Overwhelmed? Here are some small ways to help you regain control of your life.

Today, the vastness of the world can be reduced to the size of a phone at our fingertips. Before you have even opened your eyes to welcome the new day, texts, emails, and other messages have already been knocking at your digital door in your sleep. An innocent scroll of social media when you wake up exposes the brain to the vastness of the global community before you have afforded yourself the sanctuary of a shower. Research by behavioural health specialist Dr Nikole Benders-Hadi shows this habitual practice rapidly induces stress and anxiety only a matter of seconds into the day. We readily see what other people are doing, rather than focusing on what we need to do. A certain feeling, that will be the subject of this piece, naturally ensues- being overwhelmed.

In the Collins dictionary, the verb overwhelm can be defined as “something that affects you strongly and you do not know how to deal with it” and “unable to cope with demand”. So, combining the two, having intense feelings of being unable to cope with demands on you from a combination of several areas of your life is, sadly, an all too familiar feeling.

Understanding what causes this suffocating feeling is of growing relevance. With the boundaries of work and home becoming more porous from the Covid-19 Pandemic, feelings of stress and being overwhelmed is an ever more pervading feeling. What was once our space to unwind and relax also becomes the place that fills many people with dread. You might wake up to a desperate email sent at 1:17 am from a fretting colleague who is pulling an all-nighter and expects you to be doing the same. You might get a message from your boss asking to join a conference call with a luxurious 94 seconds notice.

This only paints a picture of a statistical reality. According to a 2020 study by the ONS, 1 in 5 people asked said that the difficulties associated with working from home intensified feelings of stress culminating in feeling overwhelmed. A 2018 YouGov study found a staggering 74% of people felt stressed to the point of feeling overwhelmed. Further, stress is a trademark of the 21st century. 2,500 per 100,000 workers struggled with stress in 2019/20 (even before the pandemic), as opposed to 1,500 workers in 2001/02. According to a 2020 study by the ONS, of those who cited issues with work being the main source of stress during the pandemic, 13.4% felt the difficulties in working from home was the main reason. For married couples, anxiety levels went from 19% of couples to an alarming 39%, with the pressures of home-schooling alongside working from home being cited as a key explanation in the study. So, if you do feel that way, you are certainly not alone. 

Feelings of being stressed and overwhelmed have been a growing trend of the 21st century, accelerating during the Covid-19 Pandemic. With potential financial difficulties, struggling to work from home, balancing work with home-schooling the children, it’s easy to see how the growing epidemic of stress in the 21st century has gained alarming traction. 

Responding to demands against a sense of instant expectation from the provider can leave you playing a proverbial tennis match in which you’re chasing the ball to merely return it, as opposed to crafting and executing your shots. Self-autonomy diminishes. With the combination of excessive social media consumption and the workplace living in the home, it is very easy to become distracted by the most recent demand in your calendar. As a result, it is easy to neglect the payment reminders from unpaid parking tickets, cancelling subscriptions for services you never use or, forgetting to ring or text an old friend back whose call you ignored a couple of days ago. In and of themselves these aren’t time-consuming tasks, but the flurry of daily life, these simple tasks can seem like a mountainous mirage, mammoth in mind but unassuming in reality. Together, however, they amass that daunting pile of things undone.

Feeling inundated, working so hard yet still feeling defeated by our to-do lists is too deflating to accept for yourself daily, and these have harmful long term consequences for your physical and mental health. 

What about a more gnawing sense of things undone, like your long-term goals and aspirations? Have you begun to think about this? Or is it simply something you don’t like to talk about because it is simply too daunting? Our shop window culture amplifies our innate desire to fit in. As social animals, the need for social acceptance is enshrined in our DNA. People showcasing where they are in this social standing, and their perceived achievements can leave you deflated as to where you are in your life as if it magnifies your “lack” of achievement or progress. 

Pervading feelings of not being where we feel like we need to be, or should be, causes acute feelings of distress, often hidden and repressed. Although buried, these feelings linger stubbornly unless acted on. I know this to be particularly true when I left university. I would liken graduating to being left on an island with no map, no clothes, a vague sense of what I want but no idea how to get there. I could see the island where I wanted to be, but there I was, anchored perplexingly, with my hopeful gaze becoming ever more wistful.

No number of jobs fairs or career quizzes could escape me from the suffocating sense of urgency that persistently reminded me where I wasn’t. This became increasingly burdensome, and any action taken to address this seemed futile. The gap between where I was, and where I wanted to be, seemed too big. I realised if I wanted to get to my Treasure Island, I had to start swimming.

 Newton’s First Law of Motion states that “An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by a net external force.” In so many words, if an object is stationary, for example, it will carry on doing exactly that unless acted upon, with the same principle being true for moving objects.

Picture this: You wake up startled by your alarm. As your brain slowly begins to reboot, you scroll on your phone to ease yourself back into consciousness, which turns into checking all of social media, e-mails, etc. Everything but getting up. Eventually, the urge to eat or go to the toilet forces you out of bed and a coffee in front of the TV ensues. Sound familiar? 

Similarly, when an urge to merely tidy our desk snowballs into cleaning our entire room. Or wiping down a kitchen surface escalates to mopping the floors and giving our kitchens a thorough deep clean. It’s said that for a cleaning task we dread doing, we should just set ourselves the goal of cleaning for 5 minutes, then after 5 minutes, we’ll inevitably want to carry on. Similarly, with Newton’s First Law of Motion, action begets action and inaction begets inaction. 

In his riveting read “Atomic habits”, author James Clear cites 4 laws to positive habit formation: Make it obvious, Make it attractive, Make it easy and Make it Satisfying. So, with regards to tackling the suffocation of being overwhelmed and allowing yourself to breathe again, the anticipation of things on a “to-do list” often belie their difficulty. Their bark can be worse than their bite. A good start would be, to begin with, the easiest, least time-consuming task. This could be a parking fine you need to pay which takes minutes, or an e-mail you need to send which takes even fewer. Simply setting yourself the goal of sending an important but brief e-mail for a day can breed a sense of accomplishment which acts as a positive foundation, providing valuable momentum to achieve other goals. Setting audacious targets, like “turning your life around” like a switch in a single day, will inevitably lead to feelings of failure when this (naturally) isn’t achieved, and immersing yourself in this feeling only serves to glue the feet to the quicksand you find yourself in.

Naturally, there will be periods in our life where feeling overwhelmed is normal. Moving house, for instance, is cited as one of the most stressful procedures you can undertake and is a momentous life decision. The challenges, mentioned earlier, that people have faced during the pandemic would only naturally leave you feeling overwhelmed. This post isn’t intended to be the antidote to stress and being overwhelmed. These are inevitable in life. Often, however, we have huge amounts of control in loosening the inundating grip of our to-do lists by achieving small simple tasks, allowing us to breathe and have clarity. 

Whether it is for your daily life activities or your pursuit of long term goals, think big and start small. Focus on what’s simple and achievable to gain momentum to achieve your bigger overarching tasks. Breaking larger goals or tasks down to achievable smaller targets allows a feeling of accomplishment to take root and grow. “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop,” said the famous philosopher of Ancient China Confucius. The future is the sum of days. Focus on something small that can be achieved today and allow yourself to feel good about achieving it!