Carol Look Shows You How to Tap Your Overwhelm Away
What is Being Overwhelmed?
What is Being Overwhelmed?
Overwhelm is that terrible feeling you have in your body and mind when there is so much to do, you can’t even make a decision about what to do next! You feel heavy, burdened, stressed out, unclear and often like a failure. You feel stuck and can’t seem to move forward. You may even ask yourself, “If everyone else is coping, what’s wrong with me?”
So if feeling overwhelmed is the problem, how did we get here?
In my personal and professional experience, feeling overwhelmed is not something that happens to us suddenly – it creeps up slowly. We may not even when or how, but once we are aware of being out of balance, we feel utterly overwhelmed and ineffective.
There are 3 primary causes of feeling overwhelmed:
- We don’t say “no” when we need to!
- We don’t take care of ourselves in the areas of physical, emotional or spiritual health.
- We don’t address powerful emotions that are causing us daily stress and tension.
Just Say “No”
Why can’t we say “no” when we need to? Many of us feel guilty, or we’re not thinking clearly enough to consider whether saying yes to one more commitment is a good idea. When we don’t say “no” we start feeling overwhelmed and don’t deal with our priorities adequately.
We start feeling burdened, resentful, unclear, and we stop being effective at work and at home.
Take Care of Yourself
The best lesson I ever learned was on an airplane – place the oxygen mask on yourself before assisting others! If we don’t take care of ourselves, we lose emotional, physical and spiritual balance. It is critical that we put aside time to meditate, exercise, journal, or simply relax.
Over time, neglecting our needs adds up and we become irritable, resentful, and yes, overwhelmed.
Small tasks become stressful, we start overreacting to those around us, and again, we’re not effective at work or at home.
Address Your Emotions
When we haven’t been expressing strong emotions that have been building up inside, it’s inevitable that we become overwhelmed. Too much bandwidth is being occupied by squashing these feelings. How are you feeling towards your boss? Your spouse? Your co-worker? The kids? Have you been communicating your feelings or just burying them deeper and deeper, only to feel out of control when they erupt later on?
Whether you use journaling, counseling, a friend or a technique such as tapping, you must express your challenging emotions or happiness and your life balance will be forever elusive.
Now that we have identified the problem – (overwhelm) and where it came from (not saying “no”, ignoring self-care, and oppressing our emotions) – how can we help ourselves feel better?
Enter Tapping (EFT)
Most of you have heard of Tapping (EFT) by now. Its effectiveness as evidenced by thousands of success stories have made it incredibly popular! For those of you who are new to tapping, here’s the simple definition – tapping is a stress-relief technique based on the principles of ancient Chinese medicine and modern psychology.
While focusing on an emotional target, we tap on acupuncture points that regulate our energy system to relieve the energetic blockages in our body, mind and spirit. Once these blocks have been cleared from our energy system, we move forward in our lives.
So here’s a quick tapping exercise to help you release your feeling of overwhelm, so you can make good decisions and get on with your life!
First, choose a target – for this exercise, our target is “I feel so overwhelmed.”
Next, rate how high the emotion feels to you on the 0-10 point intensity scale.
Then, while tapping on the karate chop point on the outside of either hand (where a karate master would chop a block in half) repeat this “setup statement” 3 times: Even though I am feeling overwhelmed, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Then tap on the remaining sequence of acupuncture points (see attached diagram) while repeating your target “I feel so overwhelmed.”
- Eyebrow point: I feel so overwhelmed.
- Side of Eye: I don’t even know what to do next…
- Under Eye: I can’t even make a decision.
- Under Nose: I feel stressed out.
- Chin: I feel so overwhelmed.
- Collarbone: I feel incredibly overwhelmed right now.
- Under Arm: I’m so overwhelmed.
- Top of Head: I can’t handle anything.
Take a deep breath, measure the intensity of your feeling again on the 0-10 point scale, and repeat as necessary.
Once you release your feeling of overwhelm, you will have the clarity to decide what steps to take next and can relax, knowing you are on your way to getting your life back!
Carol is an EFT Master and is a success and abundance coach in the energy psychology field. For more on Carol’s work, please visit Attracting Abundance.