Is Overwhelm Blocking Your Actions?

I'm creating a short series on the subject of overwhelm: it's causes, symptoms and solutions.

Yesterday as I slipped into the turquoise lap pool at a nearby YMCA, a man who looked approximately like the Pillsbury Dough Boy in goggles stared at me for so long, and so intently, I started to think he might have wanted me to bite into his buttery biscuits… cue the Dough Boy’s creepy “tee hee!”

But a few minutes later, as I pushed through the tranquil waters, my arms plowing ahead while I bobbed in a swift breaststroke, I noticed the guy was doing some unusual underwater flips and floats, gliding along at the bottom of the deep end, sinking down to sit on the bottom of the pool here and there, and spinning around under water, the way I used to do for fun as a kid.

Every time he noticed that I noticed his antics, the goggles would turn in my direction and stay pinned on me, the way a mouse watches a cat from its frozen pose in the corner. And cat-like, an idea crept up on me: the guy might have been trying to gauge my reaction to his odd behavior. He might have been embarrassed.

Sometimes when we flip our perspective, we see something entirely new.

And while I was in the pool flipping my perspective on this guy’s stare, I was also getting lost in thought, wondering what had happened to my Messy Human experiment for the week. And my perspective began to shift there too.

Finding My First Experiment

Last week I declared I’d be experimenting here at the Messy Human. The goal: finding what would inspire, what works for readers, and whether loosening my Tuesday deadline could stop this being “a grind” and open the aperture back to “creative project with value for others,” my starting goal at launch last year.

But as Tuesday’s “post deadline” came and went, an old instinctive pull towards “the grind,” gripped me. I’ve tried to break free, but unlearning overachiever mindsets is hard, even when they don’t serve lasting, long-term achievement.

(Do you also have the pull to grind? If so, this post is for you.)

As Tuesday passed and the pull to grind came on, I felt guilty that I had not published, and worried what I would write. Suddenly I became very stuck, blocked in my writing.

I briefly unstuck myself on Friday when delving into where my resistance was coming from. I noticed I’d created my own overwhelm.

I had too many options for my writing experiments… my mind was swirling with ideas. Plus, much in my non-writing life needed effort each day, with focused work that left me creatively depleted. Beyond this, things weighed on my mind that I “could” and “should” do — things no one had asked for but I had assigned myself anyway.

Yes, overwhelming.

My mind bubbled with questions. Which of these tasks should I do? What should I write about? When? How? Would I ever have time for it all? Could I do multiple things at once? Today, even? What would it take?

This overwhelm, I was certain, lay behind my resistance to writing.

I researched the psychological causes of resistance — and there are many ways it can arise. One way is through cognitive overload, which can stem from real exhaustion OR perceived stressful situations. Resistance can also come from limits to our brain’s resources, the way decision overload depletes the neurochemicals we need to make choices until we enter decision fatigue. And resistance can come from the downward spiral of avoidance that leads to anxiety that leads to more avoidance… and the cognitive load of processing those emotions.

So I decided to write about overwhelm and resistance, which generated lots of writing. But I found myself at the computer with too many words on the page and no meaning. Too many hours had passed. I was, again overwhelmed. Plus, dogged by my attachment to a Tuesday deadline, I felt harried and short on time.

But on Saturday, with the cool, calming water of the pool flowing over me, I began to see a potential experiment on my hands.

Instead of trying to write my one, weekly post about resistance and overwhelm, instead I could write a brief series of shorter posts, each considering one angle of overwhelm.

How would this way of writing feel, how would it go, and would people like it? Weren’t those insights the point of experimenting?

Overwhelm: The Mini-Series

Overwhelm is something we all deal with, but especially for those of us who have internalized societal / school / family / cultural / business / boss messages that high achievement is akin to “being good,” “being enough,” “doing the right thing,” and “being a good human being.”

Overwhelm has many underlying causes and many annoying (and debilitating) symptoms and outcomes. There are also ways out.

Some solutions to overwhelm are practical, like automating our decision-making process, or finding simple frameworks for cutting down our to-do list and removing or reframing non-essentials.

Some solutions to overwhelm are psychological, like how to shift our perception of what we can accomplish and how, transforming our stress response.

Some solutions may actually lie in the body, with certain movements and activities set to release us from its grip in much the way that researchers have found the body can help us release PTSD and loosen its grip on the mind.

I don’t know all the answers yet, but I do know there is rich material here.

And I now see exactly why it was hard to sort through this stuff at speed and fit it in one post.

In other words, overwhelm seems the perfect topic to try out a new way of exploring a subject, because it will help me cut back on my own overwhelm.

So, on to experiment one: Overwhelm, The Mini-Series.

xo,

Marisol