What’s causing overwhelm in your life right now?
Might seem like a question with an obvious answer in the middle of a pandemic. And I 100% agree with people who say it’s valid to feel overwhelmed at this time, but also here’s something I’ve observed:
How overwhelming the pandemic has been for an individual is proportionate to how much overwhelm that person was experiencing before it started.
- People who already felt at ease have handled the pandemic with relative ease
- People who were already crushed by chaos and overwhelm capitulated to the pandemic, becoming either the most likely to suffer with COVID-19 or people who have not left their homes in the past year.
- People in the middle – who were already experiencing life in fits and starts, flying high at some moments and burned out at others – have been experiencing the pandemic with similar ups and downs.
What that clarifies is, the pandemic has been an amplifier – of many things, but in this context particularly of how we each experience overwhelm.
It also clarifies that overwhelm isn’t so much about external circumstances but about how we respond to them. After all, how could billions of people live through the same pandemic and experience it in such different ways?
Even I had my experiences amplified – which sent me down a path of exploration that led me to this discovery:
Some people have a subconscious avoidance (fear) of overwhelm. Some people have a subconscious attachment to overwhelm. And some people have both.
I was in that last group, as it turns out. (Always the overachiever, LOL.) My lifelong way of dealing with overwhelm has been to avoid it by sitting on the sofa, watching TV and hoping overwhelm (in the form of all the things I needed to get done) doesn’t find me.
But I also had an attachment to overwhelm, which means that I every time I tried to do something that might bring ease into my life, I unconsciously sabotaged it.
I was great at making plans, coming up with systems, even hiring people to help me – but then I would not follow through on the plans, not use the systems, or not properly delegate to the people I’d hired.
I was perpetually creating overwhelm that I was then trying to avoid. In that light, it’s amazing I’ve succeeded at all!
I was sabotaging not just business plans but also relationships, even my physical body to make sure overwhelm never went away. My cortisol levels had been excessively high since puberty, contributing to significant hormonal imbalances, massive weight gain, and constant low-grade state of anxiety that I was so accustomed to, I never noticed it until it was gone.
It’s as if I’d hit puberty and my mind and body decided that feeling overwhelmed was a required part of adulthood.
And you might ask, “Isn’t it though?” That’s certainly what we’re taught to expect. So imagine if I told you it doesn’t have to be this way.
What if overwhelm is something we experience only because our parents did and so we expect we must too?
What if it’s possible to change the subconscious patterns that not only attract overwhelming circumstances but also govern our responses to them?
I can tell you it is possible to change. As soon as I made this discovery in myself, I dug in and cleared my subconscious beliefs and emotional patterns about overwhelm.
Immediately, I noticed significant changes start to happen:
- My brain stopped fogging up. (Yup, that was a thing too!)
- I stopped sabotaging my business plans, spiritual practices, and self-care.
- My body immediately started showing signs that cortisol levels were dropping and staying down.
- My other hormones started rebalancing.
- Some of my food sensitivities immediately disappeared.
- And my pants started falling down from the fat that melted away.
I have since applied these concepts about overwhelm with my Platinum clients and seen results that suggest these observations don’t apply to just me.
Has what I’ve shared pinged for you too?
Do you feel like every time you try to organize your life and bring more ease into it, you end up making more of a mess?
If you want to understand more about why you have these overwhelm patterns and get help letting go of them, then I have an invitation for you:
On Saturday, May 1 at 10 AM EDT, I’ll be leading a live online masterclass I’ve titled “The Overwhelm Detox.”
- During the class, I’ll shed more light about what’s going on in your mind with respect to overwhelm.
- We’ll go through an exercise that helps you identify your specific patterns for creating or avoiding overwhelm.
- And finally – the best part! – I’ll conduct a live healing session in which we will guide your mind to release the patterns that keep you creating and/or avoiding overwhelm.
I hope you’ll join me, because I’m very excited about the impact that releasing these patterns could have for you and everyone I can reach with this masterclass.
(If you can’t join live, register anyway so that you can get the recording. And yes, the healing portion will be just as effective via recording.)
Tell your friends, too. 🙂