Overwhelmed

March 6, 2022

I think that one of my biggest problems is that I get overwhelmed easily.

I guess a lot of us do. But every time I notice myself stressing out, itā€™s always that the situation is overwhelming me. Sometimes I have a lot of long-term assignments coming down the pike, or thereā€™s things that I donā€™t know if Iā€™ll be able to handle. The uncertainty overwhelms me, and I get stressed.

The things that are overwhelming me arenā€™t as important as they feel: missed homework, late assignments, and even delays in client projects are all not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. Theyā€™re unpleasant, but not the end of me.

But still, recognizing this relative unimportance doesnā€™t help in the moment. My brain loves to flip into the fight-or-flight panic that paralyzes me instead of letting me do things methodically and telling myself that itā€™ll be okay.

On the one hand, this tendency is beneficial. It makes me care about schoolwork and getting good grades. It doesnā€™t let me procrastinate or let things slip too much.

But on the other hand, there are moments when it builds up to such a point that itā€™s really detrimental.

I remember a couple days last semester when I was assigned four projects, all due on the same day in about a month.

For days, I was completely paralyzed by the feeling of overwhelm. I couldnā€™t do anything. All I could think about was how stressful this all was, and how I didnā€™t know how Iā€™d get them all done in time.

And then eventually, I sat myself down and made a schedule of when I would get stuff done. I spaced out the different goals for the projects, and it didnā€™t seem too bad. I felt a bit better.

A month later, all the projects got turned in ahead of time, without too much additional stress. I even kind of forgot why Iā€™d been overwhelmed in the first place.

So my tendency to get overwhelmed helped me do those projects early, which was good. But it also crippled me for a few days, and made my stress levels shoot to levels that Iā€™ve rarely experienced.

I think the interesting thing is that my stress stemming from overwhelm is less ā€œrealā€ than other possible sources of stress ā€” primarily, Iā€™m thinking of stress that comes from real current financial, relationship, or other distress. Stress that comes from something going to hell right now. Stress thatā€™s about something bad thatā€™s already happened.

So maybe that means I can learn to be more comfortable with it. Iā€™ve observed people who seem to be able to juggle a bunch of things at once, while staying cool under the pressure and being okay with not being fully in control.

Maybe itā€™s a skill I can try to get better at. Hopefully itā€™s a skill I can try to get better at.

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