Offloading your overwhelmed brain

When I began my personal development journey in earnest a few years ago, getting a grip on my mindset was the key element that I had been missing for many years.?

I had embarked on various diet and lifestyle changes over the years, but nothing really stuck. It was, on reflection, a classic case of shiny new object syndrome.?

Things in my life tended to go a bit off the rails at times when I was stressed and/or overwhelmed. I would get a bit short in communicating with the people around me at work when I had a lot going on, or a lot on my mind. I would make excuses (lots of excuses) about doing exercise and eating well because I was tired, did not have enough time or perhaps just had a stressful day.?

I had to learn how to manage my mind better to make lasting changes to how I think, feel, and behave. Although I did not realise it at the time, I had already been teaching the answer to other people on a medical course for many years.?

I have been an instructor on the Advanced Life Support course for many years. For any kind of healthcare professional, being confronted with a critically ill, deteriorating, or cardiac arrest patient is the most stressful situation that you can face.?

You would be right in saying that it's ‘your job’ to deal with these situations. In fact, these are the very situations that attract certain people to certain jobs e.g. ambulance service, and Emergency Department. One of the reasons I chose Emergency Medicine as my specialism was because, for many years, I wanted to be the person who dealt with these emergency situations.?

This does not remove the human element from the equation. It is not unknown for people earlier in their careers (and sometimes later in their careers) to ‘freeze’ with the sheer adrenaline and weight of expectation in such scenarios.?

I see this a lot in the Life Support courses. Even in a simulated environment, people get cognitively overloaded with the speed of deterioration, an overwhelming amount of information coming at them at great speed, and the potential consequences of not doing the right thing. Even when it is a simulated situation.?

This can present itself in various ways- frozen and unable to make a decision, moving on with tasks in an uncertain slow plodding manner, or, more commonly getting a bit short in their communication and snapping at those around them. All of these are well-known symbols of overwhelm.?

I try to emphasize to our candidates the importance of cognitive offloading tools to help them cope with these stressful scenarios. This applies as well in real life as it does in simulated scenarios. Whilst there is far more at stake in real life, the whole point of doing the training in the first place is to embed these skills in an environment where mistakes can be made safely and learned from.?

Coming back to personal development and mindset. With the aid of the retrospectoscope, I would say that a lot of the issues I had were around the habits I had developed in terms of day-to-day mind management. I was exceptionally good at making excuses for my bad habits and was an expert at justifying my behaviours in the aftermath.?

The other side of this coin in managing the automatic thoughts that come into your head. The mind will tend to automatically try to see the negative in everything, this is a survival instinct that is also a remnant from our primitive days.?

For me, this would manifest at times when my brain was in ‘flow’ doing something else, for example driving, showering, or walking the dog. Tasks I do every day, sometimes multiple times in a day.?

During these tasks, I would get a lot of thoughts and ideas about things. These could often be quite revealing about my overall demeanour that day. If I was a bit tired, stressed, and feeling negative, or if I was worried about something these would often be thoughts about things that had happened in the past. I do not fully understand why at the moment, but this was often me imagining some kind of future conflict that had not happened.

At first glance, this might not seem like much of an issue. Imagine for a moment the Olympic athlete who uses visualisation as part of their preparation for an event. They visualise in amazing detail what optimum performance would look like, feel like, and even smell like. Even thinking about it causes corresponding areas of the brain to activate, and makes them feel and behave like they are aiming to during the event.?

Imagine now the situation I describe above where you are thinking of negative things from the past or, in my case, imagine having conflict with someone in the future. I am allowing my mindset to drift into a negative space, drastically influencing the quality of the day I am about to have.?

How best to manage this??

There are many ways to approach this. Depending on the nature of issues you have had in the past you may need to consider speaking to a professional. For me, it was about adjusting how I approach these moments rather than addressing significant trauma from the past.?

As a logical-brained person, I needed to detach myself from the emotion of what was coming up for me and mentally file these away somehow. I have written before about the concept of the ‘mind museum’ which is one way to look at it.?

The other approach I used is to fall back on a small number of ‘mantras’ to manage my mindset, in response to these automatic thoughts popping up.?

‘Mantra’ can refer to a sound or wound, used repeatedly as part of a meditation ritual to aid in gaining focus in the moment.?

It can also refer to a sentence or phrase that you bring forth at certain times, which you may repeat internally, externally, or both.?

Below I have included some of the more common ones that I use, and why they are helpful to me.?

‘Respond, don’t react’

When I was in Emergency Medicine training, there was a point where the emphasis shifts away from ‘just’ seeing patient after patient. You get to the stage where a step back is required to maintain an oevrview of the whole department, and freeing up some cognitive bandwidth to be able to help others with their patients.?

In one three-sixty-degree feedback exercise I received some feedback about being a bit short with people when I was stressed and overwhelmed. This led to a discussion with my mentor at the time about so-called behaviours under stress. And on reflection, this is a fairly classical presentation of overwhelm. I did not acknowledge this enough at the time and attempted to justify it to myself.?

‘Reacting’ to me is that short, snappy way of communicating. It does serve a purpose in some scenarios, where physical survival is potentially an issue. Fortunately, such scenarios do not come up that often in modern life so I think it is best to avoid this type of communication in day-to-day working life.?

‘Responding’ is a more considered way of communicating with the people around you. It is probably the way you communicate most of the time. The tricky part is responding when you really feel like reacting. Those times when, whether you realise it or not, you are getting stressed and overwhelmed.?

These are the moments when cultivating the habit of thinking, ‘respond don’t react’ can be helpful. And this starts with the self-awareness that you are stressed or overwhelmed, or demonstrating signs of becoming a bit more reactive than usual. The next mantra can also help with how to be less reactive at these times.?

‘Stay calm, be curious, and ask questions’

This is a helpful one to lead into after identifying that the seesaw is tipping more towards reaction rather than response. When you get to the stage of being able to at least identify this, you are doing well. Keep building on that with this mantra.?

I first thought about this when I participated in a leadership development programme. What I found really helpful about the programme was that everyone seemed to be in the same boat- a bit uncertain about whether what they were doing was right, suffering from imposter syndrome.?

Consider the situations above where you feel a bit stressed and overwhelmed and feel, perhaps only internally, a bit irritated. Perhaps someone has interrupted you (very common in my job due to the nature of the work) or, for whatever reason, you find interactions with certain individuals challenging.?

This is a good way of calming the reaction down a bit. Reminding yourself to stay calm. While they are talking to you, take a couple of deep breaths (doesn't need to be obvious that you are doing this). This will also encourage you to listen fully to what they are trying to tell you (you will be tempted to interrupt when you are stressed out).?

Then try not to make assumptions. Ask questions to gain clarity on the situation at hand, and what help they need from you. Be genuinely curious about what is going on. Most of the time you will find that the irritation fades as you clarify exactly what is needed from you and what is at stake.?

‘Be strict with yourself and tolerant of others’

This is a favourite for the followers of stoic philosophy. I recently caused a little bit of concern when I posted this one on LinkedIn, where it was interpreted initially as a form of self-flagellation.?

Rest assured that this does not mean that I regularly beat myself up, mentally or otherwise.

Language use is so important, it is really about what the words and phrases mean to you. This is why certain mantras will work for some and not for others. This is a perfect example- there was some concern about the concept of being ‘strict’ with myself and what this entailed.?

Rest assured I do not see this as being a punishment thing. For me, it is holding myself to certain standards and in particular, being a good person as much as I can. This often comes into my mind when driving. Being out and about on the roads is a perfect environment for triggering a reaction. We often do not need to look far to find someone that has upset us in some way.?

When I am tempted to react in the moment of someone doing something that I disagree with, this mantra reminds me that I only need to worry about my own behaviour. There is no point in expending energy being annoyed about someone else's behaviour and actions.?

You can apply this to any area of your life where you tend to be triggered by things that other people do.?

‘That's theirs, this is yours’

This mantra came from something I observed about myself. I was also reminded of this when I attended a recent autism awareness learning session. The speaker described him being an ‘empathy sponge’ in various areas of his life.?

This manifests as feeling like you have to solve the problems of the people who come to talk to you, even if that's not what they want. Having an intuition that you ‘know’ how they are feeling, and almost internalise this into yourself so that you feel the way you think they are feeling.?

It also comes from social media forums and news- being really significantly affected by what is happening in the world, or to the people around you. People being generally horrible to each other on social media was a common trigger for me. I would come away from scrolling in social media ‘rabbit holes’ feeling really awful. I now realise I was internalising what I was observing. I was also being an ‘empathy sponge’.?

Falling back on this mantra helps to remind me that I do not need to be involved in everything that is going on around me.?

‘Concentrate on the problem at hand and not in your mind’

Strong links again with stoic philosophy here. Many of us get a bit carried away with problems of all sizes, and some have a tendency to manufacture a catastrophe before the horse has even left the gate.?

This may be easier said than done for some people, but just having a small reminder has been helpful for me personally in terms of bringing my focus back to the present (and immediate future). Then I can utilise the majority of my energy on problem-solving, rather than worrying.?

‘Think, but not too much’

I found this mantra incredibly helpful at work. My job in the Emergency Department could involve absolutely any medical problem presenting at the front door requiring my attention.?

It is very easy to get sucked into the whys and the whos of the situation, especially with a problem that seems obscure or complex at first glance.?

This would lead to all sorts of biases kicking in, and can even predispose you to make judgements and assumptions about the patient, the problem or both.?

I found with experience that approaching each patient and their problem with as blank a slate as possible was helpful. Keeping assumptions to a minimum, even thought they will be happening automatically in the background. Reacting a bit more in the moment, and trusting that your knowledge, skills and experience will be able to find the right way forward.?

Obviously you do not want the healthcare professional looking after you to not think, but you also do not want them to prejudge you or your situation. Hence the mantra to use when I felt myself going off down a prejudgement pathway was ‘think, but not too much’.?

That brings my thoughts on mantras as a means of offloading your overwhelmed brain. Let me know what you think of this as a concept. Do you have any that you like to use? Or do you prefer to use an alternative technique??

Share your thoughts below, and thanks for reading.