If you haven’t read the previous posts in this series on rejoicing, prioritization, taking action, and appropriate rest, they may be helpful.
Receive counsel humbly
When you are overwhelmed there will be people who mean well and want to help. Someone might immediately offer advice instead of an arm around your shoulders. Is he or she truly being unloving? If someone sees you suffering and their response is to try to take away the suffering, isn’t that the most loving thing they could do? I understand, sometimes we just want to feel understood. But don’t push aside your friend, spouse, pastor, or another counselor because they try to help you by lessening your burden. If you express to someone how overwhelmed you feel and they take away something that is overwhelming you, your response should be thankfulness generally speaking. (I’m sure there are exceptions!)
Because if someone takes away the external or circumstantial causes of your anxiety, stress, or feeling of being overwhelmed and you still feel the same way, then maybe the problem is less that you have a lot on your plate and the concern is that you are simply desiring to feel overwhelmed for some reason. I think often we resent people who help us with the things we say overwhelm us because their helpfulness exposes that we really had no reason to be overwhelmed. That is, it’s now revealed to us that we simply wanted something to complain about.
Finally, those who are not overwhelmed like you may have a good perspective from outside the circumstance you are in. When you are in the middle of the storm, everything looks like a cloud, but to someone who isn’t in the thick of it, the pathway out may be more clear. Surround yourself with people you trust and then when times get tough, trust those people to have wisdom and discernment from an unclouded mind.
