TRANSCRIPT

Hey, Cheryl Gregory here. This is the third of a four-part series on overwhelm, and here’s where we are so far. In the first step, we talked about recognizing the feeling of overwhelm.

Step two was identifying one or more behaviors that follow that feeling, because all you really know in that moment is that everything feels like it’s too much for you, and you deploy a certain behavior to reduce the pressure, provide comfort, a feeling of safety, perhaps, and that behavior is something you learned at an earlier age that probably worked very well for you at that time, and because of years of repeating these reactions that you you know these learned behaviors, they become autopilot behaviors.

They’re just automatic reactions, and now as an adult, it’s not productive and possibly not even healthy. So now that you recognize the feeling and you’ve identified the behavior, our next step is to gain greater understanding of that behavior. You want to understand the why behind your reactions. That is to say, finding out what causes you to react the way you do.

What’s Next?

So let’s pick up from where we left off, starting with a question: What do you do immediately after you feel overwhelmed? Not what caused it, but what happens next? What do you do to reduce the pressure, provide comfort, or a feeling of safety or relief? Here are some suggestions, and you may want to write down some of the things that relate to you.

Perhaps you procrastinate. Maybe you eat. Maybe you start scrolling. Maybe you snap at somebody, or maybe you shut down, or perhaps you go in the opposite direction and start frantically trying to do everything. It’s important to know this because overwhelm is the feeling that triggered any one or more of those automatic survival reactions related to fight, flight, or freeze, and then what you do next is called a pattern. It’s the thing you learned to do to recover from your autopilot reaction, the behavior that pulls you back into feeling calm again, and usually it’s an unhealthy unhealthy behavior. Something like binge eating, alcohol, drugs, retail therapy, sleep, smoking, or maybe you chew your nails. Maybe you gamble. Maybe you turn to excessive video gaming. You get the idea.

And when you recognize and identify these patterns of behavior related to overwhelm, the next step is to break those patterns and replace them with healthier new patterns. It’s called pattern interruption. We interrupt that rapid automatic reaction that you’ve done probably for a very long time, and replace it with healthier responses.  Now it gets interesting because somewhere in between those two things is what I call the gap, the feeling. Here’s your feeling. Here’s the gap. Here’s the behavior, and now this is one area of differentiation I have from some other practitioners, and I’m not going to go into detail because it’s just a short presentation today.

But putting it simply, I work with you and take you to the edge of the gap, where you’re able to feel the feelings you experience just before you react. It feels like time stands still, and in that moment of time, you can view what’s happening objectively from a 360-degree point of view, and that’s where something becomes possible that wasn’t available before, and that is choice. We’ll go into choice and how you can reclaim your calm in the fourth part of the series.

Here’s a short experience for you

But for now, here’s a short 15-second exercise I’d like you to do today. I want you to notice and don’t try to change anything. Just notice as you catch yourself feeling stressed or overwhelmed. I want you to ask yourself, “What am I about to do? And that’s all I want you to do. Just notice it. Notice where you are. Notice the feeling. Stop at. Gap, and just ask yourself, what am I about to do? What behavior am I about to do that you’ve always reacted with? That’s it. Just notice, and we’ll talk more about that in another part. And if you get a moment, I would love it if you popped some of that information in the comments, or just let me know what the experience was like for you.

If you don’t want to share your feelings, you could just say you really enjoyed the experience. You noticed a difference. I would love to hear from you. And if this information is helpful for you, I would love it also if you gave it a like and a share, and of course comments are always welcome. It really helps me out. So thanks for joining me for part three, and I’ll see you in part four.

#overwhelm #automaticreactions #survivalreactions #fightflightfreeze #patterninterrupt #thegap