Resources for dealing with stress and feeling overwhelmed

Is stress a bad thing or a signpost for our development?

Stress is always a symptom, a messenger. It is not wise to silence or kill that messenger with a pill, some other substance, or food, nor to try to run away from it with a range of distractions and avoidant behaviours. Symptoms ask for understanding its symbolic message and undercurrent, deeper cause.

Challenges require something ‘more’ from us – the next level of our ability or developing new strengths and skills. By going through challenges, we continue to grow. After going through the challenge, retreating into a rest-and-integrate state is necessary. However, many of us may not go through the stage of deactivation and integration and start each or most days being already too activated, and therefore, unable to tolerate additional daily challenges without getting too stressed and overwhelmed (I can tell you about that from some periods in my life …). Not following the rhythm of life that flows like our breath (in and out, stimulating and calming, expansion and grounding, nourishment and integration) overstrains our bodies, minds, and relationships. Therefore, stress indicates that some change or adjustment is needed in our ability to respond to life challenges to enable processing and a better flow in our lives.

Although we have just one word for the experience we call stress, there are two very different types of stress:

·       Processing stress – a problematic, reoccurring pattern that creates stuckness

·       Developmental stress – a natural part of the growth process

Processing stress is the stress created by problems in ‘digesting’ and integrating our life experiences. We can experience it as being stuck, conflicted, or reactive in a usual way. This type of stress indicates the need for inward attention, clearing and resetting. Self-exploration will create a new awareness of what is needed to complete the processing and assimilate the learning. We may find something that doesn’t fit with us or our lives, like a ‘virus’ in any computer program we use, creating a processing (stress) problem. We have to examine and clear the processing problem and re-integrate the updated program into the computer system again.  

Developmental stress results from the natural growth process or the change in the life around us, which calls for our creative adjustments and the need to develop new skills and abilities. When things around us change, we may experience the unpredictability and uncertainty of the new as stressful. Like with the technology we use, we must regularly upgrade the systems for optimal functioning as they evolve. This type of stress often requires the support and guidance of closely related people. 

Although many people say they are feeling ‘overwhelmed’ more often these days, stress and feeling overwhelmed are on the continuum. To simplify it, if we are in a processing range and going okay with our daily life, that feels like swimming comfortably. When the stress increases, it feels like having to paddle vigorously and try to get to the shore as soon as possible. When we are overwhelmed, that is more like being under the water and getting out is a vital priority. Dealing with stress and being overwhelmed requires awareness (if you can see it, you don’t have to be it), pause to connect to the ground, and cultivate space to reset and recharge.

    Grounding and Coming into Presence practice (audio recording)

Healthy regulation requires being attuned to yourself to know when and how much you can open to the world and process the data/information and when to step aside but not necessarily disconnect or isolate yourself. Having trouble with ‘challenging emotions” already contains judgment about what emotions are acceptable and what are not and shouldn’t be there. There are no ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ emotions if we know how to approach them and understand their function and purpose of arising. These judgments we have create difficulty by rejecting a part of our experience. We attempt to control what we feel - an impossible task. Excluding and rejecting anything (or anyone) will make it even more distressing and intense. Instead, try to welcome that challenging guest in your ‘house’ and be curious about what makes it feel the way it feels. What else can you learn from it? And – notice what happens and how it starts changing as you approach it with acceptance and curiosity.

Inner attending and Emotional Regulation practice (audio recording)

Cultivating Space

You may want to take a moment now to pause, check inside and notice how spacious you feel. Do you feel crowded, tight, full, and stressed, or more open and curious to engage and receive more? … Do you need a bigger house –not externally, but internally? A house that is a space for your lived experience, a space where you can reflect on, ‘digest’, and integrate your life into learning and development. That process of digesting or processing also empties the storage and regulates and refreshes the nervous system so you can have a space to focus on the next task or rest and sleep.

That space I talk about here is not something we have but a space we cultivate as a way of being in the world. The quality of connection and spaciousness of our inner and collective ‘space’ influence our ability to embrace and respond to the complexity of life. Many people live today in a perpetually highly stressed or overwhelmed state. They don't know how to pause, reset, receive, or process their experience. The solution is not in speeding up and learning how to do the same things more quickly. Instead of that, paradoxically, the answer is in re-learning how to pause, make space, process, and integrate our experience.

Clearing a Space practice (audio recording)

Clearing a Space (CAS) practice doesn't involve pushing anything away or down or getting rid of it. Our world is full of separations already. That creates polarisation, fragmentation, and othering – internally and externally. Instead, the practice is about being the observer and participant simultaneously, about being in a relationship with self and others that is equally spacious and connected. Finding an optimal distance is key here.

When you already feel overwhelmed or on the edge of it, pause, step aside if you are in the middle of something, and do the CAS process (a shorter version will even help). Do the CAS process regularly during the stressful period at the end of your working day or as you prepare to sleep.

Relational Space

Our complex and fast-moving minds may disregard the space as too simple or as something that requires time we don’t have. Connection with another human being who is fully present and available to connect expands the space where what is stressful can decrease its intensity. Our mind perceives a connection to another present human being as a resource, so the challenge is appraised as manageable. That is why cultivating space and connectedness is essential for the well-being and health of families, organisations, and our society. Building a relational space as a context leads to creating healthy ecosystems.  A healthy ecosystem is not always harmonious. What makes the system healthy is the mutual commitment to stay related in supportive and challenging moments.

In the context of Us (co-created connection and shared resonance), I can get through the challenge (survive), learn from it, and thrive. Therefore, it is not necessarily the content that is overwhelming but divisions and separations. We get the resource by connecting and expanding the holding space where what is happening can be felt as it is.  

Therefore, don’t try to go through the challenge alone. Some intense, painful experiences and reoccurring emotional states will have to be held and processed within a larger space – a connected and attuned relationship with another person. To provide a compassionate Presence to another person, we must first feel it for ourselves.

Experience of Compassion (audio recording)

Resilience comes from going through the challenges. It is the capacity to stay related to life and challenging moments (high stress, tensions, conflicts, paradoxes) and the ability to recover, heal and grow after tough and traumatic times. Children naturally develop resilience when the parent/s is consistently attuned to their inner experience; they know their inner life and help co-regulate it. Parents who don’t do that have children confused by their inner life, or they shut it down.

We are not survival of the fittest; we are survival of the nurtured – Cosolino