Emotional overwhelm can happen to anyone. Life can be overwhelming, feeling overwhelmed is understandable. If you are a people pleaser, you may allow others to interfere with your life. If you’re introverted and sensitive, you may have the tendency to absorb the pain of the people you care for or love. If you are the ambitious, go-getter type, you could be living your life as if in “the fast lane.” Even if you consider yourself to be “easy going,” changes can pile up faster than you can attend to them. For these reasons, your life may become hurried, tense, and nerve-wracking, which can lead to overwhelm.

In order to address overwhelm, understanding is important. Addressing the intensity of your emotions on your own, however, may seem impossible. The next best thing is to develop an awareness of your responses to successfully curb the power of overwhelm. A therapist can help with this.

Why Do You Become Overwhelmed?

There are many reasons why you can be overwhelmed. There are also many causes for it. Understandably, negative events like conflicts with people you care for, financial troubles, sickness or accidents in the family, parenting, and other challenges, can be overwhelming. The impact of life events and transitions, even the positive ones – marriage, having a baby, a job promotion, etc. – can also cause added pressure. It can also be an extension of anxiety, depression, or another condition.

What may overwhelm you, and the degree to which you are overwhelmed, may not necessarily be the same as other people you know. This is because everyone has different thresholds when it comes to pain, tolerance, and ability to adjust. Regardless of how resilient you are, though, when challenges come in multiples and in quick succession (“when it rains, it pours”), it can feel impossible not to be overwhelmed.

Emotional ups and downs and emotional overload lead to overwhelm; especially when you are faced with multiple challenges. This is because you are human. While you cannot always dictate how you may feel, you can choose how to respond to an event.

Psychology Today says, “You can’t control how you feel; the only thing you can control is how you respond to your feelings.” Have you heard of the wisdom “go with the flow?” It can be a sensible, “mind-over-matter” kind of response but rather difficult to execute.

Are You Overwhelmed?

Overwhelm can leave you feeling “shut down”. You may become less talkative in order to focus more on the multiple challenges you are facing, in an attempt to increase your productivity. While restraining your emotions, you may be inclined not to verbalize your difficulties and feelings. The signs that you are overwhelmed can, therefore, be indicated by your behavior.

Multiple challenges, whether positive or negative, may weaken your natural abilities to adjust. If these have been going on as usual occurrences in your life, you may have not noticed that you have become overwhelmed. Also, you may be slipping into overwhelm if you have been too busy, satisfying people’s expectations, or doing whatever you feel necessary to stay on top of things.

If you are facing excessive feelings to the extent that your everyday functioning is affected, it could be experiencing emotional overwhelm. You can also feel physically unwell, irritable, withdrawn, tired, and not quite yourself. When behavioral changes become too glaring to ignore, pay attention.

Facing Overwhelm

Overwhelm can impact your life in ways you may not realize. It can intrude upon or damage your education efforts, job, career, and daily responsibilities, wasting precious time and energy. It can also damage your most cherished relationships. Overwhelm can complicate your physical health, lowering your immunity and allowing other medical conditions to arise. Before you let any of this impact your life and health, address and resolve your feelings of overwhelm.

Facing your emotions “head on” can be daunting. With a professional therapist independently contracted with Carolina Counseling Services – Pinehurst, NC, though, you can find the peace you need and deserve. Counseling can show you where the overwhelm is coming from and stop it from overpowering you or disabling your ability to adjust.

Counseling can be a logical approach to addressing overwhelm. You can do something about your concerns, prioritize them according to their importance in your life, and above all, prevent the recurrence of overwhelm.

Controlling the power your emotions have over you can sometimes seem too difficult, but it is possible. It’s time to find the resolution to the overwhelm in your life with a licensed, independent therapist contracted with Carolina Counseling Services – Pinehurst, NC. Explore and address your emotional overwhelm and enjoy life once more. Call, text, or email CCS today to make an appointment!

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