We experience emotions every day, both conscious and unconscious.  We use the word emotions and the word feelings to mean the same thing, but they are vastly different.  Emotions are automatic, often involuntary, reactions to events.  Feelings, however, are the attitudes or perceptions that arise out of our emotions.  Moods are something else.  Moods develop from our feelings as a longer lasting emotional state.

The emotions of anger, fear, or shame create uncomfortable feelings, and build anxiety.  Sometimes uncomfortable feelings can lead to a more uncomfortable mood.  If we can avoid the feelings, we may avoid the mood.  Too often we look for an experience or a behavior to block our uncomfortable feelings.

Why do you crave a dessert just after discovering you’ve gained weight?  Why do you feel the desire to go shopping when your credit card is over the limit?  Though these behaviors are the last ones you should choose, your brain is simply trying to lessen the stress you feel when you discover that something is not the way you want it.

Humans, and some animals, use behaviors to block uncomfortable feelings.  You may recognize one or more of these blocking behaviors, and you may also have some of your very own:

  • Eating
  • Sleeping
  • Drinking
  • Shopping
  • Computing
  • Texting
  • Working
  • Drugging
  • Exercising
  • Giving
  • Busyness
  • Cleaning

Blocking behaviors don’t just block stress, some bring you pleasure and satisfaction when your brain’s neurotransmitters release dopamine.  The problem with some of these behaviors is that they can block your joy.  When you combine some of these behaviors, you create a state of overwhelm.  Check a dictionary for overwhelm, and you’ll often find the antonym, the opposite of overwhelm, is joy.

Overwhelm occurs when we become overcome in feeling or in mind, and it affects most of us at some time in our lives.  Overwhelm is a state of mind which results in negative feelings.  When we can’t control these feelings of overwhelm, we react by creating rigid agendas.  An agenda is a plan or list to be acted on.  Most of these agendas include plans to simplify, organize, eliminate, dictate, or control.  The most common effect of agendas is that we begin operating in our heads, rather than in our hearts.  When we stay in our heads, we are keeping ourselves overwhelmed to avoid our feelings.  Some of these feelings we are avoiding could be lack of worth, sadness, loneliness, fear, or anger.  We can keep ourselves so unfeeling and busy that we lose our joy.

To escape overwhelm and get our joy back, we need an action plan to become aware of the effects and causes of our own agendas.  When we learn how to maintain loving attitudes of mind towards others, our source, and ourselves, we can reconnect with our heart, our feelings, and our joy.

Are your agendas taking over your life?  Are your friends and family feeling that you are more and more rigid and inflexible?  You may be blocking your joy with overwhelm.  Your choice is to come back to operating in heart, and to reconnect with your own deepest values.

Surrender Your Agenda: From Overwhelm to Joy, is a focused 12 session audio course for women who want to get the joy back in life.

Joy & Blessings,  Carole  xx

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Overwhelm:  To overcome in mind or feeling; to load with an excessive amount of anything

Most of the world’s women are overwhelmed.  Overwhelm can destroy your joy, and overwhelm can waste your life.  How does your overwhelm affect you and affect those you love?

If you’re like most women in the world:

  • You can’t catch up with all you have to do
  • You don’t get any real relaxation
  • You seldom feel you are doing enough
  • You feel powerless to stop the increasing demands on you
  • You are frustrated, sad, and angry with your life’s direction

As a woman you are set up to be overwhelmed because of the unique factors you deal with: Your commitment to your family, your work inside and outside the home, your caring for others, the world’s message of what you should be, and your lack of time and energy.

Check the list below to see which factors describe you.  Many of your symptoms may be a result of overwhelm.  Some symptoms attributed to other factors may be increased by overwhelm.  If you experience 3 or more symptoms, you could greatly benefit from lowering your stress.

  • EXHAUSTION
  • ANGER
  • LOSS OF HUMOR
  • SLEEPING PROBLEMS
  • FRUSTRATION
  • CRANKINESS
  • RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
  • WEIGHT PROBLEMS
  • RESENTMENTS
  • LOSS OF SEXUAL INTEREST
  • DISCOURAGEMENT
  • LACK OF FOCUS
  • HEALTH ISSUES
  • SADNESS
  • HOPELESSNESS

Overwhelm does not go away on its own, and it can get worse.  So how can you lose the overwhelm , and get your life back?  How can you control your stress and overwhelm and bring joy back into your life?  Any real change begins with an understanding of what is causing overwhelm and a course of action.

Overwhelm can occur in life when 3 feelings are present:

  1. Not being able to feel a sense of accomplishment no matter how hard you work
  2. Feeling helpless to stop the factors that are causing overwhelm
  3. Feeling hopeless and feeling despair knowing that you do not see relief in your future

If you are overwhelmed now, you may react by creating more and more agendas and plans to control it.  You may be trying to organize, eliminate, communicate, and dictate to keep it away.  You may have become a person you don’t want to be.  You may have lost your ability to share and connect with your family and friends.  Your head is running your heart.  You may be filling yourself up with busyness to maintain a sense of worth.

What’s the cure for overwhelm and what heals a life which is overloaded, overtired, overstressed, and overcome?  A realization that your overwhelm is not in your career or home, but in your own spirit, that part of you which needs to feel purpose, fulfillment, and joy.  To do that you must connect to your deepest values and your true loving self.  You can move from overwhelm to joy when you surrender your agendas and let your heart rule.

Joy & Blessings, Carole  xx

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