More than ¼ of U.S Adults report being so stressed that they cannot function. They are overwhelmed at work, having troubles at home, and even just quitting altogether.
Overwhelm can feel like an insurmountable challenge when you are in the middle of it. You’re so plugged in that you can’t even take a dump without watching three conspiracy videos. Using your phone like it’s a defibrillator for your nervous system, just to feel more overwhelmed than when you started.
I’ve spent over 10 years learning how to manage stress and deal with overwhelm. In the blog you will learn:
- How the brain reacts when feeling stressed
- What can cause overwhelm and the downsides to being overwhelmed
- How to stop overwhelm in its tracks.
Let’s dive in.
How your Brain Responds to Overwhelm
Being overwhelmed at work can mean a number of things. It can mean you’ve taken on too much, you’ve been assigned something far outside your ability, or you have loose boundaries. Over time, these things leave you stressed.
A small amount of stress can be a good thing, but when you get stuck in stress, it can lead to cascading issues. That’s because your nervous system gets locked into the fight or flight response.
The autonomic nervous system is made up of the sympathetic nervous system (Fight or flight) and the Parasympathetic nervous system (Rest and Relax).
Stress puts you into the sympathetic nervous system. Your only responsibility is to focus on preserving yourself now. When in the fight or flight state, you do not think long term because you are so focused on surviving right now.
Your brain can only look for the answer to one question: Am I safe right now? When you try to distract yourself from the stress, you tell your nervous system “no”. You pick up your phone to escape the feeling, just to plunge deeper.
Distraction does not reduce stress. It only serves to magnify it. Eventually, you take on more stress than your nervous system can take and you shut down.
You become buried, swamped, unable to breathe and unsure where to go next. You are facing a problem too big for you to handle. Your body becomes a battlefield of stress and confusion. You’re tired, your soul feels like it is running on 2%, even good days feel like a break between breakdowns.
Next, you avoid it. You continue to watch Netflix and scroll your phone. The problem is still there but you avoid it.
Now? You’re so far behind that you couldn’t even catch up if you wanted to.
The Cause of Overwhelm at Work
Becoming overwhelmed at work is the build up of stress without an outlet or having any time to recover. Think of it like a balloon, if you keep filling a balloon with air or water without ever stopping, it pops. You become burned out and disinterested in your work.
Overwhelm at work involves a stressor: It can be an overdue project, a frustrated client, or a situation that isn’t going the way you planned. You start to have big emotions: Anger, sadness, frustration.
Instead of dealing with these big emotions, you play emotional whack-a-mole:
Stress pops up -> You scroll tiktok
You start feeling sad -> You find something to buy or distract with videos.
Insecure -> You avoid the challenge
You start to react to your emotions rather than dealing with them at the root.
Two key components control the reactive states that lead to overwhelm:
High Demand + Uncertainty Overwhelm in the workplace
High Demand looks like: Heavy workloads, tight deadlines, and high expectations.
Uncertainty looks like: Unclear goals, challenging work dynamics, and varying consequences.
When you have both an over demand on you and uncertainty about what could happen, it can feel all encompassing. Work is often ⅓ of your life. Balancing demand and certainty are key to understanding how to balance work with life.
Risks and Down Sides of Overwhelm
When we get overwhelmed, it can feel like the world around us is crumbling. You start to question your performance, your relationships, and your work. Research says 41% of workers said stress made them less productive and 33% said it made them less engaged.
This is because you cannot be both growing and surviving at the same time. The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems activate separately. If you are surviving, you are not growing.
On a broader scale, it is well documented that 70% of disease is caused by chronic stress. If you ever needed a reason to lower the stress in your life, the threat of dying seems like a good enough reason.
How to Tell You’re Overwhelmed at Work
You can find overwhelm in both the physical sense and the emotional sense.
Physical Measures of Overwhelm
A common measure for chronic stress is heart rate variability (HRV). A measure of the length of time between heart beats. It should not be constant and is at it’s best when the length of time between beats is changing.
HRV signals the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. When HRV is high, the parasympathetic nervous system can take over. If the variability is low, the sympathetic nervous system engages.
Learning how to balance HRV is a powerful tracking tool for your stress.
Emotional Measures of Overwhelm
Emotional measures are often a bit more challenging to see coming, but they hit hard when they arrive. You may find yourself screaming at a co-worker, arguing with your spouse, or angry scrolling Instagram.
Others, shut down completely. You may feel frozen and stopping work altogether. Noticing overwhelming emotions in the lead up to these stronger reactions makes them easier to handle.
Start by asking yourself some simple questions:
What am I afraid of?
Can I name all the emotions that come to mind?
Now that I see the emotion, what do I want to do with it?
These 3 simple questions help you to calm your nervous system and return to a rational state to move forward.
How to Deal With Being Overwhelmed at Work
The equal opposite of overwhelmed is calm. Calm is rare. It is becoming a massive oak tree in a rainstorm. Relaxed, watching, breathing. Like you have already made peace with every possible outcome even though nothing has happened.
Calm is not born, it is built. Knowing how to not get overwhelmed at work is the difference between a high performer and someone on the hot seat.
Managing Demand and Uncertainty to Reduce Overwhelm
Certainty and demand need some challenging up front work that pays off in the long run. Manage each on their own, and together, make a potent cure for overwhelm.
Increasing Certainty: Make decisions. Uncertainty is often the product of decisions left unmade. So, delegate tasks, make small decisions quickly, and ask “what should I do to create more certainty in the future?”.
Learn more about decision making: Why Decision Making Matters
Decreasing demand: Ask for help. You can lower your demand by asking for help. Whether you need more clarity on expectations or you need to learn something from someone ahead of you. Find out who can help, how to disperse the work, and can you reprioritize?
When you lessen demand and increase certainty, overwhelm fades immediately.
Increasing Your Capacity for Stress
When trying to deal with stress without changing your environment, there are two key ways you can solve it.
Increase your capacity for stress
End stress.
Eliminating stress works for “micro stressors”: small stressful activities that come up. Things like scrolling social media, watching TV, and seeing a sad news article. By avoiding these stressful behaviors you give your nervous system time to manage stress.
But, what if a stressor is too big to eliminate? Things like past trauma, your partner having 6 months to live, or not having enough money to pay rent. This is when increasing your tolerance for stress is necessary.
Increasing your capacity for stress is simple: Have faith that there will be an end to the stress. By knowing it will end, you can continue to push through challenging times. Community is important at this time. Hearing stories of others who overcame similar challenges makes it easier.
So find those that have been there and made it out already and keep the faith.
The Physiological Sigh
Popularized by Andrew Huberman, the physiological sigh is a fast breathing “hack” to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Try it:
Double inhale through the nose: 1 full inhale into the belly and a small inhale to completely fill your lungs
Long slow Exhale: Through the mouth until the lungs are completely empty
This is a super fast way to bring yourself back to a growth mind state.
Mindset Mastery for feeling Overwhelmed at Work
Mastery is a word that describes the ability to execute without the use of conscious resources. Learning a less stressed mindset is how high performers remain high performers even when all the chips are down. Some key ways high performers reframe their beliefs are:
Ask yourself: What else could this mean? Don’t spend time in the loop of the waste case scenario.
You get what you look for: Human beings are excellent at finding answers. Asking the right question can yield a much better response. Instead of “Why do I suck so much?” ask “What can I do better next time?”
Questioning unquestioned beliefs: If a belief is causing you stress, it needs to be questioned. Believing that your boss doesn’t like you does not serve you, so it’s time to investigate if it is actually true and take action from certainty.
Taking on big challenges: The bigger the monster, the greater the hero. Be willing to take on big challenges and your capacity for stress will increase alongside it. Just give yourself enough time to train before fighting the boss.
Burnout Coaching for Overwhelm at Work
Overwhelm at work can be a major challenge. When you feel like you are getting caught up, bang, here’s another project. This can keep you on the path to burnout without having a chance to recover.
The Forge Coaching balances high performance with recovery and purpose to dodge burnout. We combine up to date neurological research with time tested techniques to make you perform at your best.
If you’re struggling with balancing a high pressure job with your well-being, reach out today.
