Managing overwhelm- keep calm and be Solution Focused 19 01 21

Managing overwhelm…

Keep Calm and be Solution Focused! Listen here

Breaking with tradition today…our regular readers will know that each of our weekly blogs finishes with a quote…This week, we both start and end with one!

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”
Pemma Chodron

Every day is a new dawn…and using the above metaphor, we determine the events of the day…Consider each day to be a blank canvass, you choose the picture that you draw.

One of the definitions of overwhelm is “bury or drown beneath a huge mass of something” …Overwhelm can manifest itself in any manner of situations…our home life and our work lives. Both will relate to a situation where we feel overcome by emotion due to a situation/s where we feel unable to cope. It’s not the situation either…it’s our emotions and how we handle them…. the question…what do we do?

1. Keep calm and be Solution Focused…Its important to recognize what’s in your control. That’s all that we can influence. Similarly, to understand where negative stimuli comes from, and to stop the flow. This could be news items…either in the press or on television. It’s often said that if you suffer from depression, don’t watch the news…its rarely good, and can affect our own moods…yet we can’t influence the news!
2. In a strange way, the fact that you can acknowledge feelings of overwhelm, means that you self-aware…this then means that we can instigate “cause and effect” …Write down all of the things that you feel overwhelmed by (cause), and then cross out those you can’t control…equally, those which in reality have little importance…we over catastrophise.
3. Affirmations & self-talk are important. We have hindering self-talk and helpful self- talk.  Affirmations are doing statements that are best said first thing in the morning…something that drives your self-talk…” I can do this, by the end of the day, I will have accomplished three important tasks” etc.
4. While it may not seem it at the time, much of overwhelm is created by our own “feelings and emotions”. By changing the way that we think about any situation, changes our beliefs, drives our attitudes, influences our “feelings and emotions” and ultimately our behaviours.