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The Source of Overwhelm

Happy JUNE!


With Irene and family out enjoying a family cruise, I am searching through her past Shasta Scout Columns to pull out some new nuggets of inspiration, according to Tessa :)


In this thoughtful piece, Irene offers a fresh perspective on the root cause of overwhelm—not too much to do, but how we relate to all there is to do.


STORY: Inside Public Service: The Source of Overwhelm

A local community leader takes a good hard look at all the roles and responsibilities she’s juggling. She finds that the source of her overwhelm and stress often isn’t a to-do list, it’s how we hold ourselves to other people’s expectations.

READ MORE: Additional Resources. Discover a few simple ways to begin noticing and interrupting overwhelm at the source.

BOOK STUFF: Book Club and Book Update. We declared June Travel Reading Month! Join us for the monthly call, Thursday June 26 at 4PM PST

GOING FURTHER: Additional ways to connect in the Inquiring Minds community

STORY: The Source of Overwhelm

Irene has been practicing what she preaches by making space to be with the people she loves most in the world, while traveling the world! Instead of a new blog post, I’ve pulled this article from Irene's column on Shasta Scout to share with you.


This story was originally published as part of my monthly Inside Public Service column on Shasta Scout. Would you like to receive free, nonprofit, independent and non-partisan news about Shasta County and beyond? Sign up here.


Ed Note: This Opinion piece is part of our Inside Public Service series which focuses on providing a window into the workings of government, at a human level. Learn more about the series here.


Overwhelm. There’s too much to do and not enough time to do it. We’re all juggling work, home, church, child care, kids’ school and extracurriculars, parents, bad bosses,  and let’s not even mention politics. But often the heart of the overwhelm isn’t all the things we’re juggling, but something deeper.


When local community leader Victoria Silverman (not her real name) greeted me, it was obvious something was wrong. Her shoulders drooped as if she were carrying a heavy load. Her brown eyes had lost their normal sharp, vivacious sparkle. 


“Everything’s a little bit out of control,” she began. “My husband defers all of the decisions to me so I’m responsible for everything at home. And I’m responsible for everything at work because I’m the manager there. My company has a new metric system we’re using to measure success and the bar is raised. My team isn’t making the metrics. On top of that, last year, I was one of only six out of over a hundred offices that made our metric goals. So there’s this level of expectation that I’m gonna be able to do that again. I just don’t even know where to start.”


“Do you want to start with a hug?” I asked. 


Victoria’s stress levels were through the roof. When our brains have high levels of cortisol and adrenaline surging for days or weeks on end, it’s hard to think clearly, let alone be creative and open to new ideas. So the first step was to get Victoria out of fight-or-flight mode. 


For the next fifteen minutes, we took a brain break. She grew up in a rural corner of Modoc County and loves walking in nature. I suggested that we go for a walk. 


Brain breaks are referred to by many different names — stress relievers, mindfulness practices, breathwork, coping skills, etc. — but have three common features. They bring you into the present moment and away from the past and future where intrusive negative thoughts tend to dwell. They interrupt your body’s fight-or-flight stress response, lowering levels of cortisol and adrenaline. Lastly, you become more aware of what’s going on in your mind and body, a necessary step towards activating our thinking brain, whether for learning or for looking at things from a wiser, less emotional, non-judgmental perspective. 


On our walk, Victoria and I breathed slowly and deeply. We attended to each of the five senses: watching birds careen through the trees, listening to the sound of a nearby creek, breathing in the scent of dirt and grass, and feeling our clothes rustle against our arms. Victoria talked about the things she loves to do to unwind. 


As we walked, we quite literally shook the stress out of our systems. Her shoulders relaxed. Her voice steadied. She smiled. 


Eventually, the conversation returned to her overwhelm as she told me, “This wave of overwhelm has been really just the last two or three weeks. It’s been really bad. I feel almost out of control. In general, I’ve always been in the position of being responsible for everybody and everything. I’m holding onto too many things – other people’s things.” 


Interesting. I asked Victoria to go on a scavenger hunt, picking objects from nature to represent all the things she’s holding onto. What’s weighing her down and sucking her time and energy?

She picked up a big rock that symbolized work.


Four twigs represented her four children.


She pointed to a massive, deeply rooted stump off the side of the road and deemed it representative of the nonprofit that she helps lead.


A three-foot-long branch indicated financial debt. 


She found short sticks to represent the employees she manages and placed those beside the big rock.


Her husband’s business was a long skinny stick.


And then came the leaves – parents’ expectations, company metrics, client expectations, team expectations, family obligations, and community expectations. Soon there was a big pile of brown, dried-up oak leaves. 


We stood back to examine the array of objects. I asked, “If you could shift or change something here in this mess, what would you like to change most?”


The response was immediate. “To have less expectations, for myself and from everybody else. To stop having to live up to my persona in every facet of life.” Tears welled up behind her glasses. “I’m just trying to be what they all want me to be, and I can’t keep it up.”


For so many of us, trying to live up to far too many impossible, contradictory expectations is the ultimate source of our overwhelm. No one person can be the ideal worker AND ideal parent AND ideal spouse AND ideal daughter/son AND ideal community member, all at the same time. 


Even trying to be just a single one of those ideals is fraught. In her book Overwhelmed: How to Work Play and Love When No One Has the Time, Brigid Schulte introduces the idea of the Ideal Worker who is “expected to be on call and ready to roll all day, every day, all the time. And because the ideal worker is just that, a demanding, voracious ideal, no one can ever measure up. No matter how much you do, how hard you work, how much you sacrifice, how devoted you are, you can never attain that ideal.” 


After talking about how this played out in her life, I asked Victoria, “I’m not saying you need to do this, but what if you could say out loud to the people holding you to those ideals, ‘These expectations aren’t working for me.’ What would happen?” 


“It would lift a lot of the burden I’m feeling. I just don’t want to do this anymore. I guess I’m going to have to let go of the part of me that keeps pushing harder, putting others’ expectations ahead of my needs, and letting people down.” 


I responded, “What I hear is that you want to be valued for exactly who you are, the way you are, not how you measure up to expectations.”


“Exactly.”


After some more discussion, that’s what Victoria took away: the realization that a big pile of brown, dried-up, impossible expectations were the source of her overwhelm. She thought that if she could start speaking up to say, “This isn’t working for me anymore,” that might allow her to be valued for exactly who she is, the way she is right now.


I caught up with Victoria several months later. She told me that she ended up having face-to-face conversations to say aloud how she felt and as a result, has been able to let a lot of the expectations go. 


Now, she has a new metric for both work and home. “I decided that my life’s goal is to be known for being myself.” 


READ MORE: Additional Resources


For a fantastic, and fairly accessible review of your brain on mindfulness meditation, see this article in Nature Neuroscience: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3916


Then download Irene's audiofile below, for a centering meditation and give it a go yourself! https://www.irenesalter.com/podcast


Check out Irene’s own podcast, The Leaders Playground – especially episodes on presence, boundaries, and working with your inner voices!


Check out a prior book club read, mentioned above, Overwhelmed: Work Love and Play when No One has the Time by Brigid Schulte


BOOK STUFF: Join us Thursday June 26 from 4-5 PST


May was a very exciting call with Michael Shapiro joining us. The author of our read: A Sense of Place inspired us all to take time to connect with the world around us, exploring even our day to day stops with the curiosity of a tourist.


Michael gave us such a rich list of leisurely reads for our summer that we declared June Travel Reading Month. That list was sent to our full Book Club, but we'd be happy to share with you too. Just shoot me an email at tessa@irenesalter.com and I will send that list over!


If you are not already registered to attend book club and would like to join us register at

GOING FURTHER:

A few of Irene’s amazing clients are graduating this month (cue the confetti! 🎉), which means… a few openings become available in July for 1:1 coaching!


If you're looking ahead to the second half of the year and feeling a big goal on the horizon, a transition stirring, or just a nudge that you don’t have to navigate leadership alone — now’s a great time to reach out.



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