By Tuesday afternoon, Jenna could feel herself reaching that point. Not the dramatic, throw-the-laptop-out-the-window point, although the laptop was definitely testing its luck. It was the quieter kind of overwhelm. Her shoulders were practically touching her ears, her jaw hurt from clenching it, and she’d read the same email three times and still couldn’t tell you what it said.
The laundry was running, dinner needed to be figured out, her phone kept buzzing, and there were errands to do, messages to answer and several things at work that genuinely couldn’t be pushed until tomorrow. Her thoughts were moving faster than she could keep up with them. I have too much to do. I’m never going to get all of this finished. I’m already behind. I should be handling this better.
That last thought caught her attention. Jenna had heard that voice before and, more importantly, she’d talked about that voice in therapy. Her therapist had once explained that when stress took over, Jenna’s brain had a habit of turning a collection of individual problems into one enormous emergency. Before trying to solve everything, she needed to calm her body enough to figure out what actually needed solving.
Jenna hadn’t particularly enjoyed hearing that at the time, mostly because it made sense. Now, standing in her kitchen with her phone buzzing on the counter and pasta water boiling behind her, she decided to use what she’d learned.
She planted both feet firmly on the floor and took a slow breath in, followed by an even slower breath out. Then another. She deliberately relaxed her shoulders and unclenched her jaw. Nothing around her had changed, but she was beginning to change how she was responding to it.
Next came the grounding exercise she’d practiced in therapy. Jenna found five things she could see: the yellow dish towel, the little plant on the windowsill, her blue water bottle, sunlight stretching across the floor and a ridiculously crooked picture on the refrigerator she’d been meaning to straighten for approximately six months. She noticed four things she could feel: the floor beneath her feet, her sweater against her arms, cool air drifting through the open window and the countertop beneath her fingertips. Then she listened for three things she could hear: the refrigerator humming, the pasta water bubbling and a bird singing somewhere outside.
By the time she finished, none of her responsibilities had disappeared. The emails were still there. Dinner was still cooking. The laundry hadn’t magically folded itself, which Jenna thought was frankly inconsiderate. But something had changed. Everything wasn’t screaming at her at the same time anymore.
She moved on to another tool she’d learned in therapy: separating facts from anxious predictions. The fact was that she had several things to do. I’m never going to get everything done wasn’t a fact. Everything is going wrong wasn’t a fact either. And I should be handling this better?
Jenna almost laughed. “According to whom?”
Apparently the imaginary International Committee of Women Who Have Their Shit Together.
She suspected they weren’t real.
Jenna grabbed a piece of paper and used another strategy she’d practiced: separating what she could control, what she could influence and what she couldn’t control at all. She couldn’t control the email she’d received, but she could control how she responded to it. She couldn’t control someone else’s bad mood, but she could decide whether she absorbed it. She couldn’t magically create another four hours in the day, but she could decide how to use the hours she had.
Then she looked at everything she needed to accomplish and stopped thinking about it in huge categories. Instead of deal with work, she wrote down: send one email, make one phone call, finish one document. Instead of get the house under control, she wrote: move laundry to dryer, wash dishes, make dinner.
Suddenly the mountain became a collection of rocks. There was still work to do, but now it looked movable.
Jenna set a timer for twenty minutes and started with the most important task. When the timer ended, she stood up, stretched and checked in with herself and not her inbox, not her phone, herself. Was she hungry? A little. Thirsty? Definitely. Overwhelmed? Surprisingly, not anymore.
She drank some water, ate something and went back to what she was doing. Later, when another stressful message arrived, Jenna immediately felt that familiar rush. Her heart sped up, her shoulders tightened and her brain began preparing seventeen arguments for a conversation that hadn’t even happened yet.
This time, she caught it.
“Okay,” she whispered. “What do I actually know?”
She read the message again. It wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as her first reaction had made it seem. Instead of replying while her emotions were running the show, she used her breathing again and waited until her body settled. Then she responded. No angry reply, no frantic overexplaining and no three-paragraph apology for something that didn’t require one. Just a calm answer.
That evening, Jenna finished most of what genuinely needed doing. The interesting part was that she hadn’t pushed herself harder than usual. If anything, she’d been gentler with herself. The difference was that she hadn’t spent half her energy battling the stress surrounding the tasks.
Before bed, Jenna remembered something else she’d learned in therapy: noticing progress mattered. Instead of lying there mentally reviewing everything she hadn’t done perfectly, she named three things she’d handled well that day. She had recognized when she was becoming overwhelmed. She had grounded herself instead of spiralling. And she had responded instead of reacting.
They weren’t enormous victories, but maybe that was the point.
Therapy hadn’t given Jenna some magical ability to make stressful days disappear. It hadn’t made difficult people easier, emptied her inbox, folded her laundry or prevented unexpected problems from appearing at exactly the worst possible moment. What therapy had given her were tools: breathing before reacting, grounding herself in the present, challenging thoughts that felt true but weren’t necessarily facts, breaking overwhelming problems into manageable pieces, recognizing what she could control, checking what her body needed and speaking to herself with the same patience she’d offer someone she loved.
More importantly, she had practiced those tools. Again and again. On ordinary days, difficult days and days when she didn’t think they were helping at all. Slowly, they became familiar enough that they began showing up when she actually needed them.
Jenna still had stressful days. She still occasionally found herself standing in the kitchen wondering why she’d opened the refrigerator. She still became overwhelmed sometimes. The difference was that she no longer interpreted feeling overwhelmed as proof that she couldn’t cope.
Stress was a signal, not a verdict.
Now, when everything started feeling impossibly loud, Jenna had somewhere to begin. Feet on the floor. Slow breath. Look around. Find the facts. Figure out what she could control. Take one thing at a time. Then keep going.
She hadn’t learned how to live a life without stress.
She’d learned something much more useful.
She’d learned how to find herself again in the middle of it. ❤️
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