It’s ok to feel overwhelmed
As I get older, I’m adding more responsibilities to my ever-growing to-do list and sometimes this can make me feel very anxious and overwhelmed. Let me give you a little peek into my mindset:
Simple tasks suddenly start to pile up and I become very aware of how much I need to do. This awareness turns to full blown anxiety and my defence mechanism kicks in. Instead of calmly completing my tasks in order of priority, I ignore all of them. I completely stop doing anything (apart from scrolling on my phone which has apparently become part of my subconscious) This is fine for a day, maybe even two, but after that I have well and truly fallen behind and made life very difficult for myself.
Because of this I have piles of work to finish on the same day, my flat is a mess and I have no clean clothes or dishes. I haven’t been to the one place that will de-stress me (the gym). I don’t have time to see my friends; but I also haven’t cancelled on them because I didn’t want to let them down, so they will be annoyed when I do cancel because now its last minute. My bills are overdue and I owe friends money because I can’t bear the thought of logging into online banking and seeing my balance. I have no food in the house because I never do a proper shop, so I just buy biscuits instead and feel ill. My blog hasn’t been updated for a week, and anyway all the content I do produce I dislike because it’s never good enough. I need to go to bed earlier because I constantly feel exhausted but I have too much to do at night.
What else?
As you can see, it’s pretty easy to become overwhelmed. None of the things I worry about are ever that difficult to do and I know a lot of them will sound silly, its not like I have a child to care for or anything. But even the smallest things become huge in an anxious mind. When I’m feeling like this I can’t have my phone near me because the idea of people texting me and then having more texts to reply to fills me with so much anxiety it makes me feel sick and I prefer to just pretend it’s not happening, same with checking emails.
I’m not really sure what the point of this post is to be honest, I don’t have any solutions for overcoming anxiety and feeling less overwhelmed. I just wanted to write something about the subject because it’s having a big effect on my life at the moment. It’s quite ironic that it’s happening because I’ve been really happy lately but I guess that’s anxiety/depression in a nutshell – it doesn’t care who you are or what’s happening it just pops up whenever it chooses to!
I just wanted to say that it’s ok if you feel like this, because it will pass eventually. Make sure you talk to people that you love and trust about how you are feeling and get some help if you can.
Hannah x
