In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast

Overwhelmed? Here's How to Handle Too Much on Your Plate

March 09, 2021 Bettina M Brown Season 2 Episode 65
In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast
Overwhelmed? Here's How to Handle Too Much on Your Plate
Show Notes Transcript



What can you do when you are overwhelmed?


Well... a lot!

Life is a series of challenges, and waiting for them to go away is not always a fruitful or beneficial pathway. Small changes that you can do NOW, may make all the difference.


Here is a quick article by the Mayo Clinic that even talks about #5, the benefits of laughing!









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Hello, hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina, and this is the platform I have chosen to talk about living a life that's really in alignment with your hopes, your dreams, and your goals, and finding that motivation and discipline to actually live that life. Basically walking away from that shame blame game that really does nothing for you, nor does it do anything for those that you love and care about.

And so I like to start off every show by saying that I am not a licensed counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist, anything of that nature. In fact, I am just a physical therapist who really loves to have one-on-one conversations and figure out what makes people. And what makes people do the things they do and believe the things they believe, because those thoughts and feelings really do translate into what their body physically will, will do.

And so today's topic is you know what to do when you have more than you can handle and. That can really affect our body physically as well. And so this little article talks about how life is a series of challenges, which, you know, we don't need to read an article to know that. But in between there, what do we do with that?

Because sometimes we feel that the challenges are not just like one after another, but they just seem to be piling up and not piling up around us. But literally, Piling up on top of us where there is no sunlight, there is no light, just darkness and a lot of heaviness. And so in that place we really have situations where we feel like there is just too much for us to handle because really there is a lot that we have to go through.

So in those moments, how do we then, you know, move forward and live a life that we really feel is our dream and we know is our passion and we, we know it's gotta be better than this. So there's some strategies that we can do for that. And the first one is take knowledge that you're feeling overwhelmed.

And now this one just seems a little bit like a duh moment for me. Like, yes, I get that you acknowledge it, but the thing is, Acknowledging it is, is number one for a reason. Because so many of us, and I've been there myself, but so many people will just ignore the situation. They'll deal with it another time.

They don't want to confront, they just want to slide on by. But the thing is, in order to deal with something, you have to acknowledge its existence. Right? And that's where that cliche comes around with the elephant in the room. Sometimes it's even a pink elephant or the gorilla. Either way, it's something very large that it's almost, it's almost funny that we're not acknowledging it, but that's really how human beings are, that we try to ignore that.

But when we acknowledge something, that's when we actually can deal with it. That's when we can start to take those heavy piles off of us. And what do we do when that happens? Well, we take a timeout. Now, unfortunately, timeout has a really bad connotation in that, you know, there's some kids sitting on a little rug, or you're sitting on the pair of stairs and, and just having a, a kind like you're being bad, like you deserve a punishment.

But sometimes a timeout is this time away where it's the best thing that you can actually do for yourself. It's the most rewarding, loving thing that you can do for yourself and probably for those around you is just take a moment. Just a change in scenery can do so much for us, and that change of scenery can be small.

It can be walking across the office, it can be walking outside, and sometimes it's just taking a drive out of your regular city, right? You see the same stuff, you know the same routine. You drive the same way, but you're not able to really change that perspective. You're not able to change your life doing the same things, right?

And isn't that the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. And that's why some people actually have recommended changing up the way you drive to work and changing up the way you drive back home because it just takes us out of our habit. Now, when you have this heavy load, what can you do?

Well, you can make a plan and spending some time thinking about something other than all the heavy load on top of you is part of that plan. So your natural response is to really recognize then that you feel frustrated, you feel overwhelmed. You may even be very irritated with yourself. Maybe part of this heavy situation that you're under, you know, living through and undergoing may have been partially from your own making.

It may have been one, you know, one moment, one event in time, or perhaps. A series of events that just continued and continued and now you're here feeling worse than ever, but rather than just focusing on your issues or rather than just focusing on the same negativity over and over again, I'm gonna turn my little article page over here.

It's really important to stop and, and look at life through someone else's eyes. Stop and look at life. But not look at your life, look at someone else's, because at some point in time we really, I mean, you know, yes, my problem is my problem, and that's, of course, you know, myself, I'm most important. I have to deal with that.

But when you're only looking at your own things, you end up becoming more and more selfish. Which is part of our survival mode, right? We have to be selfish in order to focus on our basic needs. That's, you know, humanity 1 0 1. But when we are in a place where our basic needs are met, it is important to look at other people.

What challenges are they facing? What support system do they or do they not have? And when you are looking at your own situation, how are you planning to move beyond it? What solutions do you see and how are you going to set them into motion? Just focusing on something different offers you a larger array of solutions to your own problem.

Number four here is distract yourself. Now, I feel that distract yourself and timeout is the same thing, but distract yourself with doing something that's actually fun. But in doing that thing that's actually fun, make sure it's also engaging your mind so that you are not falling right back into thinking about your heavy load that is on your shoulders.

And number five is talk to someone. Talk to your friends, talk to your family, talk to mental health professionals. We all have different skills, right? We have skills as a family member, but those skills are also skewed by the love that we have for a person. And when we love them, we emotionally invested and we, we don't judge that.

We tend to accept a lot. So is that the same kind of talking as it would be to a third party? Where they're not emotionally invested or financially invested in your life, such as a healthcare professional or even a coach, where they ask, and their intent is to ask you questions, to help you come up with your own solutions.

So about this talking, you know, we love to say, Hey, I just need to talk to you for a little bit. I need to vent. But in that moment too, recognizing. Whether or not you're venting or whether or not you're perseverating, there's a vent. You know, where you really can get things off your mind, off your shoulders.

And when you do that, and even if it's a few days later again, then, then you've really left it. But if you continue to vent and you continue to vent, there's a lot of research that shows you are actually taking yourself and placing yourself back in that story as though it's happening. Right now, you're going right back into that shame blame game that you have been.

You've been in that. So it's not a vent that is productive because true venting is productive. It's releasing you. But when you are venting to the point of complaining and your identity shifts to, I'm gonna complain. I'm gonna complain. When we complain, we suddenly become a victim. And when we are a victim, we lose our power.

So recognizing that talking to someone is really crucial and really important, but who we talk to, the manner we talk to them, and also what we talk about is just as important. Number six is list the good things in your life. Now, this can be mentally, I always recommend and encourage pen and paper because there's true weight to all of our words.

And I've told this story once, long time ago that I was in chemistry class a little bit ago, and we had to weigh a piece of paper and then we had to write our name on it and weigh that paper again. And of course, you know there's ink on the paper with your name and it weighs more. But there was also a significance in that, and that your name carries weight, you carry weight.

But so do your problems. And there's a lot of research that shows when you write it down, you literally like vacuum your brain out. You get to move it out. When you don't release it, it stays in there. And sometimes it's also kind of helpful if it stays in there, right? Because when it stays in there, then we have control over it.

That's actually a figment of our imagination. We don't have control over it, but having this ability to write things down that are good helps shift your brain and it helps you focus on the blessings in your life because maybe that load is heavy and maybe it's really dark right now, but you know that tomorrow or the day after, the day after that load will continue to lift, and you will see that light again.

And the last one is laugh. So few things in life really feel better than just having one of those really good laughs. You know, when you're watching a funny movie or spending time with people that always find a way to make you laugh, make you smile, that is really important. And again, There's research to support this.

You know, the oc the, uh, Mayo Clinic talks about how much our lungs, our heart, and our muscles benefit from this increase in oxygen. It literally makes our body function better. It also allows our brain to release these endorphins, you know, our happy chemicals, and it brings us to a better state. It reduces the amount of pain that we have.

And why would that happen? Well, there's a series be of of negative events in that when you are in a constant state of having too much on your shoulders, you actually reduce your immune system. You literally break down, literally break down. And I'm sure that you've either gone through this experience or you've seen it from other people.

That, you know, something major is happening in their life just by their physique that you know, either from their, eating their emotions, eating their feelings, or not eating anything that you can tell there's a major event or series events that's happening in their lives. But this has a consequence and it reduces not only their immune system, but also makes you more susceptible for pain, aches and pains.

So it is important to laugh. It is important to smile. It is important to get your body back into a state of happiness and positivity. So what I liked about this topic that I read from this little article here is that life is not always sunshine and rainbows, but the reality is you cannot have that rainbow unless there's some sort of storm that's been around.

And you cannot really appreciate the sunshine until you've had some clouds. But life happens where the clouds are there. Sometimes it's like this heavy fog that you're in, unfortunately you can't see in front of you, and it's really hard to make a plan of what that looks like. But it is so important to acknowledge that you're struggling and realize that you will be on the right path.

It just may take you a little bit longer, but using all of those techniques of distracting and talking and laughing, they're all basically things that put you back in a position that you wanna be in the first place. So sometimes in order to get where you wanna go, you need to not wait until things get better.

You don't need to wait until that relationship does come. You don't need to wait until your kids are finally in elementary school. You don't need to wait until you finally can retire. There are so many people who are playing life so safely that they're literally gently waiting to die because it's always gonna be another crisis, but having a life that you're actually living and taking that overwhelm.

As a lesson and moving right through it so you do have your sunshine and rainbows again is so important. So thank you so much for listening today. I appreciate your time and as always, I will see you guys next Tuesday and let's keep building one another up.