How do I stop feeling overwhelmed?

You stop feeling overwhelmed through the body, not the problem. Overwhelm is a flooded nervous system, so the way out is a practice, not a plan: one minute to settle the body, one minute to widen the view, one minute to gather yourself back together. Three minutes, anywhere, no one even has to know you’re doing it.

Last fall I had a run of days where the overwhelm would not quit. Family challenges, intense healing work, the state of the world, all at once. I kept trying to manage it, fix it, push through it, and the more I focused on the overwhelm, the worse it got.

What finally worked was so simple I almost didn’t trust it. It takes about three minutes, and I still use it, in kitchens and parking lots and the middle of hard afternoons. This is exactly what to do, when to do it, and what it feels like when it works.

Why can’t I think my way out of overwhelm?

Because overwhelm isn’t a thinking problem. When too much lands at once, the body’s alarm floods, and the part of your brain that plans and reasons goes quiet. That’s why the spinning questions (what do I do, how do I fix this, why is this happening) only tighten the spiral. You’re asking a flooded mind to swim.

Overwhelm feels like being in pieces. The mind races, the heart gets heavy with other people’s pain, the body goes tense, and any sense of meaning drifts out of reach. Scattered like that, we have almost nothing to give the very situations we’re worried about.

So the way back starts with the body, not with the problem.

The three-minute practice

A quiet spot is nice, but a car, a bathroom, or a kitchen chair all work. Sitting or standing, eyes open or closed.

Minute one: settle the body. Place a hand on your heart. Breathe in slowly through your nose for about four counts, then out even more slowly, about six. The long, unhurried exhale is the body’s own settle switch. Repeat four or five times, until something in your chest or shoulders gives just a little. You’re telling your body, in its own language, that it’s safe enough to come off alert.

Minute two: widen the view. Keep your hand where it is. Overwhelm narrows your vision until the problem feels like all there is. This minute isn’t about pretending things are fine or hunting for silver linings in real pain. It’s about opening the view just enough to remember you have options. Ask yourself one question that feels true enough to hold. Some of mine:

• What if I can handle this, even though it feels impossible right now?
• What if I don’t need to figure everything out in this moment?
• What if there’s support available that I’m not seeing yet?
• What if taking care of myself right now is the most helpful thing I can do?
• What if this feeling will pass, like it has before?

You don’t need to believe the question fully. You’re only making a little space between you and the overwhelm. That space is where your power lives.

Minute three: gather yourself. Picture the scattered pieces, the racing mind, the heavy heart, the tense body, being called gently back together. See them reuniting, settling into one whole woman, grounded and complete. In the heart-based work I’ve practiced for years, this gathered state is called coherence, and it’s the opposite of being in pieces. Feel yourself arrive back in the middle of your own life.

That’s the whole practice.

When should I use it?

The moment you notice the signature: the phone call that lands wrong, the text that triggers, the news about someone you love, the afternoon when the list was manageable and then suddenly wasn’t. Earlier is easier. Overwhelm compounds the longer it runs, so three minutes at the first sign spares you hours of the spiral.

Once a day is plenty to learn it. This isn’t a discipline to perform; it’s a door to walk through when you need it. And if all you can manage is minute one, do minute one. A settled body with an unsolved problem is far better off than a flooded body with the same problem.

What does it feel like when it works?

It doesn’t feel like bliss, and nothing dramatic happens. The problem is usually still sitting right where you left it.

What changes is you. The shoulders come down a little. The breath reaches deeper than it did. The problem stops being the whole sky and goes back to being a thing in your day, and you can suddenly tell the difference between what’s yours to do and what was never yours to carry. The first time I traded managing the overwhelm for this practice, I felt a grounded calm I hadn’t felt in days.

And every time you do it, you’re doing something bigger than rescuing an afternoon. A body that gets regular moments of all-clear is a body being slowly untrained from the aging default. If the overwhelm in your life has settled into a chronic tiredness, Why am I so tired all the time? is the companion to this page.

You don’t have to hold all the pieces together. You only have to call them home.

Kristin Milan

Coach and author for women in the third act of life, holding faith and consciousness in the same hand. Master's in Social Work, degree in Psychology, HeartMath trained, and nearly five decades engaged with the science of change. She writes about outgrowing the aging default and coming home to a wholeness you already belong to. Meet Kristin