When was the last time you felt overwhelmed?
When you’re overwhelmed, or emotionally activated, it often doesn’t feel good. You might feel tension in your muscles, a tightness in your chest, or the urge to cry. You might want to run away and hide, or you might feel frozen at times. You might even feel like you need to lash out to protect yourself. Feeling like this can be intense, but there are ways you can calm down when you’re overwhelmed.
Why is it hard to function when you’re overwhelmed?
When you’re overwhelmed or emotionally activated, it can be hard to do the things you normally do. You might feel stuck or like you can’t make a choice. The moment might feel like it stretches on forever, because it’s so uncomfortable.
When this happens, remember that there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s hard to cope when you’re overwhelmed because your body is preparing to protect you. When your body goes into protection mode, it runs on instinct to keep you safe. This is because, as humans evolved, we needed to have a way to quickly protect ourselves from danger. Spending too much time thinking about what to do would slow you down and leave you vulnerable to danger, so our bodies learned to take over.
When we’re stressed or overwhelmed, our bodies go back into this state.
When this happens, your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) comes online, and gets you ready for danger via your fight, flight, or freeze response. This takes a lot of energy, and to make sure you have enough energy your body shuts down functions that aren’t essential to your survival.
For example, your digestion slows down when your fight or flight response kicks on. It’s more important to your survival for you to be able to run away and hide than it is to digest your lunch. When your SNS is active, your Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) goes offline, which is the part of your nervous system that calms things back down.
When you’re stressed out or overwhelmed and your sympathetic nervous system is activated, it’s harder for you to calm down. That’s because this system is designed to bypass your thinking brain and do what it needs to do to protect you. To calm down and bring your thinking brain back online again takes some practice.
The next time you’re feeling overwhelmed, try using one of these 5 ways to calm down:
Move your body
Being overwhelmed or stressed can sometimes come with extra energy. One way to use that energy is to move your body in a way that feels good. Some people do intense exercise like running when they’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and some prefer less vigorous movement, like walking the dog.
Even if you don’t get a burst of energy when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, sometimes moving around can be a great way to loosen up and feel more relaxed afterwards. You don’t have to move for any set amount of time, just until you feel more in control of your emotions.
Focus on your senses
Using your senses to ground yourself can be helpful when you’re overwhelmed. It’s easy to get caught up in worries for the future or stress about things that happened in the past, but doing so takes you out of the present moment. Grounding is a way to self-soothe that helps you come back to the present moment you can access in a number of different ways. To use your senses to ground yourself back in the present moment, try doing the following:
- Name 5 things you can see
- Name 4 things you can hear
- Name 3 things you can feel
- Name 2 things you can smell
- Name 1 thing you can taste
Take deep breaths
Using your breath to calm down is something that sounds really easy but actually takes practice. Many of us unconsciously hold our breath when we are stressed or overwhelmed. Being in a state of overwhelm can leave you feeling disconnected from your body, which makes it even harder to deepen your breathing. Try to notice when your breath is getting more shallow and make an effort to deepen each inhale and exhale. Deepening your breaths will help your parasympathetic nervous system come back online, which will help you calm down.
Take a break
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it can be a sign that you need a break. We often try to push ourselves to do the most at all times, but we need rest even if we don’t want to admit it. When you feel so overwhelmed emotionally that you can’t function, it’s time to take a break. Whether that means walking away from what you’re doing, taking a pause in your conversation, or even taking a nap to reset your mind, taking a break can help you feel like your normal self again.
Distract yourself
Sometimes a distraction is just the thing you need to help cope with being overwhelmed. Feelings don’t last forever, so this period of being overwhelmed will eventually pass. Try to find ways to distract yourself until you feel more calm and less reactive. Some people use ice or cold water as a distraction when they’re really upset or overwhelmed, because it’s hard to focus on anything else when you’re holding an ice cube or dunking your head in cold water.
Other types of distractions could be watching a favorite show or movie, playing a video game, doing a puzzle, calling a friend, playing with a pet, dancing around to a favorite album, or helping someone else with something for a bit. Try a few different things to see what works best for you!
