Feeling overwhelmed

Often clients tell me how chaotic life has felt for a long time and how well they were coping with it. Through this, some fairly significant life events have occurred and they knew exactly how to handle it, and even if they didn’t, they made it work.

Then, suddenly, something else happened, something that seemed far less significant than the other life events and they were overwhelmed. Now their once concise mind feels busy, loud and foggy. Decisions feel impossible. Sometimes they feel numb, sometimes, on edge and unable to settle. Emotionally they might be spent or feeling unable to regulate themselves.

We all have a part of our brain that is responsible for keeping us safe, it’s the part that allows us to feel resilient and also stores our memories [It’s like a window]. As we experience more significantly stressful or traumatic events, this window starts to close. This means the next time our brain is reminded of that Trauma or stress it will go outside of the window more easily than we may be used to and we need to find a way to come - queue the numbness or feeling of being on edge.

Now, this isn’t a choice we have made at this point, not consciously, but our brain does get stuck in its ways of coping, it’s our job to ‘unstuck’ it.

We can do this through self-care, talking about it and lots of practice.

Feeling overwhelmed can be so disorientating, we might feel disconnected from ourselves or those around us. This is something that with some gentle changes can be supported.

Click here to get in touch to talk about how this has been affecting you today.