Got Too Much On Your Plate? How To Emotionally Digest a Full Plate.

Have you ever said, "I've just got too much on my plate right now."

How does it feel when you say this to yourself?

Does it calm you down or increase your stress and anxiety?

Our inner dialogues can powerfully affect how we internally process, assimilate, and digest what is happening externally.

Look, I'll first admit that I get overwhelmed easily. Whenever a new semester of school would begin in college, I would look at the syllabus and tell myself, "Well this all needs to be finished tomorrow." Just thinking that all those assignments that were going to happen over many many months needed to be completed in one day I would go into complete shut down. A phone call to my mother always needed to happen so she could remind me that you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Because I know I have this tendency, I have gotten realllllyyyy good at breaking things down into bite sized pieces for myself and this skill is what I have offered to my clients to learn how to focus on just what is the next most supportive baby step they can take.

First, let's explore the phrase "I've got too much on my plate right now."

When you say this to yourself, what are you protecting yourself from? If we focus on the overwhelm of what we desire or what needs to get done, it can be distracting and protective to actually starting. Saying "I've just got too much on my plate right now." is protecting you from something. Let's say what you desire is within your reach. What then? What if you launch that successful health coaching business? What if you no longer worried about what, when, and how you were eating? What if you finally accepted your body as it is? What would you then want to put on your plate?

So we first need to own that putting ourselves into an overwhelmed state can often be self chosen because it is protecting us from something. No judgment here. I will own up myself that for a long time I chose that overwhelm because it was my safe space. It felt comfortable to be there. It was what I knew and I also knew what would happen when I went into that space. There is a comfort level in our patterns that we know don't serve us long term. If you're not yet ready to shift a habit please do not judge yourself. Sometimes we need to play out a pattern over and over again until we have learned all we were meant to learn from that habit.

Now, after we have owned what we’re telling ourselves…

and the emotions and sensations those thoughts produce in our body, we can then explore what we are needing. For example, when I chose to get overwhelmed over all the homework I had to do, I was protecting myself from the fear of failure. I've had to sit and process that fear for a long time as I avoided feeling it for a long time. The faster we name what we are protecting ourselves from, while it may feel counterintuitive, the faster our body can process and release that emotional experience from our body. I now know what I was needing in those moments I was so afraid to fail was to also know that no matter what occurred everything was going to be alright, that I will still be supported and accepted, and that the world will still have my back. Even in my darkest moments, I can look back and see how everything did work out how it needed to.

When you feel like there is too much on your plate, get really curious. Why do you feel that way? What are you protecting yourself from? What are you fearing? What feels scary and overwhelming to be with? And what are you needing to hear? What are you needing to know? What new beliefs could you put on your plate to feed your body with who you have transformed into today?

Exploring how we are internally processing our life can provide a lot of opportunities to raise awareness if our thoughts and actions are feeling nourishing and satiating to our body. All it takes is one pause to be able to ask yourself what is really going on here?

Lastly, I want to note here that if you have experienced trauma, your body may go into overwhelm and fight or flight response more easily. This is very different than what I have discussed today. Your body may habitually feel like it needs to protect yourself that you may not feel like you have a conscious choice in the matter. Some of these tools here may feel supportive, and there may need to be deeper healing that needs to occur first to support your body in feeling safe to be able to navigate overwhelm differently.