Avoiding feeling overwhelmed

My god it’s a shit feeling isn’t it? When everything suddenly feels on top of you. Your chest feels a little tighter and your mind goes a little faster… Feeling overwhelmed honestly sucks, but although it all sometimes feels hopeless, there’s so many ways to help yourself ensure that you don’t get to the point where everything feels just a little too much.

Now I’m not an expert on this, far from to be completely honest, but it is something that I’m working an focusing on at the moment, and it’s something that I have realized is really important. I feel overwhelmed a lot of the time because I don’t like talking about feelings to much, so I tend to build things up in my mind until I feel so overwhelmed that things has to get out, and often all at ones! Which is not good.

So I’m working on getting better at avoiding feeling overwhelmed, and I have a couple key things I’m trying to keep in mind while doing that, which I thought I would share with you guys in hope that I could help some of you in any shape or form!

FOCUS ON NOW:I know this sounds simple, like really simple, but bloody hell it can be hard to do! When you’re stressed and feel like you’re spiralling into a “but what if” “what will happen” “I don’t know how” mindset the best way out is to ground yourself. Bring yourself back to the moment you are actually in right now and stop thinking ahead or behind. Try to focus on what is going on around you. Bring yourself back to now, back to the moment. Maybe try to take a few deep breaths, take a second to stop up and clear your mind or maybe listen to a song that you know makes you feel super calm or gets your mood up. But always try to focus on now.

LET GO OF WHAT YOU CAN’T CHANGE: Now this is a hard one as well, but a really important one! Sometimes you have no control over a situation and there is literally nothing you can do about it. No matter how hard you work, how much you do, what you say or where you are there’s nothing you can do and that is okay. Some things are completely out of our hands and learning to be okay with that is a lesson that I’m still very much trying to work on. Accepting that doing our best is all we can do and acknowledging that as cheesy as it sounds life is going to throw curve balls at you left right and centre and it’s all about how you handle them, not how you control them.

This feeling of being overwhelmed can literally take over within seconds and create situations out of… nothing really! Your train is late, your car won’t start, the queue in the shop is too long, your meeting’s been cancelled, I could go on and on but you get the point, right?? Yes, they’re annoying, yes, it might mean you’re ten minutes late, or that you have to change your plans but there’s nothing you can do about it.

Don’t allow these everyday situations to overwhelm you, they are not in your hands. Instead put them aside and allow more time for situations that are worth it!

-Okay, I think I’m gonna leave it there. I find it wayyy more helpful to concentrate on a couple of pointers rather than a big old list of them. I hope this was helpful in some kind of way!