Do you like being overwhelmed? I don’t like being overwhelmed. I’m not sure anybody enjoys being overwhelmed. But we can’t always get what we want and sometimes we have to stomach being overwhelmed.
But while we’re being overwhelmed, let’s try to take advantage of the situation and ask ourselves why we get overwhelmed. This may sound extremely obvious, but I think there are two dimensions of being overwhelmed: a few big overwhelming factors or many small overwhelming factors.
For example, am I the only one who gets super overwhelmed by making phone calls? Perhaps it’s because I needed to make so many forced calls against my will since I was a kid but I really don’t like it when I need to call someone to make appointments and such.
On the other hand we have everyone’s favorite least favorite topic: uncluttering. So many decisions to make! So many things to move around! But individually they are all negligible! Which makes it all the more frustrating!
One specific way this many-small-overwhelm presents itself is backlogged expressions. I think the best example of this in action is found in relationships going sour. Whether it be a romantic relationship about to end or a parent-child relationship turning bitter, there’s this… Giant backlog of emotions that are barely holding on by a thread.
With relationships an additional complicating factor is reciprocity. Just like how I’m holding on to so much bitterness, so will the other person. Take a parent-child relationship for example. “Mom and dad! You never support me in anything I want to do!”. This quickly turns into, “You never do anything right like we raised you to!”. And the stakes keep rising and it seems like the tension will never dissipate.
But what about a you-you relationship? Humans are social animals, and we all have some innate desire to be seen and witnessed by others. This is the entire motivating factor of Hegel’s lord–bondsman dialectic; one party needs the witnessing of the other party for it to establish itself.
In this innate desire to be seen and witnessed, there is a desire for one to express themselves. But because we keep having these ideas about how we want to be witnessed in a certain way, we keep silencing that desire. This is a phenomenon otherwise known as shame.
The problem with this inner backlog is, it just becomes the default starting point for any idea you have in life. Maybe you want to pick up a new hobby. Boom! Instant overwhelm, because you have so many thoughts you haven’t expressed to completion yet. How about a new career path? Boom! Instant overwhelm.
When overwhelm presents itself everywhere you look, this becomes the prime recipe for depression: “what the fuck is the point of anything if I’m always going to feel like this?”. As someone who’s experienced both backlog-based overwhelm and depression, I wouldn’t wish it even on my worst enemies.
Clearing this backlog is way more important than you may give it credit for. How can one experience this? The most accessible way is through a journaling practice. When you journal and read back to yourself what you thought, it has the effect of expressing and witnessing yourself. Since this is a private practice, I would say that’s the most entry-level way of starting the expression.
Then you would move on to perhaps creating a burner account on a social media service and start posting there. Maybe then you’d move on to your actual account. That will be up to individual preference, but I think it’s important to let you know what actually happens when you start doing this practice.
Self-expression without backlog gives you a path forward in how you naturally want to unfold in your life. All the inner desires and interests you’ve fostered over the years but never gave enough spotlight due to shame, they will naturally start to blossom into a next step for your life.
As you bloom into that next step, it might not materialize fully into a complete path. For example you might take a ballet class and decide that it’s not for you. But that’s precisely the point; you will get to see that it wasn’t for you at this time, instead of always wondering what if.
Maybe the next easiest step is to just tell someone safe, like me. I’ve had lots of people use my inbox as an expression zone. If you’ve got a lot on your mind and need someone to listen to you, you’re always welcome at billy@julylifecoach.com.