Psychotherapy for Stress and Overwhelm
O-V-E-R-W-H-E-L-M. In modern life, we fill our time with urgent busy ‘stuff’. Though what we can call ‘motivated’ or ‘productive’ might actually be an elaborately designed plan to avoid ‘feeling’. Therapy can help you work through these feelings and feel better.
How Can Therapy Help You Lower The Stress?
Staying above the surface, where it feels safer and less complicated; it allows us to run from our own unspoken sadness. But there are better ways. When we stop running, even for a little while, we can start to feel and a kind of softness begins to return. We heal by making space for what’s real and letting go of the need to always be okay and have it all together.
Learning How To Slow Down
We keep moving and seek out things that we hope will help us feel better fast; another drink, another distraction, another to-do list that keeps us just busy enough not to think too much. Or we stay right on the edge of burnout, always saying yes, always pushing through, always just a little too exhausted to notice how we really feel. In therapy, we might call this a kind of ‘everyday mania’ or the inability to stop. Perhaps the ache of being misunderstood when we were small, the loneliness of not being met in the ways we needed, is too much to face. We carry these things, often without realising. Not because we’re broken or weak, but because we’ve never been shown how to sit with what hurts. Therapy can help.
Working On The Inner Voice
What we call the inner voice began as an outer one. We internalise the tones we heard most often when we were young and impressionable. The distracted parent, the disapproving teacher, the school bully. The voice that tells us we’ll fail before we’ve begun. The voice that says we don’t belong here. That we’ll be found out. These voices become the background noise of our lives; often these voices are reading a script that was written before we were old enough to question its value. Therapy can be a helpful way to explore the roots of this internal narrative and the stress that presents as a result. It can be helpful to look for the gentler, wiser, more patient voices, the ones that soothe us.
Finding Ways To Be Grounded
Working in therapy to appreciate your limits and know it’s perfectly alright not to do everything. Saying no to non-essential commitments and allowing space for what genuinely nourishes you can really help to support your emotional well-being. Navigating stress and overwhelm isn’t easy; some days are certainly tougher than others. but finding gentle strategies can help us stay focused, grounded, and hopeful. The heart of coping lies in kindness towards oneself, honoring your feelings, and patiently discovering what resonates most deeply, which will help guide you towards your own strength, courage, and calm.