May Newsletter – How to Break Through Overwhelm

This month, I wanted to touch on the incredibly difficult sensation of feeling overwhelmed by a project.

Happy Spring!!!!

I trust you are all walking around town smelling the gorgeous lilacs! Wow-what a show this year! Yay!!!

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This month I wanted to chat a little about the unfortunate and unpleasant feeling of being overwhelmed by a project, perhaps that project might be clutter around your home, maybe it’s an unexpected home project, or maybe it’s even just a room that has you feeling hopeless. I hope to shed some light on this challenging sensation and ideally break through some of your barriers towards finding forward momentum.

This month’s topic is hot for me right now-not only due to working with clients who may be feeling overwhelmed by their stuff, a cluttered space, or all their To-Do’s, etc., but because I find myself in a state of overwhelm.

For some unknown reason, one of my cats, or perhaps both started peeing in my living room which I’ve been trying to clean consistently to prevent the dreaded smell that makes me go batshit…I spent a good hour treating the carpet in hopes to eradicate that incredibly nasty smell before I had a party that next night. When I walked back into my home later that day, I was HORRIFIED to smell that smell so intensely, I lost it. I grabbed a box cutter and went ballistic with cutting out the offending carpet in both corners, to find that I the smell was far worse in the subfloor…a deep sense of overwhelm struck me, to say the very least.

Not only was I going to cancel the party, I was now left with a chaotic living room and no plan whatsoever on how I was going to get from where I was, to eventually having my living room not smell, as well as put back together so I could live in it. This situation occurred on top of a very busy work week and my intention of starting a cleanse in the next few days. None of these parameters were helping my mental state which felt drained, low energy, low motivation, slightly hopeless, and definitely had some tinges of fear in it. Most of those sensations are phases we’re all familiar with when things feel overwhelming. Am I right? Yuck!

I’m not sure how all of you do with asking for help, but I’m lousy at it, which I know was exacerbating the overwhelm. A good friend of mine offered help pulling the carpet and I was beyond grateful. I really did feel like ignoring the whole thing because I felt so trapped by the sensations mentioned above. I just did NOT want to deal with it at ALL.

Knowing that my friend was coming to help made all the difference in my mindset, I felt less hopeless and less alone in this mire of ick. She was an amazing support, not only in the physical aspect of ripping carpet (which was a bitch) but by allowing me to be the biggest “Negative Nancy” on the planet the entire time we were working. Every time I would get a whiff of the pungent smell, I would moan and swear like a pirate, thinking that I would always have to live with that stench. She provided support, guidance, and a shoulder I felt safe in leaning on-Thank You Whitney.

We got the carpet removal project finished in four hours and I’m still living in chaos, with exposed subfloor (that does not smell miraculously), and confusion about which floor covering I’m going to install. There’s a whole bunch more for me to move through before my home is back to its spa-like quality. BUT, the really hard part of any project that is overwhelming has been done: STARTING IT!!

As I wrote this, I definitely had a deeper sense of connection to what my clients face when I arrive. Dread at first because we are starting a project that has been overwhelming them for who knows how long, yet, by the time we finish our session they experience a new sense of hopefulness. They can see that if we keep moving in that direction, their project will have completion.