Redefining Your Relationship with Overwhelm

Catherine A. Wood 00:00
Hello, hello, welcome back to the prosperous Empath cat. Here today, I’m diving into a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Has been a huge part of my own transformational journey. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, it’s likely been a part of your journey and your story as well, and I’m talking about overwhelm, which might sound a little weird, but here’s the thing, if you are an ambitious Empath, you are likely a high achiever. You’re likely very driven and like to do things well and excellently, maybe even perfectly, and you might be bogged down by the experience of managing a lot of projects simultaneously. I know I am oftentimes, which can cause a lot of overwhelm. So there’s the first reason, and then the second reason is that, as a sensitive Empath, we are highly sensory, meaning that we have high emotional responses, and we’re big feelers, and we’re oftentimes more susceptible to the state of overwhelmed, that feeling of overwhelm, whether it’s by our own circumstances, by what’s happening in the world, which there’s a lot happening in the world right now, or by the challenges and problems of other people in your life, which is a really beautiful gift, right? Like it’s such a beautiful gift that we’re so attuned to the felt sense and the lived experiences of those in the world around us, and we have to find a way to be able to manage our own nervous systems and thrive in the face of our big feelings like overwhelm and all the others. So today, I want to share with you my own personal story with some of the ways in which I have transformed my relationship to overwhelm over the past decade, and how I have turned overwhelm into becoming an indicator, something to become empowered by, something to respond to, versus something to be disempowered by. And my story starts all the way back in 2014 when I was in my very first year of coaching. Gosh, maybe it was 2015 Yeah, I guess it would have been 2015 and I was on a call with my coach, and I was feeling super overwhelmed. Honestly, I just wanted to be a crybaby about it, and I was looking for someone to validate and justify why I felt this way and why it was completely reasonable that I was feeling so overwhelmed. And I don’t know about you, but does anyone else have a penchant for taking on multiple massive projects at the same time? Anyways, he he didn’t take the bait. And not only did he NOT TAKE THE BAIT, did he not validate and justify my experience, but rather he both infuriated and changed the trajectory of my entire life with his response when he said, overwhelm is a choice, cat, it’s a feeling, and you get to feel your feelings without being owned by them. Now I know that sounds super oversimplified, and gosh, was it the exact opposite of what I wanted to hear at that moment, but that reminder has helped me time and time again over the years. It is a reflection that I have never forgot, because it landed so fully, so deeply, and it pissed me off so much. Because for all the embaths who are tuning in, I’m sure you can relate when I say that we feel our feelings so strongly, so much so that oftentimes we can get super swept up by them, and we can relate to them as fact, as reality, as the truth, right? It can be something like I am overwhelmed rather than I feel overwhelmed even just those statements are so different. I am overwhelmed. Is decisive. It’s black and white. There’s not a lot of room to change your perspective versus I feel overwhelmed, right? Like even that distinction allows a bit more space to maybe. Change your feelings, to change your state, so that you can feel something differently. And that’s exactly it. Our feelings are temporary. They are not the truth of who we are. They are not our reality. And more importantly, we are not only solely responsible for them, but we are also responsible for changing them and not allowing them to define us, our experience, our relationships and the extent of what is possible for us. So personally, I I allowed my feelings to define my life for years, years and years, I also allowed myself to be completely victimized by them, and then on that day, when my coach didn’t take the bait, it changed the trajectory of how I’ve related to overwhelm and my feelings ever since. Now I want to be honest with you, I am still human. I still have my moments of overwhelm, and I still have moments of feeling completely and devastatingly powerless about it, but the difference is that these days, I take that feeling to heart, and I take it to be a signal that I need to offer myself some loving kindness and compassion, and that I need to practice something different, and that practicing something different is where I want to lead us today on the episode, because I want to share with you five of the most powerful practices that have supported me as well as my clients over the past decade, in shifting your relationship to overwhelm and who you choose to be and how you choose to respond. In the face of it, some of these tools are going to be more mindset based, more awareness and noticing based, and a couple are more tactical. So take what supports you, leave the rest, and if one resonates in particular, I would love to hear from you. Come on and join us over in our private online community and continue the conversation there. That is where I’m hanging out most exclusively these days, as I engage less and less over on social media, we will drop the link in the show notes to our community, and I look forward to being in continued relationship with you there with that. Let’s dive in to the first tool, which is a favorite of mine, and it is the practice of venting as a tool. Now our feelings are meant to be emoted and expressed. It’s honestly one of the qualities that I most appreciate and delight in seeing in children. I don’t know about you, but the children in my life are such great teachers for me, my nieces, my nephews, my friends. Children, they have tantrums, they cry huge tears. They get loud and stomp their feet, they pout in the corner, and then the very next minute, they’re laughing and wanting to play and jumping all over you and me and in adulthood, I think we need the same ability, we need the same outlet to be able to vent and feel our feelings and allow them to move through our bodies and release them so that we can get back to our full capacity, our full mental resources and our full ability to to have agency. Now we need to be responsible for ourselves when we’re venting. I certainly still have my moments of spewing all over my partner, making it about him, making it his fault, because I’m still learning how to share my feelings intentionally without being run by them. I am. And the thing is that when I’m incredibly overwhelmed, one of the first outlets that I now go to, that I’ve learned over the years is that I likely just need to share and communicate with him all those things that I’m stressed about now. This is some Yoda esque relationship wisdom here. So listen up when we’re responsible for our overwhelm, and we can communicate that to our partners something like, Hey, babe. I’m just feeling incredibly overwhelmed right now, and I need to vent. Okay, that is the perfect signaling for our partners and loved ones to be able to listen empathetically often provide the reassurance and care that we need, rather than feeling like they did something wrong and they need to jump in and fix our stress bubble and fix. Six are overwhelm. So that signaling is huge, I want you to try it. Next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, practice sharing with a trusted partner. First. I’m feeling incredibly overwhelmed right now I need to vent. Do you have some space and time for me to share and then wait like truly wait and see if they have the capacity to listen with compassionate and kind ears, and if they don’t go find someone else and acknowledge them for their ability to know, you know whether they have that capacity in that space or not. Now, if you’re a kinesthetic learner, instead of speaking, you’re or venting verbally, you’re overwhelmed. You might practice journaling the response to what am I feeling overwhelmed about in this moment, in a favorite journal, or even just on a scrap of paper, all right. Number two, have a healthy sense of humor about overwhelm. Okay, so why don’t you join me in laughing at my own Gosh insanity for a moment. Back in 2022 i All right, I hope you can laugh with me about this second one. Back in the fall of 2022 I tied the knot with my longtime partner of seven years and simultaneously to planning our wedding, I was also unveiling the biggest launch of the unbounded potential rebrand since our inception in 2014 to the tune of 30,000 plus. And it had been a rebrand, rebranding journey, website overhaul, like extensive creative project that I was loving, but taking well over a year. And then, in addition to that, I was running a thriving business, supporting amazing clients in my mastermind as well as in my private practice, and my hubby to be and I were in the process of selling our first home in Maryland while residing in Massachusetts. Now, I could have easily taken on any one of those projects at one time, but me, you know, I just thought it was the best decision ever to coordinate three to happen simultaneously. And I do say coordinate because it was absolutely by my own design, by my own choice. And I’m, I’m totally laughing out loud even as I say it, and I remember that experience, because the truth of the matter is I thrive under pressure, and I also typically create like this. I often create in fits and bursts, and I think many of us do right like, just like the weather and the seasons, I too have seasons in my business, seasons of expansion. I also have seasons of hibernation and reflection, seasons of big, bold blooming energy and seasons of rest and withdrawal. Now I was just in that season of Creation in life, and when I can remind myself that my business and life does not always feel this way, it’s just a reflection of the season that I’m in, it absolutely helps me to not only embrace the season that I’m in, but also normalize that It is temporary. So the next time you’re feeling a sense of overwhelm, I hope that you can laugh about it, maybe with someone else, if you can’t laugh about it by yourself just yet, and consider asking, what’s the season of business and life? Teaching you alright, the third invitation practice leveraging overwhelm as a signal. Here’s the thing, when I feel overwhelmed, it is almost always a sign of a growth edge. Now, as someone who absolutely enjoys being in self control, having a lot of self control, I now recognize that when I’m feeling overwhelmed, it is because I am in creation mode. Overwhelm is a sign for me that I’m doing something new, expansive, different, and therefore outside of my comfort zone and naturally uncomfortable because. What expands outside of our comfort zone is uncomfortable, and naturally, I would feel that sense of dis ease by stepping outside the realm of what is known, familiar and cozy, comfortable like a cup of tea for me, and that last piece is super important, so I want you to really hear this. When we allow overwhelm to take over, it can literally manifest itself as disease or disease in our bodies. I know for me, I used to get countless sinus infections when I first started my business, I remember one of my early years in business, I had eight sinus infections one winter that I had to receive antibiotics for eight times in one winter like imagine what that did to my immune system, and that’s because I was completely disempowered by my own experience of overwhelm when I was first starting out in business, and simultaneously trying to build the business while I saved and prepared my way out of my nine to five. Gosh, another year when I still lived in the Dominican Republic, and I was working in sustainable tourism. After finishing serving in the Peace Corps, I can remember I was sent home for work. I was sent home from work for three weeks because I got bronchitis while I was working full time at a Grants Manager for sustainable tourism grants, and I was getting my MBA simultaneously. So literally, I was working 60 hour weeks trying to launch this small grants initiative while doing an intensive Weekend MBA program, and I literally did not have the capacity to handle it all, and I was completely run down by my own state and feelings of overwhelm. Now these days, it’s a lot different. I literally remind myself that feeling overwhelmed is a good thing. It’s a sign that I’m uncomfortable and that I must be creating epic new things. It’s not to say I don’t take it easier on myself. I don’t prioritize extra self care, extra time off, I absolutely do. I just do not let overwhelm outsmart me anymore or run the show. So the next time you’re feeling overwhelmed and you’re present to it, consider asking yourself, what is my overwhelm signaling for me here? How can you leverage overwhelm as a sign of growth or your own expansion, all right. Number four, this is a juicy one. The invitation is, the next time you feel overwhelmed, create a distinct experience for yourself. Now, I know this sounds a bit meta, but stick with me for a moment. So back in the fall of 2022 when I was planning my wedding, I realized I wasn’t having any fun. It was a total slog, and it hit like dead weight. I was planning something I’d been dreaming about since first meeting my fiance, and I was planning a celebration, and something that was intended to be a life milestone, incredibly joyful. I know I wanted to create a community experience, and I literally wasn’t feeling any of it. I wasn’t feeling celebratory, I wasn’t feeling joyful, I wasn’t feeling supported. And it was like just awful. Now, I know lots of brides get to this place, so if you’re planning your own wedding, or you know someone who is, I mean, I feel you and consider sharing this Wisdom with them, or listening up when I realized that I was not at all enjoying the experience of planning Something that was intended to be incredibly celebratory and loving and special, I decided to change my experience, to really look at what was there to do. What did I need to shift in how I was relating to the wedding planning, or even more tactically speaking, like how I was actually planning the wedding in order to create a distinct experience for myself. So I took out my journal as I am, as I love to do when I’m really trying to just gather some new insights or inspiration, and I reflected on what would infuse more joy and. Fun into the experience for me, and then I paused and I listened for my own inner wisdom, and that is actually when I started polar plunging. So if you’ve been tuning into the podcast for a while, you know that over the winter, I did a lot of cold water swimming, and found this amazing community and cold water swam throughout the majority of the winter while I was pregnant, and it started during my wedding, because I realized that we were getting married in my hometown, which is on the coast in North of Boston. And what could be more fun than doing a Polar Plunge with my wedding guests, or those who wanted to join me on the morning of my wedding? And so right then and there, in that moment of having that download, I texted a couple of my wedding guests who are adventures like me, and I invited them to join me on the morning of our wedding for a polar plunge, and I told them to meet me at the beach, and I asked one of my bridesmaids to pick up some Dunkin Donuts and Munchkins. And I got instant yeses from all of them, and they were so gung ho for it. And then I realized, wow, I actually wanted to add this to the itinerary of weekend wedding events, and so I added a whole new event to our weekend itinerary. And on the morning of my wedding, 35 of our guests from both sides joined me for a polar plunge. We brought down our two dogs, my parents came, some of my husband’s family, who were not at all used to the cold water. And it was so, so special to me. It was honestly one of the highlights of my whole wedding, the pictures and the videos from that morning were just so incredibly joyful. I noticed I’m even just tearing up as I share about it, because it left such a mark for me. It was a highlight of the weekend. It was incredibly joyful, and all it took was a willingness to reconnect with my own sense of excitement and intentionality for how I wanted to experience my wedding, and I absolutely did. So please do not underestimate the power of creating space for your intuition and please do not underestimate the invaluable power of choosing and designing a different experience for yourself. We essentially experience all aspects of our lives, our work and our relationships through the filters or the ways in which we choose to relate to them. If you don’t like what you see, you always have the opportunity to change your vantage point or to change the lens. So next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, consider asking yourself, what is the distinct experience of this? And then fill in the blank with whatever you’re feeling overwhelmed or disempowered about that you’re committed to having. What’s the distinct experience of this wedding relationship, weekend move that you are committed to having, and then, how can I create this new experience for myself? And last but not least, the fifth and final strategy and practice that I want to invite you to consider when you’re looking at transforming your relationship with overwhelm is to ask for support. Now, in the moment of feeling overwhelmed, asking for support can often feel pretty inaccessible. I have so many empathic entrepreneurs and leaders who I’ve worked with over the years who I’m prone to asking them, What do you need? And of course, they have no idea. Now I think that makes a whole lot of sense, and if you’re not practiced in asking for support, let alone receiving support, it might even feel even more inaccessible. What I’ve noticed is that we often need to do some of the emotional release practices that I mentioned earlier, like venting before we can access what we need, but once we do once we can actually emote and feel and vent those feelings. Making specific requests for support can not only be more accessible, we can have more. Clarity around what we need, but they can also be extremely effective. Here’s why, making specific requests for support can help with removing some of the content of what’s causing your overwhelm and move it out of your head and off of your own to do list, which I have no doubt, is extremely long, as is mine. It also is a huge reminder that you’re not alone in dealing with your overwhelm, an experience that I frequently hear clients share that feeling of feeling alone, unsupported, like there’s no one that they can count on. So take a look. Have you ever been feeling overwhelmed or stressed, and your partner or your best friend asks, How can I help, or what do you need? And your knee jerk response is, I don’t know, consider that is just a sign that there are some big feelings to feel or some venting to do first, so that you can get a bit more tactical about overcoming your overwhelm, and once you do come back to them and ask yourself, what are the first or the top one to three requests for support that you can make right now and then practice sharing them with your trusted friends and loved ones. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode. This is a topic that is really personal to me, and I clearly have a lot to say about it. So if you enjoyed any of what you hear, I would love to hear back from you. Come join us in our online community and let me know what resonated most. Hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and we will see you next week. Bye.