Overwhelm: 5 tips on what you can do about it

Is there a huge mountain of tasks piling up in front of you? Do you feel helpless, stressed and don't know how to get to the summit? In this article, we explain when and how a feeling of overwhelm arises and tell you 5 tips that you can use to conquer even the biggest mountain.

What is overwhelm?

In 1908, the American psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson recorded an important discovery that has become known as the Yerkes-Dodson law. Our performance, according to the law, depends on how much we feel activated.

This means that a little stress doesn't hurt us and, up to a point, even makes us more productive. However, if the stress goes beyond a certain level, our performance decreases again and a feeling of overwhelm arises.

Overwhelm can have many different causes: an excess of tasks, time pressure, emotional problems or a combination of all of these. So it's not so easy to say exactly who feels overwhelmed and when. A situation that is overwhelming for one person cannot lead to this feeling in another. Why is that?

Overwhelm – a question of evaluation

Whether a situation triggers stress in us and we experience it as overwhelming depends on how we evaluate it. While one person evaluates one and the same situation as potentially dangerous and therefore stressful, another person may perceive it as irrelevant or even positive. In addition to this initial assessment, it also plays a role whether you feel that you can handle the situation with your available resources.

In psychology, resources are simply defined as all factors that we can use to cope with a situation. This includes both external factors, such as a strong social environment, as well as internal and more subjective factors, such as the feeling of being able to trust one's own strengths. Stress and a feeling of being overwhelmed arise when you evaluate a situation as potentially stress-inducing and feel that you don't have enough resources to cope with it.

Try to evaluate the situation differently.

Our thought patterns are often learned and therefore difficult to control. Thoughts like "I can't do this" or "It's not going to work anyway" sometimes shoot into the head almost automatically. Perfectionist demands such as "Don't make mistakes" can also lead to you perceiving situations as overwhelming.

Preventing excessive demands through resource activation

One way to prevent stress and overwhelm is to activate your resources. Imagine a mountaineer who wants to climb Mount Everest. He will only be successful if he has trained sufficiently, carries the right tools with him and gets help from people who know the area. When overwhelmed, tasks seem like mountains to us, which are similarly challenging to conquer as Mount Everest. You'll be more successful in tackling these mountains the more resources you have at your disposal.

Consciously trying to evaluate the situation positively and encouraging yourself by thinking, for example, "I can do this" or "I can master this", supports you in reducing the feeling of being overwhelmed.

What you can do about overwhelm

Activating resources or changing thought patterns may seem very difficult to you in your overwhelm. Even if you feel very helpless at first and it is not easy to keep calm, you are not simply at the mercy of the feeling of being overwhelmed. Here are 5 helpful tips that can help you deal with or prevent your overwhelm.

1Changing the perspective

When you feel overwhelmed, problems often seem insurmountable. Changing one's perspective on the situation can already help to reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed. Try to take a curious attitude towards the situation: like a mountaineer who wants to climb an unknown peak. By perceiving what lies ahead as a "challenge" instead of a "problem", your view of the situation can already change and make you more confident.

2Anchor yourself in the moment

In moments when you feel overwhelmed, you probably have a thousand thoughts going through your head. Then it can quickly happen that you can no longer concentrate on the here-and-now, but lose yourself in your worries and doubts. To anchor yourself in the moment and organize your thoughts, the 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 exercise can help you. We have already explained this exercise for you in our article on stress prevention.

3Set priorities

Take a deep breath and prioritize to prevent overwhelm. Try to assess your tasks based on two categories and put them in an order: importance and urgency. Which tasks are how important and which of them require a solution and how urgently? Focus on important problems that urgently need a solution first, and then move on to the next task step by step. This strategy is also known as the Eisenhower Principle. You are also welcome to check off the things you have already done. This makes your progress visible and increases your motivation.

4Take breaks

Even if there are only 24 hours in a day, trying to save on food or relaxation won't help your overwhelm. It is important that you also allow yourself rest and breaks during the day. Half an hour can be enough to replenish your energy stores. Go for a walk, do sports, take a break in a nice café or just sit on the couch and close your eyes. Saving on sleep is also not a solution. Your body and mind need sleep to recover and be fit again.

The higher the mountain you have to climb, the more important it is to switch off from time to time. After all, you don't climb Mount Everest in one day.

5Ask for help and share

Of course, it is nice to receive praise and recognition for a project that you have completed independently. But as with a mountain hike, it can be dangerous to take on too much. We don't have to solve all the challenges that are brought to us on our own, nor can we do it without reaching the point where it becomes too much for us at some point.

Reflect on the people around you who are important to you. Share with them, discuss your problems with them, or ask them for help. This is not a weakness, but a strength – even the best mountaineers do not climb the high mountains alone.

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Overcoming your overwhelm can be very exhausting. But the more you communicate with your fellow human beings and tackle your problems step by step, the more satisfying the feeling will be when you have arrived at the top of the mountain, look up and see only the open sky.

If you continue to feel overwhelmed and stressed, you can find more tips against stress and how you can reduce stressin our blog. In addition, we at HelloBetter have developed the effective online course Burnout and Stress, in which we show you other methods to successfully deal with stress and cope with the feeling of being overwhelmed.