Physical Overwhelm is Real. And it’s Hard.

It’s taken me all year to realize the truth. I’m drowning.

Photo by Steph Wilson on Unsplash

Overwhelm: (verb) bury or drown beneath a huge mass.

The word ‘overwhelm’ has always had a mental health connotation to me. I’ve considered it the act of being mentally overwhelmed. I’ll be 53-years-old next week and I have just now figured out that a person can also be physically overwhelmed.

Or rather I knew it, of course. But I didn’t know-know it. You know? And I never thought about how it’s an entirely different thing.

When I’m mentally overwhelmed, I need to take a breath.

Everything in me, when I’m having a moment like that, screams for me to get a handle on all the millions of things swimming around my ADHD brain.

I figure out what’s bothering me and I do something to get out of the problem. Make a plan. Create a system. Challenge myself to something that will help me inch my way out of mental overwhelm, little-by-little.

But this year has been different than anything I’ve ever experienced before.

This year, I’ve become physically overwhelmed.