How I Deal With Feeling Overwhelmed
What are some things that overwhelm you? Is it school, people, stressful situations? No matter what it is, we all have things that can overwhelm us. So, having a way to deal with this is important. Today I am going to share with you my go-to for when I am feeling overwhelmed by something.
If it’s work, a relationship or a just a bunch of small things. This has helped me gather my thoughts, process the day and helped me brainstorm ideas to be a more creative problem solver.
My go to when I need to be less overwhelmed is to journal. I sit down, take a second and write all the things that are going on in my head on paper. I write letters to my friends or to the people who are frustrating. I write letters to God. I explain my feelings of stress, frustration, hurt, etc. This allows me to keep all the different things from just constantly swirling around inside my head and makes it easier to think without the constant distractions they pose. If I need to talk to someone and I know the conversation is going to be hard and it begins to worry me I’ll write how I want that conversation to go so that I have an idea. Of course, it never goes exactly as I wrote it but if I’ve taken that time and I know the key points that are important to say.
I started keeping a journal back when I was in 6th grade. When I started reading a book called Dork Diaries and I thought it was such a fun idea I decided to try it. Around the same time, my friend was very obsessed with the diary of Anne Frank and I figured if I ever did something notable People might be interested in reading it. Since then I just never really stopped. Having a journal is a great reminder of the days that are amazing. Life can get hard and it’s easy to get discouraged but being able to look back at good days can lift your spirits. It can also remind you of the bad days and show you how much you’ve grown. Your personal growth in even just a year can be amazing to look back at, but also easy to forget. If you keep a journal you can look back during the times when you feel like you’re not going anywhere and see the changes.
Sometimes I’ll draw pictures or decorate the pages for that day. This helps add creativity to a page and helps me reference the page if I want to look back.
This has become something I really enjoy and miss when I forget to do it for a while. This is honestly the most effective way to cope when I am feeling stressed and overwhelmed because if I write it down then I no longer have to think about it and it can be much more organized than it would be in my head.
Maybe the idea of keeping a journal doesn’t appeal to you but you still would like the benefits when you’re overwhelmed? You can just write letters on any old piece of paper if you want. You can also type out your thoughts on any device with a note taking app or document program. This works just as well and would probably improve your spelling more than a notebook since there is spell-check. However, you choose to go about this I encourage you to try it!
I hope this helped you! So now I have a question for you do you journal? Answer in the comments and let me know!
Yes! I think of journaling like the Penseive in Harry Potter. It helps me to remove distractions and allows me to concentrate. I can talk about something for hours and it doesn’t have nearly the clearing ability does that writing something down does!