When You Feel Overwhelmed

 

Things can seem pretty gloomy sometimes. You can't see any light at the end of the tunnel. The reason can be anything - a sudden wave of sadness for no particular reason, mood swings, mental/hormonal disorders, facing the hard truths which you are not able to digest, a series of blows in personal life, everything falling apart, a series of your mistakes snowballing into one giant black hole, everyone letting you down or you realizing that you have let everyone down including and especially yourself. Your voice chokes, eyes tear up, there's a lump in your throat which needs to be watered down, ears ring fading out all the voices into background, head hurts as if the nerves are all going to pop out. Your overloaded brain just wants to abandon everything. You can't see the point of doing anything - every sense in your body says it's all futile. You have a sinking feeling. You can't breathe, you feel suffocated.

You think you can't say this to anyone, because may be you have already said this to them, or you think you don't have any justifiable reason to feel this way or you think that stuff like this doesn't make sense to anyone around you.

You think you are on your own. You may actually be on your own. The problem is you are not that sad voice which has taken the wheel right now. But you don't know that, you are in no state to realize that. Yet you must somehow pull yourself out of this. Because if there are infinite possibilities that can happen based on your choices, there are definitely a good amount of choices to make things better.

• Breathe.
• Don't feel like doing anything? Just let it be.
• Overloaded brain? Brain dump all the thoughts onto paper - from that mental tab to do laundry to that anxiety causing major life decision - pen down everything.
• Too much to confront everything on paper right now? Take a nap - anything ranging from 20 mins to hours as your body and mind need.
• Relax all the restrictions - allow yourself to take a break.
• Can you try to get out of that place, try if you can put up some energy into your limbs? Take a short walk outside? Or on terrace?
• When you are ready to take a look at your dreaded list of things - after hours or after days, pick the easier ones and see if you can get them done. If not, can anyone help you out on this? You don't have to open up about your mental state if you don't want to, you just need to seek help on a particular task.

Breathe. One step at a time. Pick yourself up.

When you finally feel better, don't let the things from the list or any new ones take over your life ever again. If you have experienced this way in the past, chances are that you will encounter the same state again and again till you close those loops or let them go. Until you do so, they will always control you and they will always have the power to drag you back.

Walk slow, but never backwards. Set high standards for yourself, keep raising your standards and never lower them.

But first, breathe. 

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