Grounding Yourself Amid Overwhelm

Source: Josh Bartok/ Used with permission

Written By Lizabeth Roemer, Ph.D., and Josh Bartok, M.S.

There are many understandable reasons to feel overwhelmed and distressed right now. Personal experiences, news stories, and other people’s experiences all bring reasons for distress and fear. And the sense of overwhelm can leave us feeling numb, stuck, or hopeless.

We feel these things too, and this post is not going to provide a clear solution for all of this. Instead, we want to share a few suggestions of ways to ground ourselves in the midst of overwhelm, so that we can better choose effective actions and engage fully in our lives even amid these understandable feelings.

1. Soothe your nervous system

Being bombarded with frightening images and events naturally leads our bodies to become activated to fight or flee (or freeze). Our muscles tense, our hearts and minds race, and we prepare for action. This is great if there is a single threat approaching us, but when we are being faced with unending potential risks, our nervous systems get overwhelmed and it becomes harder to engage with our lives. Knowing this, we can take time to soothe our system by gently releasing our muscles by engaging in soothing actions like baths, tea, lighting candles, wrapping ourselves in a blanket, cuddling with a loved one or pet, or anything else that signals our body to release; we can also practice formal techniques like mindfulness-based progressive muscle relaxation, in which we mindfully tense and release one muscle group at a time. Think about intentionally managing your exposure to the news or social media in order to protect your nervous system.

2. Remind yourself that your feelings make sense

When we get overwhelmed, we can easily add onto that overwhelm by telling ourselves to stop feeling the way we do, or to “get it together.” This only adds to our distress. Instead, remind yourself that the external world is overwhelming and upsetting. You come by your feelings honestly. Things are, in fact, very hard right now, and feeling distressed is, in a sense, accurate.

3. Find ways to connect to others

Isolation increases a sense of overwhelm and makes it harder to engage in the things that might feel meaningful to you. Identify people you can just be with, maybe not discussing current events for a little while and instead sharing a meal or a walk in nature or just being in each other’s presence while you work or read. Find the type of connection that works for you: it might be attending a community event, setting up your computer in a coffee shop, volunteering with an animal shelter, or even just saying hello to someone in an elevator. Notice which types of connection help you feel more able to do what’s important to you and pursue those, rather than types that make you want to withdraw.

4. Simply be with yourself as you are right now through your breath

This suggestion from Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts) by Ezra Bayda and Josh Bartok may be helpful:

“Sometimes when our emotions are particularly intense, nothing we’ve learned from spiritual practice [or psychology] seems relevant. Isn’t it when we become lost in our darkest emotions that we disconnect from the heart and judge ourselves most harshly? In these darkest moments, use the breath as a conduit to bring all the sensations of suffering into the center of the chest. In these moments, breathing even the most chaotic emotion directly into the heart is an act of compassion for ourselves. By opening to our personal core of pain, we open to the universal pain of being human. Though we may fear the pain will destroy us, opening to it connects with that which is truly indestructible.”

Try this out and see how it feels in your body. Sometimes it’s helpful to visualize that your heart (or your body) is expanding on the in-breath, becoming more spacious as you bring your emotions into your heart. See if you can notice the spaciousness, and then send the spaciousness back out into the world with your out-breath.

Remember that each practice, and any others you identify, are something to try on and see how it fits. Notice if the practice allows you more flexibility, more choice, and more groundedness so that you can continue living your life in the midst of uncertainty and overwhelm. Use this grounding as a base from which you can choose the actions that will help you to address the challenges you see, and continue to deepen your life, your relationships, and your experiences.

Josh Bartok is a contemplative photographer and life coach. He is the author of two children’s books and several collections of inspiring quotes.