Episode 255: Overcoming Overwhelm
Overwhelm - we all know what it feels like. Dread and high levels of anxiety that leads to distraction, reduced productivity, and disrupted sleep.
While I could list a number of things you can do to deal with overwhelm, it really comes down to understanding what’s causing your overwhelm at its root and how to manage your energy to overcome it.
In this episode, I openly share what makes me feel overwhelmed and three areas of my Human Design that help me understand why these things overwhelm me and the best way to work with and manage my energy to overcome them.
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 254: Aligning Your Business to Your Human Design with Anna Lois Davies
Episode 182: Human Design Non-Sacral Types and Their Strategies
Episode 185: Exploring Human Design Motor Centers: Root, Solar Plexus, Sacral, Heart
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“Sometimes the pressure is internally created. We’ve internalized within ourselves, and when we step back, we realize that what we were feeling wasn’t really pressure but rather burnout. So, the question then becomes, “How can I manage my energy better so as not to put myself in this cycle of internalized pressure, anxiety, and being overwhelmed? ”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there, friend! Welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura.
Today we’re talking about overcoming overwhelm.
This episode came about after the last episode, Episode 254 with Anna Lois Davies, where we talked about many different things, including why coaches need coaches. And I shared how I get overwhelmed. Since recording that episode, thoughts on overwhelm have been weighing on my mind, and I wanted to hear how other people experience and deal with overwhelm too.
So, I put it on my Instagram and asked what overwhelms them and what they do to overcome it. I got a lot of responses on what folks find overwhelming and not a lot on what they do to deal with it.
The consensus of what causes overwhelm was things like chores – laundry, dishes, cooking every day, along those same lines, recurring mundane responsibilities that are so boring.
Other responses were feeling overwhelmed by emails, text messages, instant messages, direct messages, having too many things to do, and being overscheduled despite their best efforts to create boundaries around that.
As I looked at all these responses, I imagine that dread - the anticipation of the overwhelm and boredom - and anxiety start to creep in. When nothing is done to address these emotions, it festers. It leads to distractions and becoming focused on those feelings of dread, anxiety, and overwhelm, then the actual tasks at hand.
In those situations, our productivity is lowered, and our energy is spent focusing on things that don’t matter. We’re bothered and restless, disrupting our sleep, making us even more anxious and irritable, and putting us on edge.
And we’re left feeling tired, exhausted, and burnt out, and it becomes a vicious, repeating cycle, and we’re stuck. So how do you free yourself and get out of it?
I could list a bunch of strategies and hacks, but I bet you already know those hacks – they’re things you’ve already read and/or maybe tried before. Instead, we must dig deeper and ask, “Why are these things causing overwhelm?”
For me, it’s about energy management - understanding how your energy works and working with it to get the outcomes you want. So, how do you work with your energy to move your life more easily and flow?
Well, first, you were all so generous in sharing what overwhelms you, so let me share what overwhelms me. Since recording Episode 254 with Anna, I’ve been practicing what I preach by exercising self-observation with non-judgment in observing these overwhelming things.
First, I wouldn’t say it’s overwhelming, but more mental fatigue - what I mean by this is that I'm someone who’s always planning out the next step - literally everything that I do.
I've realized that I’m constantly in planning mode - planning things in my head, step-by-step, in the order that things need to happen.
Professionally, I'm a project and program manager, so it's my second nature to identify things that need to happen and the dependencies that need to take place for things to move forward to get the desired results.
I find that I do this in literally everything that I do, and as you can imagine, it can be very overwhelming and mentally exhausting, leaving me mentally fatigued.
For example, recently, I was dog-sat for friends, and as regular listeners know, I have my own dog, Coco Pop. Coco Pop and Harper, the dog I was dog-sitting, are long-time friends; they get along well.
But they're both getting older and have different needs. Coco Pop has arthritis and mobility challenges and moves steadily but slowly, whereas Harper still has a lot of energy on her walks.
I tried walking them together for the first few days of dog sitting, and it just didn’t work. I was a human pretzel being pulled in all different directions – walking slowly for Coco while Harper was pulling me down the street, excited about checking out a new neighborhood.
I needed to figure out how to make the situation work, so that meant that I’d walk Coco Pop first. But Harper must be crated whenever she’s home alone, even for short periods. So, I’d have to put Harper in her crate, then take Coco out for her short, slow walk. Then I’d drop Coco Pop off at home and take Harper out for her walk.
Not only does Coco Pop hate being left home alone under any circumstances, but she also has a propensity for jumping on and off the couch, which isn’t good for her mobility.
So, when I’d bring her home, I’d have to lift the sofa cushions before taking Harper out. But then Coco would bark like crazy the entire time in protest. I’m sensitive to my neighbors, especially for early morning walks, so I had to figure out a better plan.
So, after Coco’s walk, I’d come home and put her in her stroller, pick up Harper, and I’d be the lady walking one dog while pushing the other one in her stroller – who loved it, by the way. But coming home was also a challenge of getting the stroller and both dogs in the house simultaneously. So, I had to figure out how to make that work.
So, after our walks, I’d take Harper to the patio and drop her off there, then bring Coco to the front door in her stroller. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just put both dogs and the stroller on the patio, trust me, it doesn’t work well that way. I did this for about 8 of the 10 days I dog-sat.
But this is what I'm talking about how my mind is always planning what steps to take.
I spend way too much energy plotting a game plan for chores. I plan to clean my floors around when I wash my hair because I blow dry my hair and don’t want hair all over the floor right after I clean it.
Sometimes I think, “Oh, I can’t sweep and mop today because I need to do laundry first because laundry always messes up the floors.
Can you see what I mean? I'm constantly thinking, planning, and plotting – not per se but definitely mental fatigue.
What does cause me to feel overwhelmed is having a lot of options. I’ve mentioned this before, but walking into Sephora is overwhelming because there are many options.
Well, transparently, I haven’t shopped at Sephora in years because I work with and use Beautycounter exclusively, but before that, I’d walk into Sephora, say, for a new facial cleanser. Still, there would be 20 brands of cleansers, and I had no idea what to choose. So, I’d turn around and walk out because it was too overwhelming. That’s a true story. Having too many options overwhelms me.
So, how can Human Design help in overcoming overwhelm?
Well, the first thing I’d ask is, why is this overwhelming me? And then, how can I work with my unique energy design to understand how to manage and overcome it? This is what I want to talk about today.
There are many places to look to in your Human Design for insights, but today, I will focus on undefined centers, specifically three of the nine undefined centers.
Undefined centers are the openness in your design. It’s the energy that isn't consistently available to you. It's where you’re vulnerable to being influenced and conditioned. So, let’s start by looking at the Sacral Center. I've done several episodes on the Sacral Center and talked about it many times, so you know it is the center of lifeforce energy. It’s the center with the energy that sustains life.
If you have an undefined Sacral center, you’re either a Manifestor, Projector, or Reflector because Generators and Manifesting Generators have defined Sacral centers – this is literally what makes them their Type.
So, if you have this center undefined, if you’re a Manifestor, Projector, or Reflector, this energy sustains life isn't always available to you.
I clarified this before, but I will repeat it every time I talk about this - there's a perception that if you have an undefined center, you don’t have that center’s energy at all.
I've had people slide into my DMs and say they’re confused about something I said in an episode because they have an undefined Sacral center, so they don't have Sacral energy. No, no, no, no, no. You have Sacral energy, just not always because it isn’t consistently available to you – it comes and goes.
So, what do you do with that? How do you work with it when it comes to dealing with overwhelm?
Well, knowing that you’re influenced and absorb Sacral energy when you're around others who have the Sacral center defined (Generator and Manifesting Generator), this means that they share this energy with you!
So, can you use that shared energy you’re influenced by to help deal with those mundane, boring, and overwhelming tasks? Do those things when you’re around those people?
Can that extra borrowed energy be used on those things that require a little bit more energy and effort, not because they're physically taxing but because you find them mundane and boring?
Also, the Sacral Center is the center of creativity – creative energy. When you’re borrowing Sacral energy, can you bring creativity to those boring and mundane things so it takes away some of that overwhelm you associate with them?
The second center I want to look at is the Root Center. The Root Center is a pressure center, and it’s the center of drive, momentum, and forward progress. If you have this center undefined, you don't work well under pressure, and when you’re under pressure, you guessed it – you feel overwhelmed.
So, how do we work with this because I also have an undefined Root center?
Well, let’s take a step back and ask, what’s overwhelming about those mundane and boring things? Are those things that you really must do? And if yes, do they need to be done by you? If yes, what makes them mundane? And how can you get creative so that they don't feel that way?
When working with the pressure center, I’d also ask, what is causing the pressure that you feel around this? Sometimes, once we do the thing we dread, we realize the pressure wasn't there. It was just a perception.
I can definitely relate to this when it comes to emails. I get what it’s like to feel overwhelmed by the number of messages to respond to.
There are days when I can’t even muster the energy to respond to a simple email, like a text or two, or even reply to a DM. But prolonging a response makes it more of a big deal than it really is and adds to the pressure.
So, sometimes the pressure is internally created. We've internalized within ourselves, and when we step back, sometimes we realize that what we were feeling wasn’t really pressure but rather burnout - not being able to muster up the energy to respond to messages. It’s feelings of exhaustion, tiredness, and burnout.
So, the question then becomes, “How can I manage my energy better so as not to put myself in this cycle of internalized pressure, anxiety, and being overwhelmed?
The third center I want to talk about is the undefined Head Center. While we can look at many different parts of our Human Design, for me, this is where my overwhelm comes from.
Having an undefined Head center means having all the ideas and considering all the possibilities. We don't have a fixed way of seeing things because undefined Head center energy means not having a consistent way of deliberating all the mental information that's circulating through our heads.
So, how do we work with this? How do we work with an undefined Head center to overcome overwhelm?
First, minimize distractions. Allowing our minds to wander and consider all possibilities is distracting. It's having a lack of focus, and it may be that we’re spending more time deliberating on possibilities than doing the thing. So, focus on only the task at hand and minimize all the distractions around that so that there’s only one thing to focus on.
Next, detach yourself from the situation. Detach yourself from the associated emotions. Detach yourself from the outcomes and what can overwhelm you.
What does this look like for me? In Episode 254 with Anna, I talked about social media, and for me, that means Instagram because that's where I spend most of my social media time.
Instagram has evolved. Before, it was just uploading a photo in real-time. The photos could be uploaded later, #latergram. But now, years later, there’s so many ways to share content: a single photo or graphic, a carousel, Reels, videos, Stories, you can even do live broadcasts!
So, at my full-time job, I'm sometimes asked to put together presentations, which, like creating social media content or even creating programs, is incredibly challenging for me because looking at a blank page, or in my case, a blank screen, is incredibly overwhelming, as my undefined Head considers all the possibilities. It’s paralyzing, and I don't know even where to start.
So how have I worked around this? Templates are the answer for me. A template gives me a starting point where I can focus and start to plug and play. From there, I can get out all the things that are ruminating and floating around in my head. Then I go back and refine until I get to an outcome that I’m satisfied with.
It took a while for me to figure out how to work with this energy, but templates take away all of the possibilities and overwhelm that comes with staring at a blank screen.
If something like that doesn’t work for you and you still can’t minimize the distractions and narrow your focus, perhaps working with someone – a mentor or coach can be helpful.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my perceptions of coaching when I first started my work as a health coach in 2015 and how it’s evolved to my current approach.
When I first started, I thought I needed to be the subject matter expert. I thought I needed to know all the things. And many coaches, especially newer coaches, believe this, and that's why, especially in health coaching, there’s a fine line between understanding your scope of practice as an unlicensed medical professional.
As a coach, you’re there to bridge the gap between where your client is and, if it's a health coaching capacity, what their licensed health care team recommends. The coach is there to guide them from being informed and aware to enablement and integration, putting recommendations into action, and achieving the vision the client has for themselves.
It’s holding the space to help remove the overwhelm they may be feeling and help them put their own version of “templates” in place so they’re not staring at blank screens or sheets of paper.
This is how my coaching philosophy has evolved.
Anna and I didn't mention this in our episode together, it kind of came about after we recorded the episode, but I'm actually working with Anna right now and having her guide me to manage some of the overwhelm I feel around my business, particularly around visual branding.
As a service-based business, I rely on this podcast and social media for visibility around who I am and what I do. While I’m fairly consistent with this show, I’m not with social media.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why that is, and I’ve observed that having an Outer Vision Cognition and aesthetics is very important to me, and the bottom line is I hate my aesthetics. I hate my Instagram feed. It wouldn’t attract my interest, and it doesn't evoke the feelings I want it to evoke.
As a content consumer, I’m very selective with who I follow, and some of the accounts I follow are purely because their aesthetic holds my interest and inspires me. In some cases, I have zero interest in what the actual account is about, but the visuals appeal to me.
So, Anna is helping me define and refine my visual branding to overcome some of the overwhelm I feel around this.
The funny thing is, I’ve had people reach out and express their appreciation for the level of care, professionalism, and polished posts I’ve made, which I’ve totally appreciated but also thought, “Oh my gosh, it’s a hot mess!”
But if I can create templates that connect with my vision and alleviate the overwhelm, maybe it’ll help me reframe my mindset around this and get me out of the cycle of not knowing what to post or how to post and then feeling stressed and anxious, then exhausted and burnt out.
So, working with a coach, in this case, Anna, I’m helping myself get out of my undefined Head, focus and minimize distractions.
Beyond these three undefined centers that we’ve discussed today, the Sacral, Root, and Head centers, it's also worth mentioning that Human Design goes far beyond these three things and even goes beyond undefined centers.
There's so many different other parts of your Human Design to look at to understand your energy, how it works, and how you can best work with it.
I also look at the active gates in my design because they help us understand how a center’s energy works uniquely for you and how it connects with other energies.
I have Gate 63, which is in my undefined Head center. Gate 63 is about questioning things, including myself. So, I'm sure you can all imagine how constantly questioning myself leads to overwhelm, anxiety, and self-doubt.
And energy spent on that is simply wasted; it’s poor management. And when not addressed, no wonder I feel exhausted, burnt out and tired all the time.
So, knowing and understanding that Gate 63 is active in my energy makes me better informed about how I can work with this more productively.
I also have Gate 48, which I talked about in Episode 210, where I talked about the 48-16 channel, the only channel I have in my Human Design.
Gate 48 is in the Spleen Center, and the Spleen Center is the center of primal instincts, intuition, and also the center of fears.
Specifically, Gate 48 is about having the need to know enough, meaning feeling that I know enough takes away fears of inadequacy – being afraid to share what I know, my expertise, because I feel that I don’t know enough and aren’t adequately prepared to share. This is Splenic energy.
The fear of inadequacy around not knowing enough and feeling not good enough can look overwhelming and lead to anxiety and self-doubt, and so many other things. If you have this activate gate, as I do, it takes a lot of work to undo conditioning you may have around this, but sometimes simply being aware of, “Hey, this is me, and this is how I’m designed, this is how my energy operates” and then understanding how you can use it to your advantage versus disadvantage can work wonders in overcoming the overwhelm associated with it.
If these are things that you'd like to take a dive deeper into on a highly individualized level, I invite you to schedule a Human Design reading with me.
As I've previously shared, I offer three levels of individual readings to meet you at wherever you are in your Human Design experiment.
I also offer relationship readings between two people so they can understand how their energy can work synergistically and collaboratively to get the desired outcomes for themselves.
If these are things that you're interested in, go to my website at www.livefablife.com/services to get all the details.
I also have two ways of delivering readings –
Option 1: You can purchase your Human Design playbook, a 40+ page PDF that provides great details about your Human Design and is accompanied by an audio recording from me explaining everything included in your playbook.
Option 2 is where we get on a live Zoom call and have a two-way dialogue as I share your Human Design with you.
Also, I have a new program called “Deep Rest.” It's a 70-minute self-paced video workshop on why, as a society, we're not rested and how you can utilize Functional Nutrition and Human Design to shift your relationship with rest.
In the workshop, I talk about the three centers we discussed in this episode today, but in much more depth. You can find the workshop at www.livefablife.com/deeprest and more workshops like this will come. I’m already working on the next one I hope to have available in the next several weeks.
So that's it for this week! I'd love to hear from you. What are the things that overwhelm you, and how do you overcome them? Leave a comment on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/255 for Episode 255, or find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
I’m always happy and excited to hear from you, and hearing from you helps me overcome my overwhelm. So with that, I hope you have a wonderful day! Thank you for your time, energy, and attention, and I will see you right back again next time. Bye!
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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