Dealing with Anxiety and Overwhelm

How often do you find yourself frozen in the moment: washing machine thoughts, unable to say the thing, fidgeting, and later wishing you’d handled it better?

Given our world of overstimulation—notifications, endless inboxes, back-to-back meetings—it’s understandable that so many leaders feel overwhelmed.

The good news is that you can train your system to meet intensity with connection and find a place of calm. Here are seven practical techniques, many inspired by ancient tradition, that I use successfully with my clients to help them reset when their minds start overheating.

1. Start with the Breath

When you consciously take control of your breath, you make the journey from your head back into the body.

Try this:

• Inhale for 3 counts.
• Exhale for 3 counts.
• Repeat three times.

If that feels good, extend the exhale slightly — in for 3, out for 4, or in for 4, out for 6. Lengthening the out-breath activates your parasympathetic nervous system and signals safety to your system.

You can imagine inhaling calm, even saying the word in your head, and exhaling tension, imagining tension leaving your body.

2. Speak Your Feelings Out Loud

Name it to tame it. Research shows speaking out your emotions reduces activity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat centre, and activates the prefrontal cortex, which governs regulation and reasoning.

Ask yourself:

• What am I feeling right now?
  • Answer the question out loud.
• Where do I feel it in my body?
  • Answer the question out load and move a hand to that part of the body.

When you ask yourself asking yourself ‘How do I feel?”, but answer with an evaluation of someone else, i.e. if, say, you’re riled up by a colleague, “I feel like she’s being a b**ch,” or “I feel like he’s being an a**hole” notice that’s a thought, a judgement, not a feeling.

Try instead for ‘feeling words’. Feeling words include those like ‘angry’, ‘anxious’, ‘overwhelmed’, and ‘joyful’. They apply only to our own state.

In the example above, try a second pass. “When I think she’s being a b**ch, how do I feel?” The true feeling answer might be “When I think the thought ‘she’s being a b**ch, ‘ I feel angry — tight in my chest and heavy in my stomach.”

Getting to the true feelings and sensations gets you out of the story about your circumstances and back into your body. This is a vital self-leadership capacity.

This practice is especially important for men, given the extent to which boys are socialised against speaking their emotions.

3. Write It Down

The same principle as two above, but now on paper. Journaling what happened and how you felt lowers cortisol, strengthens memory and even boosts immunity.

When you can, jot down:

• What happened?
• What did I feel?
• Where did I feel it in my body?

Even doing this after the fact helps your system integrate the experience, so you can process emotions more fluidly next time.

4. Get Outside

Nature is one of the most reliable ways to reset your nervous system. The overall benefit is profound, as the brilliant Florence Williams shared with me on Being Human. 

Step outside. Get amongst the trees. Ground yourself, literally, if you can, with bare feet.

Grounding, or “earthing,” synchronises the brain’s hemispheres and helps the body release built-up static from stress.

Look up to the sky. Let sunlight hit your eyes. Even a few minutes make a difference. For an even greater effect, leave your technology on your desk.

5. Do a Brain Dump

Sometimes overwhelm isn’t from an explicit emotional trigger; it’s simply cognitive overload. Too many to-dos swirling in your head, unclosed loops as productivity guru David Allen refers to them.

Get them onto a page.

Then ask:

“What’s the smallest, easiest task I can do right now?”

That tiny win releases dopamine and builds momentum.

For another powerful personal productivity system, check out Jim Benson’s Personal Kanban.

6. Reframe the Thought

Notice the thought creating tension. Then ask:

• Is it helpful?
• Is it empowering?

If not, try a new one.

One simple mantra that I’m currently using comes from Ester Hicks:

“Everything is working out for me. Life is good.

I love this day; can’t wait for what it brings!”

Say it whilst summoning as many good feelings as you can. You might be surprised how quickly your energy shifts.

7. Move Your Body

Anxiety tends to lock us into stillness. Deliberate movement can shift us to another state.

You don’t need a full workout: just move.

Walk around the block. Shake out your arms. Stretch your neck.

Movement releases stress hormones, improves circulation and, again, signals safety to your nervous system, pulling you out of fight, flight or freeze or fawn.

Building Emotional Resilience

None of these tools is magic on its own. But together, they build the muscle of maintaining state: the capacity to return more quickly over time to a steady, centred and open-hearted space when anxious or overwhelmed.

Start with one today technique today.

Emotional balance isn’t the absence of intensity; it’s developing the ability to parse out those emotions and return to neutrality with increasing speed.