Pursuing awareness when we experience overwhelm is the first step to addressing and then eliminating it. Try these questions and thoughts next time (and message and let us know how it went!):
Why am I allowing myself to feel overwhelm?
I remind myself overwhelm is a CHOICE and I can choose another feeling instead, if I choose.
I ask myself what thoughts are in my head that are causing the feeling of overwhelm? (This is like a thought download... I set a timer for 10 minutes or sometimes 15 and write/type all my current thoughts that are RIGHT THERE AT THE TOP OF MY MIND causing the feeling of overwhelm).
Then I take some of those (often crazy!) thoughts and walk through them (I use Brooke Castillo’s thought model) and really ask some hard truths and questions about them. Are they ACTUAL TRUTH or opinion? Do they line up with God's Word? Would I want a best friend or loved one to be thinking this way?
I always, always pray and ask God to renew my mind and to help me choose different and better than using the excuse of overwhelm for numbing myself to making actual proactive choices in my life. (This is almost word for word what I pray.)
Then I physically move. For a few minutes if I can... or from out of my seat across the room and back again, if I can't go do something else for a few minutes. There are actual real researcher studies done on the power of moving our physical bodies also moving our minds (so to speak).
At some point in this process I realize I have in the past have often used overwhelm as a way to avoid making (often unpleasant) decisions and choices... and so when I realize that, I decide I don't want to be that person and I choose different... which often means making the choices, having the conversation I've been avoiding, doing the thing I haven't been wanting to do, etc... but always, always, always, I choose the thing that I believe will please God most (through study and advisors and relationship with Him). That's the secret sauce. It's not about comforting myself or what I want in that moment... but pleasing Him. (Cause me and my emotions unchecked by the Holy Spirit can be a train wreck and that is no way to live a life or make life decisions!)
This process has helped me and continues to. People will often share books and teachings and quotes and encouragement (haha by people I mean that's my street most of the time!!) :) BUT at the end of the day, overwhelm IS a choice and we CAN choose different by thinking different and then putting feet to our thoughts and doing different. Doing different than we've done is the absolute requirement to getting different results in our life and doing different starts with thinking differently. Anything else is insanity (literally: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results).
Point to ponder:
Examine all that you have been told and your very flesh shall become a great poem. – Walt Whitman