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Navigating the current state of the world and [gestures at everything] affect each of us in many ways. As we cope with unprecedented times, many of us are struggling with feeling emotionally overwhelmed in response to natural disasters, global crises, economic challenges, and more in addition to the usual challenges of everyday life. Maybe you constantly feel tense, scattered, anxious, tearful, or on edge. But if there’s one constant, it’s that we’re all feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
As you explore what to do when you feel overwhelmed so you can function in all the ways you need, it helps to understand how to acknowledge and respond to your emotions rather than dissociate or react to them. And you can do that in any situation, whether you’re in public or alone. As you learn how to do this, you might be surprised at the resilience you find within yourself.
What to Do When You Feel Overwhelmed
These steps can help you break the exhausting cycle of overwhelm, avoidance, and exhaustion. It may take practice to feel comfortable sitting with your emotions, so allow yourself some time. Note that is sometimes essential to process your grief, whether in response to the loss of a situation or a person, with the assistance of a qualified therapist or support group.
1. Don’t Run From Your Sensations
We experience emotions not just as intangible feelings but as physical sensations in our bodies and minds. Consider the last time you felt a tense belly, pounding heart, or racing thoughts. Rather than ignoring them or resisting it, try to pause and experience these sensations when you’re emotionally overwhelmed. Simply feel them.
This felt experience may provide information that can help you identify the underlying emotions. You may understand them right away or you may only become aware of them after you repeatedly observe your patterns. For example, if your muscles tense each time you sign onto social media or a news site, be curious why. What emotion do you feel? Fear? Dread? Anger? Helplessness?
2. Observe Yourself
After you begin to witness your emotions, rather than resist them, you automatically start to disentangle yourself from conditioned patterning. Also, you can witness any stories you might be creating about your emotions or your situation. Ask, “What is the underlying expectation or belief that’s giving rise to this emotion?”
Simply notice what comes to you when you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed. This simple exercise can help you expand your capacity for compassion toward not only yourself but others.
3. Know That You’re Okay
Settle into any practice that brings you a sense of stability or security, such as slowing your breath, sitting still in a longheld stretch, even resting your palms on your abdomen or chest. Let yourself feel more connected to you, even if only for several seconds.
Notice if your emotions change or become less loud. No matter what emotions are present and whether or not they immediately recede, know that there’s nothing inherently wrong with them—or with you.
4. Release Unrealistic Expectations
It’s understandable to want circumstances to be different. But clinging to a running narrative in your head about how things “should be” changes nothing about your external reality. Additionally, it keeps your internal reality stuck in a loop of unresolved emotions and continued suffering.
To step ruminating, bring more awareness to your thoughts so you become aware when you’ve unknowingly slip into fiction writing. Keep returning to the present moment, keeping your breath slow and noticing what comes up for you. This can take practice. There’s no judgment. Simply return, calmly, to what is real for you in the present moment. Repeat as needed.
5. Notice Your Physical Surroundings
Sit or lie down someplace that’s not within reach of your phone or screens. Take a long slow breath out as you let your attention rest on your immediate surroundings. Feel the air on your skin. Focus on your body parts that touch the chair or couch. Take in the sound of voices laughing in another room or the sound of a car coming to at stop along the street.
Then shift your attention to yourself. Notice any tense muscles and see if you can let them release. Witness any sensations and emotions. Simply observe them, as they are, without judgment. If it’s challenging to sit with the physical, continue to practice this in short sessions at a time.
Then unleash your awareness. Feel yourself everywhere and nowhere all at once, as if you are a spacious presence expanding in all directions. (You can experience this with yoga nidra practices, which you can practice online from home.) Gently ask, “Is there some action I am being asked to take that will enable me to feel authentic and harmonious within myself and in my life?”
Simply be curious. You may or may not experience an answer from a place of internal wisdom each time you explore this practice. But knowing what to do when you feel overwhelmed so you can be more calm and grounded ensures that you do hear it when it comes.
This article has been updated. Originally published December 7, 2020.
