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Emotional Wellness

Managing Overwhelm

Chronic overwhelm is one of the major causes of anxiety and anxiety disorders. When you’re overwhelmed, your mind overloads with all that’s going on. It takes a toll on your nervous, immune and hormonal systems, and left unattended will likely produce cycles of anxiety, fatigue and temporary despair.

 

Your body sends physical warning signs but your mind can easily override warning signals until you spiral down into overwhelm. Having strategies in place to refer to when you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed is a helpful tool.  

 

There are many strategies for managing Overwhelm.  It is important to find the strategy that works best for you.  When you find success with a strategy you will be more likely to refer to it when needed.  Emotional Wellness is an active ongoing process, be patient with yourself, 

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Strategies for Overwhelm

  1. Accept your anxiety:

    1. ​What to do when Emotions Overwhelm You - Psychology Today

    2. Dealing With Overwhelming Emotions - Health Guidance​

    3. Stress Management: Strategies For Tackling Extreme Overwhelm - Huff Post

  2. Change overwhelm inducing thoughts: Thoughts of uncontrollability or unpredictability are the backbone of overwhelm. It can be the unrealistic or unreasonable thoughts that induce our feeling of overwhelm. It’s important to pay attention to what we tell ourselves and learn to create helpful thoughts.

    1. How to Change Your Thoughts - The Daily Positive

    2. How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed - Psych Alive

    3. Mind Over Medicine - Lissa Rankin MD

  3. Develop Coping Strategies In Advance

    1. Build Coping Skills that Stand the Test of Time - Inner Health Studio​​​

    2. Cancer Diagnosis: 11 Tips for Coping - Mayo Clinic

  4. Engage in an activity that you enjoy:  It's not just about too many overwhelming things on your plate, but also about too few things on your plate that strengthen you or build you up.  Find time for the activities that will give you strength and resilience to get through everything else.

    1. How to Make More Time For the Things You Love - Richly Rooted 

    2. Relieve Stress With A Bath Meditation -VeryWellMind.com

  5. Exercise:

    1. Helping Patients Set Fitness Goals​ - AAFP

  6. Find Support: When people get sick or in trouble, they often lose social support rather than gain it. 

    1. Social support: Tap this tool to beat stress - Mayo Clinic

    2. Therapists in Canada - Psychology Today​

    3. Melanoma Connect -Facebook Group

    4. Melanoma Wellness Canada - Health Unlocked

  7. Focus on what you are doing:  Think about what you are doing rather than what you’re not getting done. Worry and time have an inverse relationship. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

    1. You're More Resilient Than You Give Yourself Credit For - Harvard Business Review

  8. Get it Out of Your Head: Take the ‘overwhelm’ out of your head and put it on paper, where you can distance yourself from it a bit.

    1. The Health Benefits of Journaling - PsychCentral

    2. How To Start A Journal and Keep it Up - The Guardian

  9. Practice Mindfulness: When you’re consumed with what may or may not happen in several minutes or months it's harder to appreciate right now.  

    1. How to Reduce the Overwhelm of Intense Emotions​ - Strong Sensitive Souls

    2. Overwhelmed? These 6 Strategies May Help -PsychCentral

    3. 6 Simple Steps to Handle Overwhelm - Simple Mindfulness

    4. Benefits of Mindfulness - HealthGuide.org

    5. Mindfulness and the Breath - thebreathproject.org

    6. 22 Mindfulness Exercises, Techniques & Activities for Adults - positivepsychologyprogram.com

  10. Take a deep breath: encourages our body’s relaxation response

    1. 6 Breathing Exercises to Relax in 10 Minutes or Less - Greatest  

    2. Three Breathing Exercises and Techniques - DrWeil.com​

    3. Breathing Techniques for Stress Relief - WebMD

    4. Mindfulness and the Breath - thebreathproject.org​

  11. Take out the significance: Assume objectivity about an issue or feeling, as if it were another person having this problem. One of the first things you may notice is how much more compassionate and understanding you are toward this imagined person than you have been toward yourself.

    1. Solution for Overwhelm - Heart Math​

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