Overwhelm can be stressful and anxiety-inducing. It can make you feel stuck, don’t know what to do, and have no way forward. Overwhelm is an emotion–that means your thinking always causes it. Here are 13 causes of overwhelm.
1. Black-and-white thinking.
Also known as all-or-nothing thinking. This is when you think that if you don’t have time to do absolutely everything, you don’t have time to even do one thing.
Black-and-white thinking can keep you limited in your thinking. You will think you have limited options when making a decision and limited opportunities.
2. “Should.”
The idea that you “should” do something that keep you stuck in patterns of fear, guilt and obligation. “Should” can have you making decisions and commitments that you don’t really want to make.
It can also have you adding more to your plate or to-do list for no other reason than because you think you “should”. Not because you want to, you enjoy it or it will have you moving closer to your goals.
Resources:
- 3 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed at Work (free download)
- Burnout vs. Overwhelm (blog post)
- How to Reject Busyness (blog post)
3. Perfectionism.
Perfectionist thinking can have you stuck in overwhelm. If there is a fear of not wanting to fail or not wanting to feel shame, there is probably some perfectionist thinking.
Perfectionist thinking will have you not making progress on tasks until you know more information or feel more confident in your abilities.
It can also show up as procrastination. If you knew that you would have done a better job with more time, you can blame your “less-than-ideal” job on not giving yourself enough time.
4. People-pleasing.
People-pleasing is saying yes to everyone and everything else before you say yes to yourself. It is a way for you to try to control other people’s feelings, judgements and thoughts about you.
Instead of prioritizing yourself, your approval and your goals, people-pleasing has you prioritizing what other people want from you.
5. Indulging in drama, not facts.
When you separate out the facts from the stories you are telling yourself, it becomes a lot easier to solve a problem.
If you are stuck in a story that you are telling yourself, it is easy to get swept up into the emotion instead of making decisions and a plan to move forward.
Indulgent feelings that don’t move you forward are doubt, worry, self-pity, etc.
6. Indecision.
Not making decisions will keep you stuck and in so much overwhelm. Indecision will keep you spinning and looping in your head instead of making any progress forward.
You will feel less overwhelmed when you make a decision and move forward. Making a decision and moving forward will also give you more data than any analysis you can do in your head.
7. Undisciplined thinking.
When you have undisciplined thinking, it is very easy to indulge in unhelpful thoughts and unhelpful emotions. This habit can be hard to break out of if you don’t properly manage your mind.
Disciplined and deliberate thinking is how you keep yourself highly productive, focused and disciplined.
Resources:
- 3 Ways to Feel Less Overwhelmed at Work (free download)
- 5 Ways to Achieve Work-Life Balance (blog post)
8. Allowing I don’t know.
When you ask your brain a question and you allow yourself to answer with “I don’t know” you keep yourself stuck.
When you require your brain to make a decision in the moment, you create the ability to make a decision.
9. Lacking constraint.
Constraint is when you constrain your options.
An example of this is a vegetarian. A vegetarian has constrained their food choices to anything that doesn’t include meat. When they go out to dinner and are looking over a menu, a vegetarian doesn’t spend any time contemplating or thinking about the different meat options a restaurant offers. They just don’t eat meat.
Constraining can simplify your life, help you make quicker decisions and save you time and mental energy that would be better spent solving bigger problems.
10. Confusion.
Being confused is an easy way to stay in overwhelm and remain stuck where you are. Confusion is an indulgent emotion that feels useful but does not help you. You will learn more by just making a decision and moving forward than if you stay stuck in confusion.
If you are really confused and genuinely don’t know how to do something, than add “research how to do xyz” to your calendar to get you out of confusion.
11. Not staying committed to decisions.
Often, when someone is habituated to overwhelm thinking, they have a hard time staying committed to the decisions they make.
They make a decision to work on a task and then as soon as they start, they think that they should be doing a different task instead. This back and forth takes mental energy, contributes to decision fatigue and extends how long it takes them to get their task done.
12. Decision fatigue.
It takes a lot of brain power to make a decision and the more decisions you make, the more tired your brain gets. Then, it runs into decision fatigue and has a harder time making decisions and making good decisions. This can prolong the feeling of overwhelm.
When you make decisions ahead of time, constrain and commit, you can greatly reduce how overwhelmed you feel.
13. Scarcity thinking.
Scarcity thinking is a thinking pattern that is rooted in the thought that there isn’t enough. It presents when you feel overwhelm because overwhelm is typically an emotion caused by thinking there isn’t enough time or resources to get everything done.
A Final Note
The feeling of overwhelm is caused by the way that you are thinking but there are a lot of different thinking patterns that could be contributing to it. By learning the causes of overwhelm, you can see which cause is most likely to be happening for you and then can learn to change that pattern so you feel less overwhelmed.