The question of the week is How do you react when you’re overwhelmed?

Let’s dissect the question a bit. First, the word react assumes a more or less automatic action, as opposed to a deliberate response. Most of us go through life reacting rather than responding; being forced into action by something that happens to us. The next part of the question basically points to that idea, that you’re overwhelmed, meaning something is happening to you. It is as if overwhelm itself is an external force acting upon us, causing us to react in a certain way. This certainly matches the experience of getting overwhelmed. Something happens, and we get this feeling like we are drowning. We then react to it in some way we don’t generally get to choose. Many people feel helpless and just give up. Others lash out and fight back (physically or emotionally). Maybe you do something else. Generally this is an unpleasant experience.

Overwhelm in our practice

This is part of what our martial arts practice teaches us to handle. In fact, a recurring theme in practice is getting pushed and challenged either by our teacher or our fellow students to a place of discomfort. We find a point where we are about to be overwhelmed and we either give up or keep going, growing a bit stronger in the process. Maybe you’re free grappling in BJJ and your partner has way more experience. They are able to defend everything you throw at them with ease, as well as get you with any submission they try. A really good partner will push you just past your comfort zone so that you have to be better right now. Sometimes, you’ll get tipped fully into a place of feeling overwhelmed, so you get to deal with that.

Working through being overwhelmed

The best way to continue making progress is to go right up to that point where you’re about to feel overwhelmed and just flirt with it. Something challenges you, you grow, and you don’t give up. We get overwhelmed, and have a great learning experience, though we shouldn’t have this learning experience too often. Can you imagine class overwhelming you every time? You would want to quit and you probably would. If we are going to be able to defend ourselves in a real fight, we must deal with physical and emotional stress from time to time. That stress or resistance causes us to grow stronger both physically and emotionally.

As my sifu always says, we train ourselves to be masters of our actions rather than prisoners of our reactions. We can recognize that, on some level, we are in charge of the feeling when practice overwhelms us. It is the same thing in the rest of life. We can always choose to train ourselves to withstand a certain amount of stress, so that we can still respond to the stress well.

We can also recognize that in that moment, it is our interpretation of events that causes us to feel overwhelmed. Let’s say someone in sparring hits us ten times before we hit them once, or in Tai Chi our senior student has to show us something twenty times before we can do it on our own. We set the bar of what is acceptable and what isn’t. When we expect needing to see something fifty times before learning it, then when we get it in twenty we feel great! This shift in mindset and expectations can possibly even stop us from feeling overwhelmed in the first place.

Overwhelm is inevitable

Ultimately, we will have a hard time to completely escape feeling overwhelmed. Something will happen that we just cannot deal with. I remember when my mom passed just not knowing what to do, or even how to feel. She was suffering, so it’s a good thing? Yet I miss her and being able to call her, so I’m sad. Do I keep myself busy by planning her funeral? I don’t even know where to start with that. There were times where I just sat there, unsure of what to do that moment or that whole day. This experience sure puts other difficult things into perspective and makes them less likely to overwhelm me. I remind myself that even if I get overwhelmed, this too shall pass. That feeling will give way to something else.

Sometimes when we are feeling overwhelmed, the best way to deal with it is just to allow ourselves to feel overwhelmed rather than fighting it. This acceptance will allow us to invite it in, learn from it and let it pass.