated to not recognize the danger. We just accept half a dozen billboards back-to-back-to-back on the road, advertising on busses, music in bars and restaurants, and the propaganda of the “new normal”, until we are so overwhelmed that we lose perspective, lose awareness, and have no idea how we got here.
Both internal and external forces contribute to this. The former, however, is often a product of the latter unchecked.
What does that even mean?
You can recognize overwhelm in yourself
The only person in your head, heart, and soul, is you. Nobody else can think, feel, intend, or act for you. If you don’t work it, nobody else can or will.
Despite this, it’s amazingly easy to get overwhelmed and not recognize that’s our state.
Why? Due in part to the aforementioned “new normal”. We’re expected to accept being bombarded and overwhelmed by this, that, or the other thing as our default setting. We receive frequent messages telling us that that’s how it is and how it’s always been.
This, however, is a lie. The first smartphone wasn’t sold before 1994 (almost 30 years ago). The term “smartphone” didn’t come about until 1997, and it didn’t become the norm before 2007 and 2008, when the first iPhones and then Android smartphones were released. Not counting the early adopters, I would guess the “normal” of smartphones didn’t really get going before 2010. That was only 13 years ago.
I’m not blaming overwhelm entirely on smartphones and other tech. But they are indicative of our belief that overwhelm is and has always been the human state of being.
When you stop, however, and consider all the data you are absorbing daily – passively and actively, subconsciously and consciously – it becomes apparent that it’s a lot. Quite possibly a metric fuck-ton of data.
But you can recognize this. That, then, empowers you to do something about it.
The choice is yours
You live in this world with all the messages constantly scrabbling for your attention. Thus, you get to decide if you allow them to reach you, impact you, and sink into your psyche passively or actively, subconsciously or consciously.
How? Active conscious awareness. In other words, mindfulness. Mindfulness is active conscious awareness, here and now, of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. With that active conscious awareness, you can choose to make any necessary changes.
Overwhelm will impact your thoughts and feelings first. It’s a product of both. You have too many thoughts vying for your attention, and that naturally causes you to feel uncertain, boxed in, and overwhelmed.
But guess what? This is utterly normal. Everyone experiences overwhelm from time to time. The problem is that we don’t talk about it.
Whether you’re walking a chosen path or just letting life live you, overwhelm skulks in the shadows, ready to pounce when you least expect it. Everything can be utterly copacetic, and then, out of seemingly nowhere, KA-POW! – you feel overwhelmed.
The choice in this is whether you allow it to settle in and be your norm. Or not. You can mindfully take steps and various actions to reduce, lessen, and fix the impact of overwhelm. But it’s not passive, it’s only achievable via active choices.
There are tools available at no cost that can help with overwhelm.
Overwhelm reduction tools
This is not a comprehensive or professionally created list by any stretch of the imagination. But each of these can help you reduce overwhelm in your life. I’ve employed all of these myself and found them to be quite helpful.
Put away your smartphone
Put your smartphone/tablet/laptop down and walk away. If you can help it, don’t take your phone into your bedroom at night. Allocate time away from the constant connectivity. Choose to disconnect yourself.
Go to nature or out on the water
Go somewhere without the constant advertisements and messages. Take a walk in nature; go for a boat ride; meditate somewhere quiet, or with binaural beats or similar sounds to separate you from it all.
Journal therapy
Journal. Write down what’s overwhelming you, why and how it’s having that impact, and put into it the feelings. If needs be, write it out and destroy it in some way – if just journaling it doesn’t free some of the sense of overwhelm.
The vessel of overwhelm
Here’s a visualization tool my therapist taught me. I named it the Vessel of Overwhelm.
Find a place you can have privacy for at least 5 minutes. Take a deep breath. Visualize a container of some sort – a bag, box, pack, or something you are intricately familiar with. See it in your mind’s eye. Take it in hand and feel its composition, weight, texture, and all else that makes it seem as real as possible.
Then, visualize opening the vessel. Once it’s open, take everything that’s currently having an impact on you – mentally, emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually – and place it, item by item, in the vessel. This is a bag of holding, so it can be any size, shape, weight, and so on. Take all the pains, fears, discomforts, annoyances, and all else you don’t desire to deal with now, or that you recognize you have zero control over, and put it in the vessel.
Once done, seal it up. Feel free to visualize locking it tight, placing it in a safe, or otherwise setting it somewhere secure and away. Take a few deep breaths in and out, staying with the visual of those things you removed and placed in the vessel. Welcome back. How do you feel?
You can take control
Does everyone experience overwhelm from time to time? Absolutely, yes. But not everyone chooses to actively reduce and separate themselves from overwhelm. But it’s always a choice available to you. You, and you alone, can use your active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to do so. What it takes will vary from situation to situation.
Why bother? Because this is one of the few things in life we can control. Overwhelm can be overcome via action. But only when you choose to act on it.
Can you see how overwhelm impacts you and that you ultimately have the power to overcome it?
This is the six-hundred and twentieth (620) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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