Me and my journal, Clarity Pages.
Overwhelm is a motherfucker.
~ Annie Sanchez
Acknowledging
I struggle with overwhelm. It’s a very human experience that also feels very personal. At times I feel overwhelm heavily. Sometimes it’s non-existent. What I know is this though: overwhelm is an experience I have and not a static feature of my life.
The very first time I experienced anxiety was about 10 years ago. Yeah, 2009. I remember being unable to pinpoint the exact cause of the incessant butterflies in my belly, and flutters and twinges in my chest, but I remember thinking for weeks, “I feel really anxious.” I realized later that it was the beginning of my relationship with what I now describe as anxiety.
I recognize there’s a spectrum and I’m thankfully somewhere left of center on the axis. Arguably, my anxiety and associated feelings of overwhelm are manageable. Nonetheless, they are very real.
I’m not trying to get rid of any of the feelings or experiences. Rather, I’m basically always working on managing them in ways that allow me to be and do all the awesome and magical things I’m called to be and do. I’m working on releasing judgment about how it all should or could look and instead trying to lean into the feelings.
My partner is a vessel of wisdom when it comes to this stuff, and he teaches me every day how mindfulness and compassion (for ourselves) work IRL. I’m a student always.
Managing
One of the things I regularly write in my journal is how grateful I am to have tools that support me and my goals — these goals ultimately being happiness and liberation (from many things).
I am grateful to have tools that support me and my goals — these goals ultimately being happiness and liberation.
I’m a get-to-the-bottom-of-things kinda person who likes to dissect situations and challenges. When I was at my most overwhelmed and anxiety-riddled a couple of years ago, for a couple of years — heavy onset mid-2015 and lasted through early 2018 — I needed to deeply understand what the fuck was going on and how to make it stop.
At the time, the only way to do this was to get out of my current life for a while and go breathe and think. I got in my car and drove 2,000 miles to the icy lands of the northern Midwest. It was really cathartic being on the road alone. The cold air and warm, loving home that welcomed me was exactly what I needed.
Managing overwhelm and anxiety then meant: 1) plan nothing 2) do half of what you decide to do 3) write.
I started a blog while sitting in my chosen family’s Chicago apartment and poured my heart out for all of no one to see. But there was an interesting thrill at the idea of someone maybe reading it one day.
My practice was in letting go of what others thought or would think if they came across my words and to let my feelings just pour out through my fingertips onto the screen. It was my first time being “online” in a real, human way and it crazily enough was the first step for me in real anxiety management. It was journaling.
Expanding
I’ve evolved and expanded my practices. Nowadays I use this blog here to express myself and share ideas, and I use my Clarity Pages to manage my day-to-day while moving those goals I mentioned forward.
What I’ve learned over the years is that my relationship with my feelings and experiences are always growing, changing and evolving. Anxiety and overwhelm, joy and happiness, success and abundance look different at different times.
It’s essential that I detach myself from ideals in any one area and instead love and respect all of them and where I am in each. Each feeling and experience teaches me something when it decides to show up.
I’m an expansive human with exponential power to be, have, do and experience everything I want and need — the work is in letting go of outcomes and enjoying the journey. Tricky stuff.
get to the bottom
In my signature get-to-the-bottom-of-things style, it has been helpful for me to understand the relationship between overwhelm and anxiety and tease them apart. In my mind, anxiety will be something I always experience, but overwhelm is something I could theoretically get rid of for real reals.
I see anxiety as a chemical reaction to a variety of things psychological, emotional and external. And I see overwhelm as a purely individual/internal reaction to things entering my life — anxiety, to-dos, deadlines, and the like.
Overwhelm can be gotten to the bottom of with the right system. I’m a systems person.
I use my journal to manage all the things I have put on my plate along with my ambitious goals and desires. The zillions of tasks and choices that loom out of the goals and plate-filling activities that are the crux of overwhelm.
When I know what, when and where each thing should be on the timeline and to-do list, my overwhelm goes down. Everything still needs to get done, which is a big deal of course. But the feeling that it’s all falling through the cracks isn’t. Make sense?
It’s super fucking important that I don’t attach myself to the idea that I can get rid of overwhelm or anxiety in their entirety though. If I start to think I can, I’m setting myself up for a very rude awakening.
What I can do and believe in with all my heart though, is that I have the power to decrease overwhelm with a system that holds what I’m working on, encourages me to think about what else is going on in my life and body, and is forgiving and flexible. For me, it’s journaling.