Overloaded and Overwhelmed? Here's Help
Overloaded and Overwhelmed? You are in the right place.
Here's help.
Perhaps you've been rushing around for a while with just too much to do. Yet, you've been coping, trying to handle everything, maybe even delegating some of your list to others. And then - something else lands on your plate.
Overwhelm hits. You shut down. You don't feel like you can cope with any of it.
If you are there right now, feeling both swamped by what you have to do and emotionally unable to face any of it, this post is for you.
Overload and overwhelm are related and they often arrive together, but they are two different problems that require two different approaches. Understanding the difference between them is not just a conceptual exercise — it is what allows you to actually solve both. More on that in a moment.
Overload Is a Math Problem
Overload can be understood as a math problem. It is simply too much to do: a certain number of tasks, each requiring a certain amount of time, within a given period — and it just cannot all be done. That is overload.
People often resist looking at overload this plainly, because they compare themselves to others. It is easy to look at a neighbor, or a sibling, or a colleague and think they are managing more than you are. But those comparisons are genuinely not worth much. It is very difficult to accurately assess what someone else actually has on their plate. All that comparing yourself to others reliably produces is feeling bad about yourself — and the comparison is probably not even accurate. Setting it aside and treating overload as a concrete logistical problem is a far more useful place to start.
Overwhelm Is a Feeling
Overwhelm on the other hand is a feeling. Overwhelm is related to how you feel about what you are experiencing, and how you feel about your ability to cope with everything on your plate, including your emotions.
Overload and overwhelm often go together, but not always. You might be genuinely overloaded, have too much to do, but you are plowing through and handling it reasonably well.
Conversely, you might feel completely overwhelmed without having an enormous amount to do — it just feels enormous.
This latter scenario can happen when something emotionally significant happens in our lives — a loss, a crisis, a relationship rupture — and suddenly our capacity to handle everything else drops. We feel overwhelmed by our ordinary responsibilities, not because those responsibilities have grown, but because we are carrying an emotional burden that is quietly consuming the energy we would otherwise bring to daily life.
Why This Distinction Matters
Getting clear on which problem you are dealing with changes what you can actually do about it. Here is the core issue: if you are feeling overwhelm — that felt sense of being unable to cope — and you respond by sitting down to write detailed to-do lists, you will not feel less overwhelmed. To-do lists are a tool for managing overload. They do nothing for a nervous system that is flooded with stress.
The reverse is equally true. If the problem is genuine overload — too much on your plate, full stop — and you respond only with physiological calming techniques, you may feel somewhat better in the moment. But the actual pile on your plate will still be there when you come back. The calming helps the feeling; it does not touch the practical problem.
There is also a sequencing issue that matters. When you are feeling both overloaded and overwhelmed at the same time, the overwhelm has to be addressed first. Without calming the feeling of overwhelm, you will not have the capacity to accurately assess whether you are truly overloaded. You also will not have the rational thinking part of your brain sufficiently online to figure out what to do about the overload even if you are. The feeling has to be addressed first. Only then can you work on the practical problem effectively.
Tools for the Overwhelm
Tool 1: Identify Your Triggers and Reframe
Knowing what tends to tip you into overwhelm gives you an early warning signal, which makes it easier to intervene before things escalate.
I realized recently that one significant trigger for me is having a lot on my plate that I do not want to do: tasks that feel forced on me rather than chosen. I have come to recognize resentment as an early warning sign.
A recent example: I have been helping an elderly relative who just lost their spouse. Much of the work involved is very detail-oriented — dealing with different institutions, transferring accounts, spending long stretches on hold. It demands concentration while simultaneously being tedious, and that combination tends to push me into overwhelm. On top of it is the feeling of not wanting to do it.
The reframe that helped me was shifting from "I have to do this" to "I am choosing to do this." Because the reality is that I do want to help this person. They matter to me. I have skills that are genuinely useful here. I do want to do this — I just do not enjoy the tasks themselves. When I can connect the choice to do unpleasant work to a larger goal I care about — connection, living my values, helping someone I love — the emotional texture of the work changes meaningfully.
It may be worth taking a moment to think about what kinds of tasks tend to tip you into overwhelm, and what emotions accompany them. For many people, resentment is at the center of it. It might be a feeling that a spouse should be handling something, or that you should no longer be managing certain things for your children, or that you are picking up the slack for a coworker. Those feelings may be pointing to a real problem. Going into overwhelm and resentment is not how that problem gets solved, though.
Tool 2: Physiological Calming
The feeling of overwhelm is produced by stress chemicals flooding the body and tipping us into fight, flight, or freeze. This means the most direct early interventions target the physiology.
Grounding techniques are particularly effective for this. (I have a full video on
grounding techniques).
Even something as simple as taking a few slow breaths while deliberately focusing on what you can hear — near sounds first, then far sounds — can bring you back into the present moment. Focusing on your sense of smell or your sense of touch works similarly. The goal is to interrupt the stress response by anchoring your attention in what is actually happening right now, rather than staying caught in the spiral of everything that needs to happen.
Tool 3: Take a Real Break
This is the tool people most resist. When you are overwhelmed and overloaded, taking an hour away from everything feels like the last thing you should be doing. It is not.
Stress makes the brain single-minded. It activates only a narrow band of what is available to us, and it is exactly the wrong state for problem-solving. Solving problems requires the whole brain working — memory, intuition, emotional processing, and rational thinking all integrating together. A real break is what brings the whole brain back online.
The break needs to be a genuine one: a walk in nature, playing an instrument, time spent doing something that is actually fun and feeds your soul. Scrolling on your phone or watching television does not produce the same effect. Consider this both permission and a gentle instruction. Go for a swim. Go for a walk. Listen to music. Take whatever kind of break genuinely restores you. When you return to the work, you will be more productive and better able to tackle what is on your list — not despite having taken the break, but because of it.
Tools for the Overload
Once the overwhelm has calmed enough for your rational mind to engage, you can begin working on the overload itself. This is a concrete, step-by-step process.
Step 1: Brain Dump
Start by writing down everything that is on your plate and on your mind. You can organize it if you like — bigger issues toward the top, smaller to-do items below — or simply empty your mind onto the page in whatever order things come. Either way is fine. The goal is to get everything out of your head and visible in one place, so you can begin to work with it rather than carry it all mentally at once.
Step 2: Identify What Is Outside Your Control
Read through the list and mark anything you are genuinely powerless over. A useful signal: when an item on your list is focused on an outcome rather than an action, there is a good chance you may not have control over it. "Get into a top university in my field" is not fully within your control. What is within your control is the application itself, the preparation, the steps you can take.
For anything outcome-focused, the task is to transform it: cross out the item as written and replace it with the concrete action you can actually take that moves you toward that goal.
Some items may need to come off the main list entirely. If you have things on your list focused on helping someone else stay sober, hold down a job, or manage their relationships with other family members — those outcomes are genuinely not within your control, no matter how much you care. Take those items off the main list and move them to a separate one. Consider labeling that list "acceptance." We will come back to why that matters.
Step 3: Mark the "Shoulds"
Look through the remaining list for anything driven primarily by what other people will think, by keeping up appearances, or by a kind of perfectionism that is not really serving you. Getting the spring flowers planted in your garden so that your neighbors can see that you pay attention to these things. Going to an event mainly because of what people will say or think if you do not. These kinds of items can often be crossed off.
This is not about dropping relationships or withdrawing from people who matter to you. Maintaining connection is a real priority, and that belongs on the list. This is about distinguishing what is genuinely important to you from what you feel you should do because of how it might appear to others. I used to be very reluctant to cancel anything, and I am still not casual about it. But I have come to see that occasionally cancelling something is not only acceptable, it can be necessary. It is worth seeing what comes off your list when you apply this filter honestly.
Step 4: Prioritize and Check Your Deadlines
With the remaining list, look honestly at the deadlines attached to each item. Many deadlines are self-imposed — and while self-imposed deadlines are often necessary (without them some things would never get done), they frequently carry more flexibility than we allow them. For my own YouTube work, I have to give myself deadlines or the videos would not go out. But those deadlines do have some flex in them.
Look for anything on your list that is a genuine priority but could reasonably be pushed two or three weeks without real consequence. Using that flexibility deliberately is not procrastination. It is good planning. What remains after this is your actual near-term priority list.
Step 5: Break It into Small Steps
For each remaining priority, break it down into the smallest reasonable actions. The question to ask is: what can I actually accomplish tomorrow, without sacrificing sleep, meals, or the ability to take breaks?
This approach tends to meet resistance. When overwhelmed, the instinct is to feel that everything needs to happen right now, all at once. But there is real value in identifying just two concrete steps of a priority and making one phone call that gets something moving. When you actually complete those things, you gain the energy and the emotional capacity to keep going. Accomplishing small, specific actions builds momentum in a way that staring down the full list simply cannot.
A Note on Acceptance
The acceptance list deserves its own attention, because acceptance is not the same thing as giving up — and the research on this is illuminating.
Studies on overwhelm and overload show that when a problem is within your control and you take meaningful steps toward addressing it, you feel significantly better. The sense of agency itself is relieving.
But when a problem is outside your control — when you are genuinely powerless over it — taking more steps toward it does not help. Writing more lists about it does not help. Strategizing endlessly about it does not help. Trying harder does not help.
What helps is reframing how you relate to it. We live in a world that has always required accepting things we do not like and did not choose: other people's behavior, other people's destructiveness, outcomes we cannot determine no matter how much we try, circumstances beyond our reach. This has always been the human condition. When we can accept the areas of our lives where we are genuinely powerless, something shifts. It does not feel like defeat. It frees up an enormous amount of energy — energy that was being consumed by the effort to control something uncontrollable — and it becomes available to put toward the things where we do have power, where our efforts can actually make a difference.
Was This Helpful?
Let me know in the comments what resonated most, what questions you still have, and what you felt I left out. If there is something specific you are dealing with that I did not address, share it — the more specific your feedback, the more I can make future content directly useful to you.
I also have a blog on emotional regulation skills (emotional regulation is the key to managing overwhelm), and a video on
how to say no without feeling guilty which will help you reduce the overload.
Blog Author: Barbara Heffernan, LCSW, MBA. Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and specialist in anxiety, trauma, and healthy boundaries. She had a private practice in Connecticut for twenty years before starting her popular YouTube channel designed to help people around the world live a more joyful life. Barbara has a BA from Yale University, an MBA from Columbia University and an MSW from SCSU. More info on Barbara can be found on her bio page.
Share this with someone who can benefit from this blog!
