Leanne French Relationship Expert & Counsellor

You can’t calm the storm, so stop trying, What you can do is calm yourself. The storm will pass. Timber Hawkeye.

Overwhelm can arrive when something triggers a powerful emotion in us; especially fear, which can then flood our mind with paralysing negative thoughts and emotions, and change our posture, breath and ability to cope.

It’s really important to be curious about our thought patterns, and to claw back some control because once negative thoughts overly take hold in our mind, they’re likely to distort the severity of our situation and have us focusing on dramatic consequences.

Emotional overwhelm occurs when the intensity of our feelings outmatches our ability to manage them. It can come from a single big stressor, like a pandemic. Or financial issues. Trying to make ends meet is probably number one in the list for tipping many people over the edge. Others find that overwhelm sweeps in like a tidal wave, brought on from a bunch of challenges like life transitions and losses that come at us one after the other.

Tags: grief, Leanne French Counsellor, loss, Mangawhai Counsellor, money struggles, Northland relationship counsellor, overwhelm, pandemic, self soothe, stress, telehealth counsellor, transition