Build your overwhelm plan
Three short steps. What comes out is a plan you wrote, for the version of you who has no words left.
The short version
- Pick and write your own early warning signs, your in-the-moment calming moves, and one break to schedule before the next overload. You get back a personal overwhelm plan card to copy out and keep.
- The point is to decide these things now, while you are steady, because when you are flooded your thinking brain is offline and cannot decide anything. A plan written in the calm is a plan the overwhelmed you can follow.
- Nothing here is saved or sent. It rearranges what you choose and type and hands it back.
Shutdown rarely comes out of nowhere. There are usually quieter warning signs first, and there are small moves that help once it starts. The trouble is that the moment you most need them is the moment you can think least clearly. So you decide them in advance, in your own words, and keep the answer somewhere you can find it.
Before you begin
Think of a recent time it all got to be too much. You will build the plan around that, so the version of you mid-overwhelm has something ready-made to reach for. Nothing you choose or type is saved.
Steps
Step 1 of 3
Your overwhelm plan
When the load is climbing, here is what to do.
Copy it somewhere it will survive
Select the text below and copy it into your notes, a reminder, or wherever you will see it. This page keeps nothing.
Reading it back
Notice that your calming moves are small and physical, not decisions. That is on purpose. When you are flooded, your thinking brain is offline, so the plan asks nothing of it, just one easy thing your body can do while the wave passes.
And the break you scheduled comes before the next overload, not after it. Rest is far easier to give than to recover. If you only keep one line from this, keep that one.
Worth knowing. Deciding in advance when and where you will do something, rather than only that you will, has one of the more reliable effects in this literature, Gollwitzer and Sheeran pooled 94 studies and found a medium-to-large effect (Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006). That is why the plan does not just ask you to rest, but to name a day, a time and a place for the break, and why the in-the-moment moves are physical actions rather than things to decide.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you choose and type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.