Healthy Mind
Overcoming Overwhelm
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By Amy Beth Acker, LCSW
We experience overwhelm when it seems life has handed us too much, leaving us feeling helpless and anxiety-ridden. Amy Acker teaches us to change our perspective, to focus on what we value the most, and to manage our time, so it doesn’t manage us.
Overwhelm is a common feeling. In fact, I don’t know many people who don’t feel overwhelmed at some time or another. The world can be an overwhelming place and our lives, with all their complexities, often feel like a never-ending drain of the time and energy that adulting demands of us.
We do the math and feel like it all adds up: we have too many things to cram into too little time, and we never have enough energy for any of it. “Of course I’m overwhelmed,” we tell ourselves. “I’m burnt out. I have too much to do. Everyone needs things from me, and I have nothing left to give to them, much less to myself!”
We never want to be in a position where we feel that life is happening to us, yet that is where most of us find ourselves much of the time, which leads to feelings of being overwhelmed. But our overwhelm is not a fact. It’s a thought. This is great news because it means we can examine the thoughts about how we spend our time that don’t serve us and start to regain a sense of meaning and purpose in our days, reducing occasions of overwhelm.
We experience overwhelm when it seems life has handed us too much, leaving us feeling helpless and anxiety-ridden. Amy Acker teaches us to change our perspective, to focus on what we value the most, and to manage our time, so it doesn’t manage us.
Overwhelm is a common feeling. In fact, I don’t know many people who don’t feel overwhelmed at some time or another. The world can be an overwhelming place and our lives, with all their complexities, often feel like a never-ending drain of the time and energy that adulting demands of us.
We do the math and feel like it all adds up: we have too many things to cram into too little time, and we never have enough energy for any of it. “Of course I’m overwhelmed,” we tell ourselves. “I’m burnt out. I have too much to do. Everyone needs things from me, and I have nothing left to give to them, much less to myself!”
We never want to be in a position where we feel that life is happening to us, yet that is where most of us find ourselves much of the time, which leads to feelings of being overwhelmed. But our overwhelm is not a fact. It’s a thought. This is great news because it means we can examine the thoughts about how we spend our time that don’t serve us and start to regain a sense of meaning and purpose in our days, reducing occasions of overwhelm.
What Do You Think?
What is your experience around your time? Do you feel like you have no control over it? Do you feel like there’s never enough? Whatever your experience of time is, I would bet that it reflects your personal experience of life. This is because time is a mental construct, and so what we view as fact, “I have no control over my time,” really means, “I have no control over my life.”
More than that, our relationship with time is also a reflection of our relationships with ourselves. For instance, many of us who feel out of control of our time also think, “I have no control over myself,” and “I’m never enough.”
What Do You Value?
In my psychotherapy practice, discussions of clients’ values are always part of the conversation. If we can go in any direction in life, our values become our compass. Once we have our bearings, we can always check in with them and make sure we’re headed in the right direction.
What do you value most in life? I encourage you to take time to think this question through and to come up with a list of three to four top values that you want to guide you in your life. If you value autonomy but you always feel like you have to take care of everyone else, for example, what does that mean for your quality of life? Or, if you value community but you’re always telling yourself you can’t find the time to connect with others, where does that leave you?
Statements like “can’t” and “have to” may feel factual, but they aren’t. As adults, we make choices about our lives; although this doesn’t mean we always get to pick the options, only that we have free will to make a choice from the options available to us.
“Can’t” and “have to” are thoughts that bring with them the feeling of victimhood. When we have these thoughts, we feel stuck and out of control of our own lives. This is because we are telling ourselves that something outside of us has more power over us than we do over the issue. No wonder we feel overwhelmed. What would it be like to start to replace these phrases with ones like “get to” and “choose to?”
I always tell myself that I have time for everything that matters to me. I don’t have time for everything else, but I don’t need to have that time.
Life feels overwhelming when we feel out of integrity with who we are. A life can be very full of things that are in alignment with our values and that fullness can feel completely manageable and congruent.
How Do You Work?
I have certainly been guilty of overscheduling my time with things that feel simultaneously urgent, important and necessary. It’s easy to get swept up in the minutia of our day-to-day lives and become unable to see the forest for the trees. I have found that while it sounds counterintuitive, leaving free margin space in my schedule allows for the inevitable unpredictable things that come up.
I don’t want to live an inflexible life where there is no space for things to go differently than planned, and so I expect the unexpected and plan accordingly. This usually means making tough decisions about what I’m willing to say “yes” and “no” to in my life, but those tough decisions leave me in the driver’s seat of my own life, and so even though they’re tough, they also feel good.
I’ve also been experimenting with what I call “cabin in the woods time.” This is time that I plan each day where I imagine that I’ve gone on a solo retreat to a cabin in the woods where there is no Wi-Fi, no phone service, and no other distractions. Cabin in the woods time involves setting a timer for approximately 45 minutes to two hours (depending on the day) and doing work that requires mental energy and focus with the intention of producing a finished product by the time the timer goes off.
This time is incredibly valuable for a few reasons:
In addition to creating cabin in the woods time, I encourage you to schedule personal time into your week. Personal time can be for whatever you’d like, as long as it’s for you. Want to scroll Pinterest while binge-watching reality TV and eating a burrito? Put it on the calendar! Deciding ahead of time how you’re going to spend your free time in a way that feels delicious to you (literally, if the burrito is involved!) gives you the pleasure of looking forward and the permission to do it guilt-free.
What’s True About Your Time?
I encourage everyone who feels overwhelmed to take stock of their time. Try logging your time for a week to get an honest account of how your days are actually being spent. Be honest with yourself about how much of your time is being spent living out your values and how much of it is being spent on things that are “necessary.”
Use your relationship with time as a conduit to change your relationship with your life and yourself and leave feeling overwhelmed behind.
What is your experience around your time? Do you feel like you have no control over it? Do you feel like there’s never enough? Whatever your experience of time is, I would bet that it reflects your personal experience of life. This is because time is a mental construct, and so what we view as fact, “I have no control over my time,” really means, “I have no control over my life.”
More than that, our relationship with time is also a reflection of our relationships with ourselves. For instance, many of us who feel out of control of our time also think, “I have no control over myself,” and “I’m never enough.”
What Do You Value?
In my psychotherapy practice, discussions of clients’ values are always part of the conversation. If we can go in any direction in life, our values become our compass. Once we have our bearings, we can always check in with them and make sure we’re headed in the right direction.
What do you value most in life? I encourage you to take time to think this question through and to come up with a list of three to four top values that you want to guide you in your life. If you value autonomy but you always feel like you have to take care of everyone else, for example, what does that mean for your quality of life? Or, if you value community but you’re always telling yourself you can’t find the time to connect with others, where does that leave you?
Statements like “can’t” and “have to” may feel factual, but they aren’t. As adults, we make choices about our lives; although this doesn’t mean we always get to pick the options, only that we have free will to make a choice from the options available to us.
“Can’t” and “have to” are thoughts that bring with them the feeling of victimhood. When we have these thoughts, we feel stuck and out of control of our own lives. This is because we are telling ourselves that something outside of us has more power over us than we do over the issue. No wonder we feel overwhelmed. What would it be like to start to replace these phrases with ones like “get to” and “choose to?”
I always tell myself that I have time for everything that matters to me. I don’t have time for everything else, but I don’t need to have that time.
Life feels overwhelming when we feel out of integrity with who we are. A life can be very full of things that are in alignment with our values and that fullness can feel completely manageable and congruent.
How Do You Work?
I have certainly been guilty of overscheduling my time with things that feel simultaneously urgent, important and necessary. It’s easy to get swept up in the minutia of our day-to-day lives and become unable to see the forest for the trees. I have found that while it sounds counterintuitive, leaving free margin space in my schedule allows for the inevitable unpredictable things that come up.
I don’t want to live an inflexible life where there is no space for things to go differently than planned, and so I expect the unexpected and plan accordingly. This usually means making tough decisions about what I’m willing to say “yes” and “no” to in my life, but those tough decisions leave me in the driver’s seat of my own life, and so even though they’re tough, they also feel good.
I’ve also been experimenting with what I call “cabin in the woods time.” This is time that I plan each day where I imagine that I’ve gone on a solo retreat to a cabin in the woods where there is no Wi-Fi, no phone service, and no other distractions. Cabin in the woods time involves setting a timer for approximately 45 minutes to two hours (depending on the day) and doing work that requires mental energy and focus with the intention of producing a finished product by the time the timer goes off.
This time is incredibly valuable for a few reasons:
- I can’t tell myself I don’t have time to work on things that are important but not urgent when I’ve built that time into my day.
- I get distracted easily, and this method gives me the structure I need to do the work I love to do without doing mental gymnastics to figure out how to get it done.
- I don’t have to think about what I’m doing for the rest of the day, which prevents me from feeling guilty or confused about not doing the right things at the right time.
In addition to creating cabin in the woods time, I encourage you to schedule personal time into your week. Personal time can be for whatever you’d like, as long as it’s for you. Want to scroll Pinterest while binge-watching reality TV and eating a burrito? Put it on the calendar! Deciding ahead of time how you’re going to spend your free time in a way that feels delicious to you (literally, if the burrito is involved!) gives you the pleasure of looking forward and the permission to do it guilt-free.
What’s True About Your Time?
I encourage everyone who feels overwhelmed to take stock of their time. Try logging your time for a week to get an honest account of how your days are actually being spent. Be honest with yourself about how much of your time is being spent living out your values and how much of it is being spent on things that are “necessary.”
Use your relationship with time as a conduit to change your relationship with your life and yourself and leave feeling overwhelmed behind.
Amy Beth Acker, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, mindset coach, author, and poet specializing in working with high-achieving women who struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing and perfectionism. Her first book, The Way of the Peaceful Woman: Awaken the Power of You, Create a Life You Love, and Set Yourself Free, is excerpted HERE. Her writing on personal development has been published widely. She is also a published poet and regular contributor for Sanctuary.
