Too much in your cup?

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Time constraints, multiple competing priorities, and high expectations can lead to feeling overwhelmed, but for the trauma survivor, it may trigger a much deeper experience, but we don’t have to be paralyzed by it. This article will explore the body’s stress response, the emotions triggered by these sensations, and what you can do to “dig out” of feeling overwhelmed.

Conceptual Definition of Overwhelm

Having a lot on our plates is not unusual in today’s society. We have many obligations related to family, work, church, or community that we are responsible for. Our lives can get tremendously hectic at times. For the trauma survivor in the workplace, there is an added dimension that may contribute to feeling overwhelmed, the disruptive nature of trauma.

In my coaching business, I often talk about Dan Siegel’s Window of Tolerance. The thing I like about this work is that he talks about the optimal amount of arousal or stress needed for us to function/operate at our best. He does not villainize stress. He holds that we need a certain amount of stimulation to function well and that the challenge is actually in the extremes.

One of the obstacles trauma survivors face in the workplace with trying to manage their window of tolerance is that they already have the weight of their past taking up space in their jar.

jar of rocks

I want you to picture with me a glass jar that has a good-sized rock in the bottom of it, which symbolizes our childhood trauma. Then you add rocks of a family (maybe multiple children), school, church, community, hobbies, and work to the jar.

When you start filling that jar with water (stress), it will not be able to handle the same capacity as a jar that does not have the trauma rock in it. Trauma takes up space in our mental capacity, our emotional capacity, and our work capacity.

We have a finite capacity to hold space for stress. There is nothing wrong with our jar; it is operating as it was designed. The challenge is that someone deposited a big rock of trauma in our jar that we didn’t ask for, nor did we want, and it is taking up space in our life and capacity.

Now, I want you to picture that same jar, packed to the brim with our stress water. This is a picture of us living within our window of tolerance. Even though we still have that trauma rock in the bottom of our jar and have limited capacity for holding stress, we are nonetheless managing everything in our jar.

Everything is good, right? We have everything under control, or so we think until we get a notice from our boss that the six compliance courses we thought we had two weeks to complete have to be completed by the end of the week, and we have no time to do them because our calendar is packed full. What happened? Someone added six more rocks to our jar, and it caused the stress to spill out. That is the overwhelm. We feel overwhelmed when we are beyond our capacity to hold the stress in our jar. Trauma, at its core, is an overwhelm, or spilling of our nervous system’s capacity to manage the stress of our experience.

Overwhelm in the body

How do you experience overwhelm? For me, my whole body tenses, I feel like I have an elephant sitting on my chest, making it difficult to breathe, and my body feels agitated. My speech becomes short and clipped. I am easily irritated and have no tolerance for other people’s nonsense (that is a technical term…lol)

As I said earlier, overwhelm affects the nervous system. It may impact our ability to sleep or regulate our emotions. Sleep disturbances are one of the most common and dysregulating symptoms of CPTSD. There is a reason sleep is on the foundational level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Overwhelm for a trauma survivor

Trauma survivors are not the only ones that experience overwhelm. We all become overwhelmed at times. However, the sensations we experience in our bodies can trigger old memories and emotions from our childhood trauma. This can lead to emotional flashbacks and emotional dysregulation.

An unfortunate consequence of having our past triggered is the impact it has on our capacity to function as an adult in the present. When we are launched into the past, our ability to cope and think corresponds to the same age of our trauma. If I am triggered back to a trauma I experienced in third grade, I only have access to my coping skills at that time. So, if I felt powerless as a child, I will feel powerless as an adult in the present. Even if we have gone through years of therapy and have accumulated all kinds of coping skills, we do not have access to those “adult” tools when we are triggered back to our childhood.

When this happens in the workplace, we may feel ashamed, broken, young, embarrassed, or frustrated. In my original article on CPTSD in the Workplace, we learned that one of the defining symptoms of CPTSD is “beliefs about oneself as diminished, defeated or worthless, accompanied by feelings of shame, guilt, or failure related to the traumatic event.” These core beliefs about ourselves permeate every area of our lives, even work.

Overcoming Overwhelm

Now that I have totally discouraged you, I want to share some encouragement. Feeling overwhelmed is not unusual, but we don’t have to be stuck in it; we can overcome it. There are several strategies we can use to overcome it.

Long-term strategy.

I am intentionally starting with the long-term strategy because you may never pay attention to it if I don’t. Everyone always wants the quick fix when they are experiencing discomfort or suffering; that is human nature and nothing to be ashamed of, but often we don’t put much effort into the long game.

The long-term strategy is to keep chipping away at the trauma rock taking up space in your jar through therapy. When we chip away at the core beliefs that hold us captive to our trauma, we will have more capacity in our jar for things WE want to put in there.

I will warn you that this work cannot be done fast because it is complex. That is why they call it Complex PTSD. There is a lot to unwind, and for those of us who have been practicing these coping strategies for decades, these habitual ways of thinking are difficult (not impossible) to change.

I encourage you to stick with it because you are worth it. You didn’t ask for that trauma rock to be put in your jar, but it was. Now, you have the power to remove it and the ability to choose what goes in your jar.

Intermediate strategies.

A more intermediate strategy to overcoming overwhelm is to lessen the stress (water) in your jar. This takes some effort and requires setting up daily practices that reduce stress. Some examples might be: journaling, yoga, exercise, meditation, walking through nature, etc.

These are just examples, but you can do many other things to manage your stress. Find the ones that work for you and create a new habit of proactively managing your stress levels.

Near-term strategies.

Renegotiation. Regarding the workplace, there may be opportunities to renegotiate deadlines or bandwidth. There is nothing wrong with making an appeal or asking for an extension. As trauma survivors, we tend to think that if we are struggling to meet an unrealistic deadline, there is something wrong with us. That negativity then takes up mental capacity that could be used to determine what needs to be done to meet the deadline.

Reprioritization. Sometimes we need to take a serious look at the things we have in our jar and reprioritize them. As humans, we tend to try to live the fullest lives we can, which means cramming as many things into our jar as possible without spilling the water (stress) out. Let’s face it, not everything in our jar is a high priority. Some things are just “nice to haves.”

You might be passionate about a hobby like I was about triathlons, but when you look at the time you devote to it compared to all the other responsibilities in your jar, it might not be worth it. Ask yourself how important that hobby is to your mental health. Is it contributing to your mental health or detracting from it?

Working to support yourself and your family is usually a high priority, but that does not mean you have to stay with a job or a company that is sucking the life out of you. As we’ve seen with the “Great Resignation,” people are reevaluating their jobs to see whether they are adding value or costing them more than they are willing to pay.

Some jobs require more capacity than others. There have been times in my career when I took a less strenuous and challenging job within my company because I was trying to balance being a full-time employee, soccer mom, and graduate student. I did that to manage my capacity. That is OK. Not every role needs to be a big role.

Wrap Up

Feeling overwhelmed, especially in the workplace, is normal. (Don’t you just hate it when your therapist tells you everything you are experiencing is normal for what you’ve been through?) I digress.

The sensations related to feeling overwhelmed may trigger past trauma. It is essential to get yourself grounded in the present and emotionally regulated so you can manage the present situation.

There are long-term, intermediate, and near-term strategies available to help you deal with feeling overwhelmed. You CAN manage this. You are no longer POWERLESS. You’ve got this.

Let me know if this was helpful. Tell me how you handle feelings overwhelmed in the workplace. Drop your best practices in the comments.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

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Cyndi Bennett

Believer. Leader. Learner. Advocate. Writer. Speaker. Coach. Mentor. Triathlete. Encourager. Survivor.
 
Most of all, I am a fellow traveler on the rocky road called, Trauma Recovery. My mission is to minimize the effects of trauma for survivors in the workplace.