When it all hits at once
I bet you have a lot going on, just like I do. I hit a nasty emotional wall last week and ended up slumped in my friend Vikkie’s soft lounge chair. She’s smart, witty, and has a house full of artistic wonders. I wanted to run away from my world, just for a bit. It was all just too much.
As I sat there, I went through my mental scroll of concerns and responsibilities:
– Every time I turn on the news, it seems worse, and I worry for my family’s safety.
– Do I need drought-tolerant landscaping because I care about climate change, or just because I’m tired of ridiculous water bills?
– My career obligations are constant.
– I’m navigating the hormonal chaos of a tween while riding the tail end of my own hormone journey.
– Midlife crisis? Me? Him? Both?
– I’m supporting my elderly mom, and all the messy emotions that come with that.
– There are silly social obligations that somehow feel urgent in the moment.
– I’m waiting to hear back about a dear friend’s biopsy.
– And dear God, I miss my eyesight. I scan the room for one of the 57 pairs of reading glasses I’ve stashed around the house, but, of course, none are within reach.
So perhaps, like me, you’re overwhelmed with the sheer volume of concerns, decisions, and demands in your life.
The real problem isn’t the big stuff
The funny thing is, the true problem didn’t hit me until later, while staring at the wall in the shower, pondering the state of the grout.
It’s not the big problems that take me out.
It’s not even the unsolvable ones, like “How do we cope with global devastation in a sea of misinformation?” Or the “life stage” problems I should have expected, like tween angst (a front-row seat to something I barely survived the first time), or caring for my aging parent (the inevitable mirror image of my own life arc).
It’s not the PTA meetings, the community connections, or even the internal debate over whether it’s time for a colonoscopy.
It’s this: Everything is being treated like it’s equally important.
When everything feels urgent, nothing is
The life-altering, the manageable, the baked-in, the petty — they’re all showing up at the same volume. The mind is so overloaded that it loses the ability to prioritize. Everything registers as an emergency.
This is the root of feeling overwhelmed.
Without a sense of hierarchy, without the ability to scale and sort, we lose our power. We’re paralyzed by the pile.
It’s like organizing a cluttered room. If everything is treated as equally important, nothing stands out. Nothing is functional. Nothing is beautiful. Grandma’s antique table is buried beneath reusable shopping bags.
We don’t believe that all things are equal, but when we fail to prioritize, we live like they are.
So, what now?
How do we sort through our messy, overcrowded, function-confused minds? How do we hold both the question of which pet food to buy and the desire to make a meaningful impact on the world?
Start with mindfulness.
Not the buzzy, incense-burning kind (unless that’s your thing). I mean the simple act of being present with this moment.
Mindfulness means we stop time-traveling to the next crisis or the last mistake. We land right here. This breath. This second.
And from this still place, we can see the tiny baby step that’s being asked of us right now. Sometimes that step is just to rest.
We don’t need the whole plan. We don’t need to fix it all at once. We just need to remember: We are always enough. Always worthy. Always whole.
Even in the chaos.
Because in the clarity of the present moment lies the only real cure for overwhelm.
