#8: Stressed vs. Overwhelmed
Emotions are something I’ve been exploring more in-depth recently, both for my sake and to better support the people I interact with.
My motivation?
Quite Simply: We live in an age where our emotions have been denigrated and weaponized.
“You’re being too emotional, calm down.”
Many of us (myself included) have heard this expression or something along the lines of being ‘too sensitive’ or ‘taking things too personal.’
Or perhaps you’ve heard the opposite, “Why don’t you show more emotion and just express yourself more?” or the dreaded, “Smile more, it makes you look happier.”’
We all experience the same emotions, but the circumstances and capability to express them are influenced by multiple factors throughout our lives - trauma responses, social influences, and familiarity with our emotions being only three examples.
This is why I think we need a deeper understanding of emotions - when something so natural (such as emotions) is widely viewed with such shame and judgment, we need to reappraise the framework that we’ve been taught.
Hence why I’m writing this post.
In the future I will discuss more emotions, but this post will focus on being stressed and overwhelmed.
Stress is something we all deal with, and while we can lament the perpetual cycle of stress-chill-stress, the fact remains - ‘tis an inevitable part of life.
However, I learned that where there’s stress, there’s also overwhelm.
But what are these two emotions?
Stress is both a physiological and psychological reaction in the body that we feel when we’ve evaluated environmental demands as being beyond our ability to successfully and/or effectively cope; this includes elements of unpredictability, uncontrollability, and feeling overloaded or overstimulated.
Overwhelm is an extreme level of stress, an emotional and/or cognitive intensity to the point of feeling unable to function; completely overcome or overpowered by thought(s) and/or feeling(s).
When we’re overwhelmed, the only way to effectively bring us back down and ground us is to give us space from whatever has stressed us out to that point - in other words, to disconnect from the situation!
“It’s all unloading faster than my nervous system and psyche can manage it.”
(Brown, P. 7; Quoting Kabat-Zinn)
I always thought of it like a balloon, where the balloon (us) holds air (stress) for as long as it can until it pops (overwhelmed). That, or a cup of emotions, in which stress is the water that fills our cup’s emotional capacity, and being overwhelmed is when we overflow with water.
“Our emotions are intense, our focus on them is moderate, and our clarity is low enough to confuse us in identify them.”
It’s beautiful to experience all these different parts of human emotions, especially in proper moderation and exposure.
However, I am a firm believer that emotions in every capacity and all measures have a message that deserves to be heard, and a beauty that sometimes has yet to be seen.
Titled “Pinecone” (2022). This image brought up a lot of emotions, both enjoyable as well as more difficult-to-manage emotions, so I leaned into these feeling by diminishing the colors to make it more monochromatic.
Citation:
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaning Connection and the Language of Human Experience. (1st Ed.) Random House, Penguin Random House LLC. P. 4-8.