Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we'll be talking about overwhelm. I have a little experience with this. In the last episode, something happened and I shared the inner workings of the spiritual effort that happens once you start seeing things about your personality that are coming up that you wanna change? I'm gonna do the same thing today with overwhelm. First I'm gonna describe, I can give a clinical definition of what is overwhelm. It's when it's when you feel, or you can say stress, right? When you feel that you internal resources are not enough to deal with the situation at hand. That sounds great. In my experience, the overwhelm shows up and it's a very self perpetuating experience. For instance, let's say I am trying to write a letter or I'm trying to work on something on the computer and someone keeps talking to me, or I'm trying to, and this was, I grew up with this one. You're trying to watch a movie and somebody makes a sound and everybody attacks you for making a sound, but feeling like you need everything to be just so in order to be stable. And then when something changes, there's this feeling of being overwhelmed. Sometimes it might be more than one thing that changes. Maybe the situation has gone in a direction that you didn't even anticipate, and maybe in that moment there's a feeling of like frozen, not knowing what to do. In my experience, overwhelm is really anger because I'm angry at the situation for being not under control. So I'm gonna say that again, in my experience, overwhelm is actually an expression of anger because the situation is no longer what I would consider to be in my control. So maybe you have had that experience before. Maybe that happens all the time for you, or a lot of times where something changes and there's kind of a feeling of frustration or, I, I wanna say that there are a lot of things in life that we have kind of accepted as normal or expected; getting angry, getting frustrated, feeling overwhelmed, feeling depressed, feeling anxious. I'm not saying that they're bad or wrong to feel that way. It's a phenomenon. We have it. It's here. What I would like to say is that it is possible to begin to work on dissolving these experiences We don't have to have them. It is possible to remain calm and remain in control of oneself even though something is changing on the outside. So I'm gonna describe a situation where I felt overwhelmed and then I'm gonna describe how, now I'm trying to stop the expression of that overwhelm. I have to say this, what I'm talking about is not normal, let's say. Normal, meaning what everybody thinks is the way that it is. People get angry. They say they're sorry. Okay? The next day, they're angry again. People feel frustrated. They say, oh, you know? Then they feel better a few minutes later. Then the next day, the next next hour, they're frustrated again. I feel sad. I feel bad about myself. I feel guilty. I feel regret. I feel upset about this. I worry about this. It's one thing after the next. It is normal because we all experience it, but spirituality gives us a chance to actually dissolve those experiences. I talked about one in the last episode about the self critic, so now I'm gonna talk about the overwhelm. So I was trying to do something, do some recording actually. And I with recording it requires for those of you who know, but if you don't know, that's okay. It requires quite a bit of preparation, so you know, I have to get dressed, I have to get this lights, I have to do, there's a bunch of things that have to get set up before I sit down to do recording. So you have to set up time for that. It's very difficult to say, okay, well I'll just record now. No, you have to actually set aside time. So I set aside time and I was finally got down to sit, to, got everything set up, and now I'm gonna get ready to record. And then people in my house started coming in. Now they know I'm recording and they're not, they're not making a lot of noise. It's just that if somebody's walking around, like imagine if you know, one of the podcasters and somebody just like came walking through, it's like, it just doesn't work. You have to have, the space has to be quiet so that you can do the recording. So in that moment, I was trying to stay peaceful because I know I'm trying to work on this now where I'm not acting out any feelings of frustration or overwhelm or whatever. Certainly not towards the other people, but at the same time, I still have to take care of myself, right? So I am trying not to say anything, and then I tell myself, I'm talking to myself, okay, you can always cut this out. Don't worry. Keep rolling. You can always edit this out later. So I'm waiting, I'm waiting. So then afterwards, I didn't say anything. Then my husband came in and he was looking at me and, he goes, are you okay? How's the recording going? And I'm like, okay. And of course he can read that something is going on. So I ended up telling him that, I got interrupted or whatever. I wonder if I could have just not told him. And this is what I wanna talk about with overwhelm. Is it possible for us to weather the storm without telling anybody, without complaining, without causing a scene? Maybe, whatever you wanna call that. When you start expressing frustration to others or maybe feeling angry or maybe having an emotional outburst, is it possible to deal with the storm that's going on inside without letting it come out and the thought came to me, it's like the little Dutch boy with the finger in the dam. Is it possible? I'm telling you today that I wasn't able to do it in that situation. As soon as he asked me, I basically expressed it or talked about it, but with overwhelm. I think what I'm going to do now is I'm going to try to see if I can deal with it. The next time something happens and I'm inviting you to come along with me on this journey of discovery, that the next time something happens where normally you would feel frustrated or express frustration or complain or something like that, I am inviting you along with me to see if you can weather the storm. I'm gonna see if I can weather the storm and wait till it passes. Then just go on and not say anything. I wanna talk about how I grew up. I grew up in a house where everybody was, you know, raising their voice or yelling or expressing themselves. And even in the culture that I grew up with, maybe it's my generation or I grew up in the northeast, in the seventies and eighties. So the age group, my age group right now, maybe you can relate to this kind of communication. That everything was emotional communication, very self-expressed, especially anger and everything like that. So I am now going to try to see if I can manage it internally. So where's the overwhelm come from? Overwhelm, I'm gonna say means that I can't manage my own emotions. It really doesn't have anything to do with the situation. Now I've been talking for about maybe 10 minutes and now what I just said was it. Overwhelm is really that I'm not able to handle my own emotions. It has nothing to do with the situation. So what I am suggesting now and what I'm gonna work on, and I'm again inviting you to come with me, is, see if next time if you feel like that reaction coming up, if you feel like everything's going different than it's supposed to, or maybe you feel all of a sudden like there's too much going on. See if you can calmly sit with the storm inside yourself and use the power of silence. Become completely silent inside. I am reminded of Jesus, actually. This is one example, but Jesus put his hand up against the storm and the storm stopped. So in spirituality we have what we call body list stage, which means that it's complete silence. It's absolute silence. Everything is gone. There's no movement, there's no thinking, there's no bodies, there's no world, there's nothing. It's just me. Quiet, silent. Still light. I'm light and there's nothing else. So would it be possible for me to do that, to use that power, use that power of silence, while the storm is going on? I can tell you I've been able to do that in other situations, where there's been some emotional, but never in that moment where in the past it would've been, you know, I feel justified to express that frustration or that complaint or that outburst, the emotional outbursts. I feel justified. That seemed like normal behavior. But can I weather the storm? Can I stop it? Or if I can't stop it, can I remain still while it's happening and not express it? The reason I'm doing this, I'll, I'll end with this. We eventually want these things to stop. The name of the episode is Facing Overwhelm. Face it with silence. It's storming, but I am still, and I'm not gonna speak. I'm not gonna act out. I'm not gonna yell. I'm not gonna blame. I'm not gonna beat myself up. I'm not gonna feel bad. I'm not gonna get stressed out. I'm not gonna overeat. I'm not gonna undereat, I'm not gonna take drugs, I'm not gonna, all that stuff. I'm not gonna do any of that. I'm going to be quiet and still and see if I can be that little boy with the finger in the dam. If you wanna say or be like Jesus, and put my hand up the silent silence. And let the storm be there. In lesser experiences. I know that this works, but I can still see that there are still, there's still many times where I find myself talking about things, maybe not complaining negatively, but definitely talking about things and maybe I don't have to. So I'm gonna invite you all to think about this and let's do a moment of reflection before we finish today and see if this is something we'd like to work on. So sitting quietly, take a look for yourself. First reflection is, do I get overwhelmed? Do I find myself in. A kind of overwhelming emotional state in different situations. Just notice for a second if that happens, and if you can think of one situation, then think of that situation. Second reflection is, what did I do? What was my behavior when that happened? Was I yelling? Was I complaining? What was I doing? Was I acting out? Was I withdrawing myself? Was I slamming doors? Was I beating myself up? What was I doing in that moment? What was my response to that emotional overwhelm. Third reflection is. Would this be something that I would be happy to get rid of? Is this something that I would like to finish in myself? And then finally, just reflect for a moment, whatever visual you would like to have, whether it's I'm using Jesus with the storm, or you could use the, the, the little. Boy with the, the dam, or maybe just maybe a storm, like if a hurricane comes and then afterwards there's this absolute peace after the storm. Is it possible to have the peace in my awareness while the storm is there and have the courage to not let it flow out into my speaking or flow out into my behavior? All those things that were there before, maybe I thought was normal, but I don't wanna be like that anymore. So is it possible to remain still and silent while the storm is going on and with the faith that it's going to pass? I mean, this too shall pass. We've heard this before, but I'm trying to bring it now for myself and for everybody who's listening, bring it to actual practicality. Can I do this? I say we can, I've done it in smaller circumstances. I know it works, but like I've said, maybe it's time to maybe take it to the next level. So I will leave it there. I hope that that's given you all something to work with and to try and maybe with overwhelm, maybe if it's too much, maybe try it with a little upset. If you have a little upset one day, see if you can use silence instead of acting out instead of going forward. See if you can keep yourself, keep your emotional self under control until the storm passes. So I will leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. Until next time, take care.
