When One Day at a Time is Too Much

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The suggestion to take one day at a time is a good one; however, sometimes even a day is too much to handle. Your To-Do list is overwhelming. You have too much information to digest. You have too many options to make a decision. Sometimes one bad event leads to another until there is snowball effect…even in the summer.
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The Symptoms
Sometimes we become overwhelmed because we didn’t say, “Enough” soon enough. The signs are there, but you don’t recognize them. You know you have to move from living one day at a time to one moment at a time when you start to exhibit some of the following symptoms:

• The words, “I can’t take it anymore” come to mind over and over again.
• When you say that you can cry at the drop of a hat and you start crying before the hat even reaches the floor.
• Your positive attitude stepped out for a minute and never came back.
• You feel like you’re wearing cement shoes because it takes every bit of effort to move forward to complete a task. You think to yourself, “I just can’t do it.”
• You start to do tasks that never even made the To-Do list just to avoid doing the ones that are on the list.
• You make excuses about why you can’t start something today.
• You want to stand in a room, scream, and pound on a wall that you can only hope is padded.
• You feel a sense of panic.   

 
What to Do
Some of these symptoms are more extreme than others, but each of us is likely to experience at least one of these symptoms from time to time. Some of us will experience these symptoms more intensely or more frequently.  Only you can decide when you have reached your limit.

Frequent and Intense Symptoms
In some of cases, you may already feel like you have reached your limit and regularly feel overwhelmed. You may be depressed and anxious. You may want to seek professional help. You have enough on your plate. Don’t let your feelings be yet something else that overwhelms you.

Occasional and Manageable Symptoms
If you are experiencing symptoms but still believe you can manage, here are some tips (a potentially overwhelming list) that may help to alleviate some of those feelings:

• Recognize when you start to feel overwhelmed. If you don’t detect it early enough then it will take even more effort to recover from it. It’s like feeling a migraine coming on and not doing anything to minimize the pain that comes with it.
• Break your day into smaller chunks. Only you can decide how much you can handle before you start to feel overwhelmed. There’s a reason that people say to live for the moment. Sometimes it’s only a moment that separates us from panic or success.
• Stop whatever you’re doing. Take a deep breath. Listen to some music. Think about something that makes you happy. Go someplace quiet, even for a moment.
• Remember that taking a break is not cutting into the time that you need to get everything done. Taking a break may actually allow you to be more productive in a shorter amount of time.
• If you’ve made a list to help organize your day, don’t look at it so often. In fact, if you are a list-driven person, you may want to make a list of what you have accomplished instead of what you still need to do.  Sometimes just looking at the length of the To-Do list can make you want to panic even before you get started.
• Pick out one or two of the most important or larger tasks on your list and then tackle the smaller tasks that will allow you to stroke one of the big items off your list.
• Set realistic expectations. Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves. We always believe that we can accomplish more than we can in the time we have available. Don’t create stress for yourself. There are plenty of other people who will set unrealistic expectations. Don’t do the same thing to yourself.
• Talk to someone. Sometimes just being with someone calm will help. Being with someone else can also make you feel like you are not alone. Sometimes the power of two is all that you need to get back your confidence.
• Learn to negotiate. Sometimes deadlines are not carved in stone and the completion of certain tasks can be moved to another day. This doesn’t apply to everything that you do, but doing it for some tasks may take some pressure off completing other tasks that can’t be moved. 
• Recognize that too much information doesn’t only apply to revealing very personal information. It’s possible to read too much and have too many options. Sometimes less is more and is easier to manage.   

Conclusion
Everyone feels overwhelmed at some point in their lives. Circumstances change. One minute you can feel like you have everything “relatively” under control (no one’s perfect) and then the next you can feel like things are spinning out of control.  It could be a cancer diagnosis or an epileptic seizure, where each one feels like a setback. It could be a baby who never seems to stop crying, where sleep (at least for you) seems only like a dream. Your situation at work may have reached new stress levels.  There are so many circumstances that can cause you to feel overwhelmed.  Just remember, if one day at a time is too much, live for the moment until those feelings of being overwhelmed subside. At some point, you have to believe, things will get better. Until they do, try to take control of your life by minimizing your stress and, if you can’t, seek professional help. There is no need to do this alone.