OVERWHELMED BY THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR?
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Hello, my friends.
Well, it's June, and another school year is coming to a close. Your kids might still be waiting through final exams, or they might have recently graduated. If you have a college kid, they might even have been home for a few weeks.
For us moms, and for our kids, it's a time of transition, and let's face it, also a time that can be fraught with feelings of overwhelm. The other day, I was totally caught up in feeling overwhelmed. My youngest was taking the SAT, and just afterwards was headed off to a two-week school trip to Greece.
My oldest has been home for a few weeks. He's been trying to settle into a routine that looks very different than his college experience. He's got a virtual internship, and he's looking for another part-time job, so his plans for the summer are a little bit in flux.
We've been spending quite a bit of time together, and we've been having a lot of political conversations at dinner. Then in separate news about my youngest son, we submitted a proposal to school for something that means a lot to my son, and it was denied. On top of all of this, I've been recovering from foot surgery, so my productivity has been reduced by half, at least.
I've been trying to keep up with my workload and other obligations and chores around the house, but the pain in my foot has made it challenging to get motivated, or even tackle tasks that require me to be somewhat mobile. So, none of this is very interesting. I've just shared a bunch of facts about my life, and while you might guess why the combination of all of these things could be making me feel overwhelmed, this list actually doesn't create the feeling of overwhelm.
And yet there I was the other day, so overwhelmed, I actually experienced the feeling like anxiety. They say one way you know you're experiencing emotional overwhelm is if the intensity of your feelings outmatches your ability to manage them. I think that's where the anxiety came in for me.
It was like it was all too much. It's one thing to experience intense emotion in some moment where you kind of understand why you're anxious or angry, like my son just gave me attitude, so I got angry. Trigger emotion.
We know where the anger is coming from, but sometimes it's almost like we can't see it. We feel this intense emotion, and we're not even sure where to start in terms of processing it. If you've experienced emotional overwhelm, in fact, if you feel like this is you right now in the midst of the craziness of the end of the school year, you know it's an uncomfortable feeling.
Actually, not only is it uncomfortable, but it's a feeling of I'm uncomfortable and I don't know how to let it go type feeling, like you're trapped in emotional discomfort. I don't know about you, but this stuck, trapped feeling almost always leads me to shut down for a bit. And it's ironic because often one of the drivers of my overwhelm is a thought along the lines of there's so much I have to do, but then I feel overwhelmed and get nothing done.
It's like the opposite of what I'm telling myself I want, and surprise, this only leads me to feel more feelings of overwhelm. I think one of the hard parts about feeling emotionally overwhelmed is that it feels like it's happening to you, like there are all these things going on around you, people doing things, things not going your way, so much to juggle, so much out of your control, and we have feelings about all of it. And let's face it, sometimes we react to those feelings.
We snap at our kids or a partner, we might get in arguments that we regret later, we overeat or drink to feel better, then feel a bit of shame that we did that. Or as I mentioned, the overwhelm leads you to not get much of anything done, and then you feel guilty and disappointed in yourself. Whether it's something going on with your kids that you wish weren't happening, the long list of things you have to get done, disappointments, hurts or frustrations, thoughts about the past, worry about the future, all of it seems to build up, layer upon layer of stuff you don't want.
And it's like the emotions get amplified. For so long, I judged myself for feeling this overwhelm. It was something that used to come up for me a lot.
I'd judge myself for the feelings themselves, but also for the way I handled them. I'd find myself stuck in shame and judgment. It actually seemed like a fact that there was something wrong with me, that I couldn't handle my emotions.
As I've really explored what overwhelm looks like for me, and also worked with so many women who find themselves stuck in this place, I've learned a lot about what causes it and how to overcome it. I think the best analogy I can offer is that overwhelm feels like one of those balls of rubber bands. You know, those balls of hundreds of rubber bands all wrapped around each other until you actually create this hard ball where you almost can't tell how to unravel the ball or even what's underneath those layers of bands.
We have some idea, a concept of what's creating our feelings, but that doesn't seem to get us any closer to resolving those feelings. But here's what's happening. When we're overwhelmed by any emotion, we believe that the circumstances of our lives are creating our pain.
We think that it's the end of the school year, or my son taking finals, or graduation events, or the way someone else talked to us or behaved. We point to all of these facts and we think those things outside of us make us feel overwhelmed, frustrated, anxious, or angry. I'll even take it one step further.
We think we're offering the facts when we say things like this. And let me share some examples of exactly what was going through my mind when I felt overwhelmed the other day. I was thinking, if my son doesn't do as well as he hopes on the SAT, he'll be so upset.
I hope he's safe on the school trip and honestly that he doesn't try to sneak out with his friends. About my oldest, I was thinking, if he doesn't enjoy himself this summer, he might not come home again next summer. I was wishing he could resolve some issues he's had with friends.
And thinking about how some of the conversations we've had around the dinner table have been intense. I was also taking it personally that the proposal we submitted for my son was denied. I couldn't help but think it wasn't fair and in my mind replayed all of the reasons why.
I was thinking that somehow I should be more productive even though I've been in pain and it takes me a lot longer to get around. I've had all of these other thoughts. I've even had thoughts like, what I'm doing isn't enough.
Are my sons doing enough? Or are they doing the right thing? What should I be doing differently? Needless to say, all of these categories of thoughts had a long and much more detailed narrative. I could go on and on about the denied proposal alone. Do you ever find your brain going into these thought loops? Like you just can't stop thinking about the situation and how much is wrong and ways that you want to try to make it right.
Better ways that you could phrase your arguments to change someone's mind. Now imagine this narrative about every single situation that you're facing in your life. For me, it would be everything from my son's political views to the implications of my lack of productivity.
Is it really any wonder that I feel overwhelmed? So I had these novel-size worries and judgments, hurts, and frustrations spiraling on repeat in my head. With anxiety, we often get it that when we catastrophize or fixate on something we're worried about, that it becomes bigger. Something that's hard to talk ourselves down from.
We may not always be able to turn off the anxiety right away, but we often have an awareness that our mind is churning over thoughts about a situation that we should be able to let go of. Even if you can't let go of the anxiety, you kind of know that you're worried about something that hasn't happened or is actually not even likely to happen. You have some awareness about this even if you can't talk yourselves off the ledge in the moment.
But with emotional overwhelm, I don't think we always see it. Part of it is there are so many emotions churning around in our minds and bodies that it's like we're not even sure what to call the feeling. Even though the other day I sensed a feeling that physically seemed similar to anxiety, that didn't entirely explain what I was feeling.
I didn't think I was anxious. It was more that I was feeling so much at the same time. Yes, anxiety, worry, and concern, but also annoyance, anger, disappointment, frustration, lack of motivation, and guilt.
Kind of a primordial soup of sludgy, heavy emotions. In fact, as I sat with the feeling and tried not to fight it, that's exactly how it felt. Heavy.
Dark. Oppressive. I had noticed this feeling, and actually, before I was able to sit with it, I took my journal and I just vented.
I let myself be completely childish and uncensored. If my words could paint a picture, it would be of me having a tantrum. Because one of the questions I ask myself and my clients is, why is this actually a problem for me? And keep asking the question.
Go beyond the knee-jerk reaction like, I'm worried about my son's SAT because I don't want him to be upset. Okay, but why is my son being upset a problem for me? Really think about it. So my son would be upset.
I mean, of course I don't want him to be upset. I love my son. I don't want him to be in pain.
But also, the reality of life is that he's not going to be happy all the time. So why then is it such a problem for me to contemplate that he might be upset? In fact, if he got a score on the test that he didn't want, it would make perfect sense that he would be disappointed and even really bummed about it. Should he really be happy? So often women come to me and they tell me that they feel enmeshed with their kids.
That they can't help feel what their child feels. And I do get it. I've been there.
But the truth is we can't, in fact, experience our child's emotions. It's not possible. They experience emotions as a series of sensations in their body.
These physical sensations don't magically jump into our bodies. But what does happen is that we observe our children. We see physical signs that they're experiencing an emotion.
They might even tell us specifically what they're feeling. So we're left with this series of facts. Words and behaviors that we've observed in our kids.
These are just facts. And then we have thoughts about these facts. What thoughts do you have about your teen when you see signs that indicate to you that they're in emotional pain? Why do your thoughts about these facts bring you pain? If you do this exercise, I encourage you to be really, even brutally honest with yourself.
Because sometimes we don't like the answers. Look, if it was just a matter of empathy, like, I feel sad because I don't like seeing my daughter sad, that makes sense, of course. I don't want this to be true and so I'm sad about it.
This does hurt. But the way we often react to our kids being in emotional pain goes beyond just empathy. Often we experience this emotional pain as something deeper.
Now what is that about? Get really curious. What does your child's pain actually have to do with you at all? As I said, sometimes it's hard to look at these answers. We don't want to make it about us.
We don't like the way it makes us look. Even if we're just admitting it to ourselves. Maybe it's hard because you think your teen's failure becomes your failure.
Maybe their pain makes your life more difficult in some way. Like, now we have to keep dealing with this challenge. Maybe you're actually judging your teen in some way, but you don't want to do this to a child that you love.
Maybe you think that whatever is going on will only get worse, spiral into some worst case scenario. My friend, these thoughts are simmering beneath the surface and in fact there's nothing wrong with you if that's the case. What I've found and seen so many times with my clients is that it's like our brains create these thoughts in our subconscious and when we bring them to light, we don't even really believe them.
It's like, wait, is it really true that my son's SAT score says something about me? No. But if that thought is simmering beneath the surface of your subconscious, it's creating negative emotion for you, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. If you're experiencing overwhelm in this transitional moment at the end of the school year with your kids, in your life, list out all of the different categories of problems or challenges running around in your head.
Try to see if you can notice a difference between the actual facts of what's happening and your thoughts about those facts. Why are those facts a problem for you? Think about this. It's actually easier for us to blame other people or the circumstances of our life for our pain.
It's easier than having to look at some of these truths within ourselves. And here's the fascinating thing about blame. As long as we believe the pain that we're feeling is being caused by the facts or the circumstances of our lives, we have absolutely no power to feel better.
If we think our pain is someone else's fault, we give all our power up to the hope that the other person will change so we can feel better. If we think we feel pain because something's gone wrong, we think we can't feel better unless we fix it. If I believe that my pain is being caused by some inherent flaw within myself, then I think I either need to change something about me or I stay stuck because I can't escape who I am.
The mom who catastrophizes or has attachment issues or is a people pleaser, a perfectionist, or any of the other labels we put on ourselves because we think somehow we're broken or not enough. As I say all of this, I in no way mean to imply that we shouldn't feel emotional pain about the facts or the circumstances of our that aren't what we want. There are times when we will feel angry, frustrated, scared, or disappointed.
Even times when we feel ashamed. And guess what? If we were able to take a step back and think about the situation objectively, we might have to agree that yes, that's an appropriate, reasonable emotion to feel in this situation. If I get an answer or a result that's different than I'd hoped, of course I'm going to feel disappointed.
If someone steals something from me, I'm going to feel angry about it. Maybe you violate it. Frustration, worry, anxiety, and fear.
This is life. The problem is that I think we sometimes set ourselves up to believe that there's a problem if we feel this way. That the goal of life is to feel happy all the time and you're doing it wrong if you're not.
As I looked over the long narrative of all the reasons why I was angry, scared, and resentful, disappointed, and feeling guilty, I looked at everything going on in my head that I'd poured into my journal and I was like, huh, no wonder I feel so overwhelmed right now. It makes perfect sense. In fact, in that moment, I validated all of my stories.
I let it be okay that I had all these thoughts. I didn't judge them. I definitely didn't judge myself.
Even when I realized that the reason that it was such a problem for me that this proposal had been denied was because I felt disrespected. In my mind, I thought the outcome should have been different. That I deserved a certain level of consideration.
And so the fact that the answer was no meant again in my subconscious mind that I had been pushed aside and discounted. No wonder I was spinning about it. And before even trying to convince myself that I was wrong, that the no wasn't personal, I just acknowledged that yes, I totally get it.
If you think you've been disrespected, it makes sense that your brain's fighting back, demanding respect. Here's the power of embracing these thoughts, even the ones that you don't like. You stop fighting.
You stop resisting the negative feelings that are stacking up layer upon layer and becoming this overwhelming mix of emotions. When you stop fighting, you give yourself grace. You become willing to accept and even love all of the parts of you because you understand yourself just a little bit more.
And you know what? It feels terrible to feel disrespected. When you stop thinking that you shouldn't feel it and you really acknowledge that it's your thoughts creating that emotion, you stop blaming the world for your emotions. If you're wondering how you could ever possibly get to this place, consider this.
Do you remember when your child was little and they came to you and they said, mommy, I'm sad? Maybe at the time you knew why they were sad, maybe you didn't. But let's imagine a time when your child was young enough that you were pretty confident that the hurt wasn't because of something terrible. Remember those innocent days when we had the belief that we could easily fix our kid's pain? Wouldn't we wish we could do that so easily now? But see if you can put yourself back there with your child, seeing that they're sad, and you don't think in their mind that they shouldn't be sad.
You're just curious, willing to hold space for them and love them through it. Maybe you give your child a hug and just sit with them for a while. You don't have to fix it.
You don't think anything is wrong with your child that they feel sad. You just let them be sad for a little bit. Love them through it.
Imagine the comfort and validation of having someone just be there for you, just loving you for exactly who you are in that moment, sadness and all. What if you could offer yourself that same level of unconditional love and support when you're feeling overwhelmed or any other strong emotion? Think of what a gift this would be. It actually makes you wonder why it's so hard to allow ourselves to feel.
Or should I say allow ourselves to feel without needing to react, without needing to rush to fix it, or find a way to make it hurt less by buffering with distractions or food or alcohol? It's not an option we've ever been taught to give ourselves, to just sit with our emotional pain and allow it, to acknowledge that it's there, experience what it feels like in your body. In my case, my overwhelm, this mix of emotions, felt heavy, deep, like a weight on my whole body, making me feel small and slow. But as I sat with it, I acknowledged it and recognized that it was okay.
I was sitting, feeling the heaviness, but I wasn't in pain. I was safe. This is just what the feeling of overwhelm felt like in my body, a series of sensations, this physical response to the way I was thinking about the circumstances of my life.
I recognized in that moment a bit of relief, not fighting these feelings anymore. I'd been pushing through, trying to ignore that life is more challenging when you're laid up with an injury, especially one where you can't walk. Of course I wasn't going to get as much done, but I was ignoring reality and only compounding my frustration.
In every scenario that I was dealing with, I'd been resisting or fighting against some of these emotions. But by intentionally stopping and taking a moment to listen and acknowledge those feelings, I stopped fighting and I felt a little more open. I created just a bit more space, a little distance from the intensity of the emotions I was feeling.
And in that space, I was really able to ask myself, why am I overwhelmed? What is really going on here for me? And I was willing to listen to the answers. With a clear mind, I'm able to see the facts of my life as separate from my thoughts about them. So earlier, I shared the facts that were connected to my overwhelm as a fairly boring list of things going on.
My youngest was taking the SAT and I was worried he would be upset if he didn't get the result he wanted. Why is any of this a problem for me? Well, if you've been following my mom archetype series, you've heard me describe the achiever. In this respect, that's me.
I want my boys to be successful and I feel this deep sense of responsibility to help them get there. I know my son has high aspirations for college and the reality is he needs a certain SAT score to be in the running. Does where he goes to college matter in the scheme of his life? Absolutely not.
But I'd be lying if there wasn't a subconscious part of me that hopes I can help him and support him as he pursues these goals. And that same part of me would be disappointed in myself if reality doesn't match his dreams. Pretending these thoughts don't exist in my mind doesn't make them go away.
And my oldest is back home and I notice I have opinions about how he should spend his time and how I'd like him to be with his friends, about his political views. I love this child with all my heart and I accept him for exactly who he is. But also, I have judgments.
And on some subconscious level, I'm making those judgments mean something. Cue the mentor mom archetype. Again, as much as I don't want to acknowledge that I'm judging my son, that's the truth.
I can only understand and let go of those judgments and even more let go of my instinct to do something about those judgments, like try to convince my son, encourage him to do something I think he should be doing. These reactions and my discomfort, it's all because of my judgments. And I'm willing to acknowledge those judgments in order to let them go.
And I already mentioned how my anger about the proposal was me making this result about me, creating a reality in my mind that I was being disrespected. Here's the truth. My pain is never the other person's fault.
It's never them causing my pain. In fact, if I told you the whole story, all of the details, you wouldn't have been angry about any of it. You probably would have been able to see both sides and you definitely would have been confused about why I was thinking about it so much.
Without the story in my head about why this situation is a problem, there is no problem, no pain. This reminds me of Byron Katie's words, no one can hurt me, that's my job. Here's the reality, even when you recognize that it's your thoughts that create your emotional pain, that doesn't exactly mean that you can change your mind about the situation, at least not right away.
Which is why I think the skill of learning to allow and sit with your emotions is so powerful. It takes that release of the fight, that little opening to allow your brain to even consider the possibility that your version of the story, those thoughts in your head, might not be true. This is the process I teach in my program Mom 2.0, this process of self-coaching.
I think of it as a little bit like organizing your closet. Your mind is the closet and it contains all of these thoughts, some of the thoughts you've been carrying with you for a really long time. You're not even sure why you keep them, but you've held onto them for so long they seem to be a part of you.
Sometimes your thoughts are focused on the past, some of them are about the future, some thoughts you end up using every day but you don't even question why, habit or convenience. Sometimes you try on new thoughts, like the new outfit you want to buy because it represents who you want to be, but those thoughts don't feel entirely comfortable all the time. So your mind is like this closet of jumbled thoughts, some that you've held onto for your entire life and others that you don't even realize are there, stuffed into the back of your closet like something forgotten but still taking up space.
And then you have these thoughts that are dreams for something better in the future. Coaching for me is like bringing Marie Kondo into your mind, clearing everything out of your mind and looking at each individual thought to decide again whether you want to recommit to having that thought in your life. The first step is to pull everything out of the closet of your mind, to allow yourself to look at it honestly, without judgment, and then to have the patience and compassion to look at each thought one by one and question it, understand why it's there in the first place, what it means for you.
Unlike in therapy where you might look to your past to understand why the thoughts are in your head, this process is more about seeing the thought for what it is today, for the impact it's having on your life right now. Yes, your past may have contributed significantly to the way you think about your life right now, but that doesn't change the fact that you can actually decide right now if you want to change your perspective. But first, you have to start with awareness.
There is so much beauty and compassion that you can create for yourself by simply watching your mind, not in judgment but in self-love. This is what's true for me right now, in this moment. It's not right or wrong.
The piece of clothing in your closet isn't right or wrong. It's simply a matter of whether or not you choose it on purpose. There are many thoughts in my brain that I would love to give away, sometimes thoughts that I don't want, but I'm not always ready to throw them away just yet.
I need space to acknowledge that the thought is there, to recognize that I am the one who created the thought, and I am the one causing the emotional reaction to that thought. When you blame your emotional pain on others or the past or what might happen, you often feel powerless or stuck feeling this pressure, this urgency to change others, fix the past, or control the future, all in an effort to feel better. Unfortunately, this rarely works.
You can almost never change someone else unless they actually want to change. You obviously can't change the past, and you can't control the future. So when you try, you're constantly fighting this impossible battle in your mind.
It's also valuable to acknowledge that the goal of life isn't to stop experiencing negative emotion. This is life. But so often we fight against the pain, and honestly only create more pain for ourselves in the process.
When you allow yourself to experience these negative emotions without judgment, you can create space to understand what's really true for you without judgment, without guilt or shame. When you allow yourself to feel, you open yourself up to the truth and the beauty of your life. So the other day, I honestly needed this reminder.
I'd been stuck in the overwhelm of all of these painful emotions, fighting against them, wanting them to be different, wanting the circumstances of my life to be different. And when I embraced these thoughts instead of fighting against them, I created compassion. I slowed down.
I decided to let myself off the hook and rest. I acknowledged my fears and my judgments, and I gave that part of me that was scared and needing to fix the situation with my boys and my life, I gave that part of me a hug. I acknowledged that part of me that loves her boys so fiercely she would do anything to protect and support them, but also recognized that maybe now there's nothing to fix.
As I breathed in this love and compassion, the emotional pain loosened just a bit. By accepting the pain, I opened the door to peace. Life is 50-50, my friends.
If you can love and accept the negative 50, you get to spend so much more time enjoying the beauty of the positive 50. This is the work of becoming Mom 2.0, that next version of yourself who believes there is more peace and joy available to you. It's time for you to choose it on purpose.
To get started, I invite you to check out my coaching program, Mom 2.0. In this moment of transition, take a deep breath and love what is, my friends.
Until next time.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
