How to Deal with Feeling Overwhelmed (Research-Backed Tips)

When inundated with too many demands on your time and energy, it can become impossible to think clearly and act with purpose. Learning how to deal with feeling overwhelmed will empower you to reclaim a sense of calm and focus, even when nothing seems to go right.

Not all stress is harmful, and sometimes, overwhelm can be a useful challenge to your status quo — if you know how to respond. 

This article will show you how to deal with feeling overwhelmed so you can manage stress, maintain emotional well-being, and even turn stressful situations into powerful motivators to level up your life. 

How to deal with being overwhelmed?

When you really dive deep, overwhelm comes from fear.

We often experience overwhelm when too much is happening that feels outside of our control. Life throws way too many curve balls at once, triggering fear and inducing a stress response in the body and mind.

In times of change and challenge, we can’t predict what will happen, whether we’ll be up to the task, or if things will work out.

If you have experienced it, you already know how much being overwhelmed influences your ability to act and think in a rational fashion. One domino brings down the whole row, irrational thoughts spilling over into irrational behaviors.

Sometimes it can feel intense, preventing us from performing at our best. Even mundane, simple tasks feel impossible.

Many things can make you feel overwhelmed. Stressors can be psychological, like limited thinking, information overload, or some form of trauma. 

You can feel overwhelmed at work, because of a toxic boss or responsibility over too many things. 

You may also experience overwhelm due to physical stress, like illness, injury, or lack of sleep. 

Overwhelm doesn’t distinguish between physical and psychological. Your body reacts to any form of stress in the same way. 

The trick: understanding what to do when you feel overwhelmed.

When overwhelm helps

As unpleasant as it may feel, sometimes stress can play a positive role, or even help us. Consider if you’ve had one of these experiences:

We were overwhelmed by all the positive reviews at our grand opening event.

I felt overwhelmed by the empathy and understanding my team showed when my father passed away.

Stress, in certain situations, can improve performance and help us live up to our highest potential. Many of us experienced stress during the recent pandemic. The overwhelm of that period:

• Forced many of us to recognize what really matters and prioritize our lives. 
• Motivated many to help their family, friends, neighbors, and community. 
• Created unprecedented collaborative action between doctors and scientists around the world.

Perhaps you’re even listening today because you’ve had an unpleasant bout with overwhelm and you want to fight back – count that as a positive!

I understand the pain and panic that happen when you feel overwhelmed with life. I want to help you start alleviating that stress by changing your mindset. 

Open your mind to the notion that overwhelm doesn’t always translate into something that keeps you from being your best. It can also be a source of information and motivation — alerting you that something needs to change and spurring you to take control of your life.

When overwhelm hurts

When you allow overwhelm to run rampant, it can feel like drowning in a sea of panic. It’s almost like trying to swim without natural boundaries like a shoreline where you can rest.

Consider what it feels like when you have experienced overwhelm negatively:

We were overwhelmed by the competition and lost our advantage in the marketplace.

He was thrilled to have a chance to lead, but quickly overwhelmed his team with challenges, reading materials, and extra assignments.

I am overwhelmed by the number of tasks I need to accomplish today.

And as Harvard Health points out: sometimes the body overreacts. The body’s stress response is the same whether we are in physical danger or not. This happens with all kinds of non life-threatening situations, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties. (Sound familiar?)

What happens in the body when you feel overwhelmed

Learning how to deal with overwhelm starts with understanding the cause of it. Once we understand the science of what happens in the body when we are stressed, we can take back control and learn how to overcome overwhelm. 

That way, when we do apply a solution, we can rely on the right strategies to match the special brand of stress, concern, and chaos known as overwhelm.

The science of stress

Knowing how overwhelm affects the body will help you recognize when it’s happening and release the stress in a healthy way.

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. In his podcast, Huberman Lab, he explains that our bodies have hard-wired systems to manage stress. 

Human beings inherited this stress response over millions of years of evolution. These highly-developed systems helped our ancestors survive treacherous, often life or death situations, like running away from a lion or hunting for food. 

At the moment of stress, the sympathetic chain ganglia in the middle of your body activates. Your body releases acetylcholine, a chemical that normally helps move muscles. Other neurons respond to that reaction by releasing adrenaline (or epinephrine).

That epinephrine activates specific parts of the body needed to respond to stressful situations, like speeding up the heart to support movement (like escaping from a bear or lion). The body focuses extra energy on the systems needed to escape danger. 

At the same time, other systems take a back seat until you are safe, like digestion. That’s why you may lose your appetite before a big exam or important meeting.

The stress response tells your body to “do something!” or “say something!” It pushes you into action, a sense of agitation that makes you want to move. 

Stress makes you more likely to say something without thinking and use a harmful communication style. That’s why most of us can recall a time when we’ve said something while stressed that we regret later.

You may try to ignore or suppress your body’s stress response. But telling yourself to just “calm down” only agitates you even more; you’re working against your system. You’ll feel that resistance in your body. 

When your body goes into stress mode, you need to learn to work with it—not against it. 

What to do when you feel overwhelmed

You can’t just ignore stress or wish it away. 

But when you’re overwhelmed, your decision-making and problem-solving skills are at their worst. It’s not a space from which to make big decisions like whether to quit your job or drastically change your life.

When you’ve regained a sense of calm, you can more effectively access the thinking, creative parts of your brain. Then, you can focus on finding solutions to the challenges and stressful situations in your life.

These strategies will help you not just manage overwhelm, but use it to motivate you in setting goals to create the life you want.

1. Calm the nervous system with a physiological sigh

When you feel overwhelmed, the first thing you need to do is calm your nervous system. 

When your body goes into stress-response, you want to activate the neutralizing parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for reducing stress. 

You can do that with a little trick called the physiological sigh. 

The physiological sigh is like a lever to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. It helps in the heat of the moment, reducing panic and providing a real-time calming effect.

One or two physiological sighs are enough to calm down fast and to stop feeling overwhelmed, and it’s backed by science. When you activate the parasympathetic nervous system with the psychological sigh, you free up more brain space for creativity in deciding what to do next.

2. Practice regular self-care for long-term resilience

We know that we should exercise regularly, get enough sleep, and eat the right kinds of food – that will help us build resilience and cope with long-term stress. That way, when stressful situations arise, your body will function at its best, ready to fire on all cylinders. 

Follow these healthy habits to cope with stress better:

• Get enough sleep: Doctors recommend ~8 hours per night
• Eat a well-balanced, nutritious diet: Include stress relieving foods like fish, poultry, fruits, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and healthy fats
• Exercise regularly: Harvard Health says exercise reduces stress hormones
• Drink water: Even mild dehydration can impair brain function, according to studies

3. Use the 80-20 rule to eliminate sources of stress

When you follow a healthy routine and practice stress management techniques— just a little bit goes a long way. 

Let’s take the Pareto Principle a step further: 

I observed this strategy in action when I read, To Don’t List: Project Planning for Creative People, a book by Donald Roos. Roos tells the story of a psychologist invited to the Pentagon to present a workshop for a group of generals about time and resource management. 

In the beginning of the workshop, the psychologist asked the generals to write down, in 25 words or less, their strategy for managing time and resources. 

According to Roos, all the generals failed to do this except the only woman in the group – an accomplished general who had made her way up through the ranks, including fighting in the Iraq War. 

Here’s her strategy:

First I make a list of priorities. Then I cross out everything from three downwards.

You may wonder, “She only picks three?” And that is the essence of this step in addressing and regulating yourself through overwhelm. 

When you feel overwhelmed, first make sure you’ve actually calmed down (through steps like the physiological sigh). 

Next, get curious about just how many things are flooding your mind. Get out a sticky notepad or draw a thought-map, or grab several scraps of paper. Jot down everything vying for your attention, one item per sticky note. Lay all the notes out on the table.

Now, let’s apply the Pareto Principle. Say you have 10 items that you wrote down. Apply the 80/20 rule by choosing two critical areas to focus on. 

When you commit and make a plan to solve 20% of the major sources of your stress, you’ll experience a sense of relief. At the same time, you’ll get a boost of confidence in your ability to handle the remaining 80%. 

It can be difficult to decide which items to prioritize first. If you can’t decide, try closing your eyes, taking a few deep breaths, and listening to your intuition about what would help you the most.

Or just pick one at random and get to work!

4. Work on setting boundaries

When feeling overwhelmed is a recurring theme in your life, despite your best efforts to manage stress, establishing healthy boundaries can help.

If you have poor boundaries, you may find yourself overwhelmed trying to please everyone at the expense of your own health and well-being. People may take advantage of you in relationships or at work, without boundaries around how available you are to fix their problems. 

You may even overwhelm yourself by having no boundaries around how many projects you take on or how fast you’ll go in pursuit of a long-term goal.

Learn how to set boundaries and you’ll make sure that any stress you allow into your life is there for a good reason — one that aligns with your values or important goals.

Stress and overwhelm will still happen. Panicking or trying to ignore it will only make the situation worse. 

Instead, recognize the stress response. Understand the reactions happening in your body and what triggers your feelings of overwhelm. 

That way, the next time you feel stressed, you’ll have the tools to strategically lessen the amount of time overwhelm has a chance to control you. 

When you’re ready to stop letting overwhelm shut you down, we can help.

Check out our online course Take Control to start embodying your authentic self and living a life of passion and purpose.