How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed – A Guide to Inner Peace

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by life. There’s a lot about your life that can be overwhelming. Work. Relationships. Marriage. Family life. Moving. Changing jobs. Sometimes just getting through the day can be a challenge.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed with life, it’s important to stop and take a moment to ground yourself. Notice where you feel the overwhelm in your body. Anxiety and stress caused by feeling overwhelmed by life can cause somatic symptoms such as headaches, migraines, nausea, tightness in your chest, and other physical manifestations of the overwhelm you feel.

In this brief guide, our online therapists in Ontario break down a few ways of how to stop feeling overwhelmed and to start being able to live your best life. Finding inner peace doesn’t mean that you’re without stress and overwhelm. It means that you can be in the middle of things that could be stressful and overwhelming and find calm within that.

Feeling Overwhelmed With Life

You might feel so overwhelmed that you can’t do anything. Anxiety and stress can cause you to feel overwhelmed to a breaking point. Everyday tasks seem impossible. This is especially true if you deal with mental health challenges. If you have a mental health diagnosis, such as an anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, or ADHD, you might get overwhelmed more easily.

Anxiety can cause any kind of stress to feel overwhelming, regardless of the source. Depression puts you in a state of complete overwhelm from everyday tasks. And if you have ADHD, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by everyday tasks. Other mental health challenges such as mood disorders and substance use disorders can also cause extreme overwhelm without the coping skills to manage it.

Figure out what works for you when it comes to coping skills. For example, if you can set your own hours at work or work from home that might take away some of the stress and overwhelm you feel due to anxiety, depression, or ADHD. If you struggle with addiction, everything can feel overwhelming. You numb the stress and pain with substances. But it’s important for your health and your relationships to find ways to manage the stress and overwhelm of life without turning to drugs and alcohol.

It’s also important to acknowledge what’s making you feel overwhelmed by life. Once you’ve identified the problem it’s a lot easier to figure out how to decrease your overwhelm. Aside from mental health challenges, you may be facing stress at work or a stressful home life.

If work has become so stressful that it’s running your life to the point of overwhelm and exhaustion, it might be time to reevaluate your job. Maybe you need to make a change. That might be either in the amount of work you do, your hours, where you work, or the type of work you do. Or it may mean switching jobs or careers entirely.

If home life has become too stressful and overwhelming, it’s time to look at what’s not working anymore and try to find ways to fix it. If you live with a partner, talk to your partner about what is stressing you out. If you’re a single parent with kids, see if you can find time to just be by yourself. If you live with someone who is abusive, seek counselling and find somewhere to go for your own safety. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, regardless of your home life situation.

Sometimes there isn’t just one particular thing that causes you to feel overwhelmed with life. Maybe it’s just a culmination of all of the things you’re dealing with. If that’s the case, you need to prioritize the things in your life that truly matter, like your health and your family and doing things that bring you joy, and get rid of the things that are causing you to feel overwhelmed by life.

Establish a Routine

Having a routine can take away some of the anxiety and stress you feel about your day when you feel overwhelmed with life.

Morning routines are a great way to set up the day. It doesn’t have to be anything too complicated. Something as simple as having your coffee in your favourite chair and listening to some music, reading a book for 30 minutes, meditating for 10 minutes, journalling, taking a brief walk, or a combination of all of the above, can really set you up for a successful day.

When you start to feel overwhelmed, return to your routine. Adapt the routine for what you need – it can change depending on your needs, but try to establish some kind of routine.

When considering a morning routine, don’t pressure yourself to have the “perfect” morning routine. Pressuring yourself to be constantly “productive” even in moments of rest won’t help you to stop feeling overwhelmed.

Bedtime routines are helpful too in order to destress at the end of the day. Make some tea, listen to a podcast or calming music, practise gratitude, meditate, stretch – again, it doesn’t matter what you do, just that you do something that works for you.

Depending on what you do for work you can also establish a mid-day routine. It can be as simple as eating your lunch with a specific person or group of people and taking a short walk around the building or outside.

It’s up to you to find the routine that works best to help you when you feel overwhelmed by life. Routines are dependable, and a good way to stop feeling overwhelmed is to have something you can depend on that won’t change. You can always go back to that routine.

Calm Your Nervous System

When you start feeling overwhelmed with life, see how you can ground yourself. Feel your feet on the floor, feel the chair beneath your body, notice the sounds and smells of your environment.

Rely on your senses to help you ground. Zero in on what you can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. Try sucking on hard candy. Use a diffuser with a calming scent, like lavender. Keep putty, playdough, or a stress ball to squeeze and touch when you need extra grounding and support. Listen to the sounds around you. Notice your surroundings and focus on one thing at a time to orient yourself when you start to feel overwhelmed by life. These are all things you can do in a public place, like work or school.

Another thing you can do to get grounded is to lie on the floor. This may seem silly and you can’t necessarily do it everywhere, but there’s literally nowhere closer to the ground you can get than lying on the floor.

Another way to get grounded is to apply pressure to your body, either with something like a weighted blanket or a giant bear hug. Even just wrapping your arms around yourself can help.

Take deep breaths with a longer exhale than inhale. You can count to 4 or 5 on the inhale and 6 or 7 on the exhale, for example. You can also practice door breathing, which is when you scan a doorway and as you scan across the top you inhale and as you scan down the sides you exhale and then repeat as you complete the doorway 3 full times.

Get Moving

Exercise is a great way to manage overwhelm. If you’re feeling stressed and pushed to your limit, intense exercise, even just for 20 minutes, can help relieve some of that stress. You can run, swim, get on an exercise bike, or even do jumping jacks and run in place.

Exercise doesn’t have to be a tough workout or running 10 miles. You can do other things like taking a brisk walk around the block.

Yoga is a great way to manage overwhelm because it forces you to focus on your breath, the movement, and the current moment. Getting into a habit of exercising, like a consistent yoga practice, can really change the way you manage overwhelm.

You can also do things like have a five-minute dance party. This lets you blow off steam, do something fun, and release some endorphins. Pick an upbeat song that you like and dance around, either solo or with a friend or partner. Playing for the sake of playing is an evidence-based way to relieve stress and enjoy life!

Give Yourself a Break

While it’s hard when you’re feeling overwhelmed with life to cut yourself some slack, it’s important that you do. Remember that you are strong and can handle more than you think you can. If you need a reminder of that, phone a friend and talk it through. They’ll probably tell you the same thing.

It’s also important to take actual breaks throughout your day. Build in time, if you can, to walk away from your desk. Take moments throughout the day for yourself.

If you work a job that has scheduled breaks, make sure you take them and make the most of them by grounding and breathing. If you start to get overwhelmed at the thought of a task or the day ahead of you, break the day down into small chunks.

Focus on one thing ahead of you – look at the stair rather than the whole staircase. Make lists or keep a calendar with notes of everything you have to do.

Maybe you’re feeling overwhelmed by life in general and need to take some time. Find something relaxing to do that can take your mind off of the things that are stressing you out and remember that it won’t be this way forever.

Take the pressure off of yourself to make things work out just the way you want them to because that might never happen. You don’t always control life, but you do have control of your response.

Try to always respond rather than react, meaning take some time before you respond to a situation with your first gut instinct. Often that leads to angry outbursts or fights, which only make the overwhelming feelings worse.

In order to figure out how to stop feeling overwhelmed, you have to look inward sometimes and find what’s causing the overwhelm and what you can do to manage it. Find a therapist that you feel safe enough with to explore what’s making you feel overwhelmed and stressed. At Fresh Solutions Therapy, we work with people who are constantly overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed.

If you’re ready to take the first step in learning how to stop feeling overwhelmed, contact us to schedule an appointment. We look forward to working with you as you grow and ultimately find peace.