overwhelmed? this list may help
10 simple things to come back to when you're teetering + recommended reads
Overwhelm lives in my house alongside the bookshelves and the pot plants. It’s as persistent as the snack requests and laundry piles, as bracing as the dog barking at the postman. Sometimes I carry it with me through my day without much trouble and at other times it sits heavy in my chest prompting shallow breaths and languid limbs.
And I know I’m not alone. Our collective overwhelm is palpable; we are busy, frazzled, pressured, and on a fast track to burnout. Overwhelm stifles our ability to think creatively or flexibly, we lose the skills that assist with reasoning, managing and planning and it’s harder to access the part of the brain that helps us make sense of things.
I presume that most of my readers are mothers and, therefore, navigating a mental load that’s persistent; it doesn’t necessarily ease with older children, it merely changes shape (author Beth Berry calls it motherwhelmed). I think it’s important to reiterate that there is more capacity for your own work and creativity as your children become more independent; it’s definitely not as physically demanding as it is in the first few years when babies are on you feeding, pulling, tugging and nuzzling (I long for that connection and will also never forget the deep exhaustion of it).
Is overwhelm another name for the mental load of motherhood? Perhaps. Recognising its prevalence is a good reminder to accept its presence and learn to manage it. For me, that’s coming back to some very practical, grounding choices when I feel overwhelm dialling up. But in order to make those choices I need to be very aware of the overwhelm in the first place. You need to see it coming before you can tame it.
I took to Instagram last week to ask what overwhelm looked and felt like. Perhaps it was unedifying of me to do so, considering the first place many of us go when we’re overwhelmed is social media (because scrolling makes you feel better, said no-one ever). The response was as I expected; an enormous outpouring of familiar yet uncomfortable symptoms exacerbated by the idealisation of motherhood and the cost of living crisis:
paralysis and heaviness, both physical and mental
quick to snap, reactive, angry, panicked
head fog, inability to make decisions, forgetfulness
tight chest, shortness of breath, tense shoulders and jaw
swallowed by responsibility, overloaded by commitments
deep exhaustion and agitation
While it was one of the driving forces for my big life change, overwhelm is also something I’ve had to grapple with over the years as I raise four kids and juggle a career and a house and maintain some semblance of grounding (all the things we’re all trying to do, every day).
It’s most definitely possible to live with overwhelm and not let it dictate your life. I know this for certain. I’ll caveat this with the fact that it still takes hold of me more often than I’d like and I live with the privilege of being a middle-income earner, in a supportive relationship with good health and emotional resilience.
While I’ve accepted that overwhelm is a constant, I know I’ve got the capacity to recognise it. I (like you) detest the way it makes me feel so I’ve been really proactive with recognising when it’s creeping up on me. And it really does creep, doesn’t it? But I still need reminding - every day of every week - that the simple things I do each day matter and form the foundation for a more grounded, less overwhelmed existence. We need to lean on the practical in order to move forward. Here’s how I do it: