What do you do when life overwhelms you? When everything piles up on you? When you feel like you’re drowning? When your car and your washing machine break in the same week and your kid is having a meltdown and work is piling on top of you? Or even more, when you’re grieving, or your relationships are breaking, or you’re facing life-changing medical issues?
We all have a degree of coping and resilience, but it seems like there are periods in my life where everything piles up on me at once, flooding me with stress and fear and I just feel like I can’t get on top of anything.
When I was younger, I didn’t know how to handle these painful moments. I would often just drown in sadness, feeling bad about myself, or wallowing in resentment towards others. But as I’ve grown, and practiced, and observed others, and learned, I’ve built up a system that helps me feel very confident that I can get through these periods of overwhelm, and I feel very confident that you can too.
So let’s talk about some healthy, adaptive ways to work through life’s crises when you feel like you’re drowning. I’ll give you a little 3-step framework on how to do this, plus 3 examples of people who are figuring it out, including myself!
1. Reframe Emotional Crisis as Opportunity
When you’ve been treading water for so long, or trying to swim against the current, it’s exhausting. But then a crisis comes along, like a giant wave. You’ve tried harder and harder, but it’s not working. In these moments it’s easy to think that this situation is terrible, a catastrophe, this is unfair. You might think, “Why does this always happen to me?” You might feel like giving up, or you withdraw into negative coping like drugs or screens. Or maybe you feel angry and resentful at the universe.
You might think “I can’t keep doing this anymore.” I’ll quote Ibrahim, a fictional psychiatrist from The Thursday Murder Club. He says, “Never waste a good crisis.”
In each of these moments, we have the ability to choose.
So when life overwhelms your current capacity, when your current skills and coping mechanisms just aren’t cutting it, this might be the only type of opportunity to get you to level up, and let go of your old coping skills and build new ones, better ones, healthier ones. This crisis might be a gift—a chance to stop treading water or just trying to keep your head afloat.
Now, this is how I like to think about this. We reframe these situations as an opportunity to level up. And often when I see these crises it’s the toughest people who are the ones who get themselves into these situations because they’re trying so hard to do it all themselves.
Let me give you an example. I recently talked with a woman in our membership; let’s call her Kay. She was divorced from an abusive husband, and is a single mom to two girls, all on top of her demanding career. For years Kay has been okay. She has done everything in her power to hold it all together, work harder, study more self-help, and be the perfect mom. And then, a close family member ended his life by suicide. It came completely out of the blue, no one knew he was struggling. And now, everyone is relying on her and reaching out for support. With all the stress and demands, Kay is drowning, her body is falling apart, she just can’t do it anymore.
How could this be an opportunity instead of a catastrophe? First, if I were sitting with her, I would absolutely spend time listening and feeling with her. It’s ok that things are hard. It’s ok to feel sad, to grieve. Whether it’s our world falling apart or someone else’s, it’s important to give time and space to feel, to express emotions.
And then, when Kay is ready, we’re going to frame this crisis as an opportunity to level up, to learn and grow. This crisis is an opportunity to do something different.
2.Through Emotional Meltdowns: Identify Missing Resources
Maybe your whole life you’ve been treading water, stuck in survival mode, and now this crisis is a chance to build more sustainable ways to manage your life. The ocean might continue to be rough and choppy. We can’t change the size of the ocean. We often can’t change how stressful life’s circumstances are, but we can add to our resources.
So that’s the next step: get curious. Ask “What skills or resources am I lacking?”
Kay’s previous coping mechanisms were to try to do everything herself, to try to hold it all together and to be the strong one for her family. That has worked well in some situations, but it isn’t working for her anymore, and she’s drowning. Sometimes we can’t make the situation any easier, but we can build in more resources to help.
That’s what my membership is for. I’ve got 10 courses that can help you build up the skills and resources to work through emotional problems in a healthier way. You can start by checking out the free Grounding Skills course, where you’ll learn how to regulate your nervous system. That’s an example of a skill that you maybe didn’t have before, and you can learn, and that’s going to help you level up.
So instead of just trying harder, swimming harder, perhaps it is time to ask for a life jacket, or build a better boat.
Knowing that the old way of coping no longer works brings us to the third part of our framework.
3. The Power of Asking for Help When Overwhelmed
So, with all of you beautiful people who are drowning in overwhelm, many of you are the people who would never ask for help unless you were pushed beyond your limits. Perhaps this crisis is a wonderful opportunity to do that—to ask for help.
I encouraged Kay to build up support for her and her girls, instead of trying to do it all alone. Therapists in general can provide a lot of support and new skills or new ways to think about a problem. She’s watching videos and learning new skills.
These crises are a unique opportunity to be vulnerable and ask for help. (human chain)
I love this news story about how we can come to the rescue for each other. Nine people in Florida got caught in a rip tide. They could not save themselves. But then strangers started forming a human chain that grew to 80 people.
In my experience, people just need to know that you’re struggling. So reach out to those who can help.
With Kay, I encouraged her to share with her family that she’s not “OK”. This is so powerful, because without the crisis, she would have just kept trying to do everything on her own. But by opening up she’s actually opening up her entire family and extended family to a new normal where people talk about their emotions. What an amazing opportunity to help the family heal by doing something different.
Also, instead of simply demanding more from herself, this might be a chance for Kay to be compassionate (take a break on shore) with herself and build up her space for self-care and mental health. Kay could spend some time on shore, which might look like loosening the idea of herself as a perfect mom and allow her girls more time to watch TV so she has time to process her grief. She could practice self-care, and self-compassion. All of this is building up a more sustainable approach to managing emotions.
YouTuber Kurt Worked Through His Emotional Crisis
Let me give you another example. Kurt is a YouTuber I’ve been following for almost a decade. He and his friends make fun videos searching for history and treasures while metal detecting. But in 2024 he missed a big detecting trip to Scotland with his friends, and everyone wondered what was going on.
“What’s up YouTube? This isn’t easy for me so I’m going to more or less get right into it if I wrote some things down so I wouldn’t get off topic. Apparently there’ve been a few people out there worried about me. I appreciate that very much, for once I was worried about me too. I have everything I’ve always dreamed of: a beautiful loving wife, healthy children, a close family, and amazing friends that I also consider family. Unfortunately, because of some work-related issues, I’ve been battling with some sort of depression for the last ten-plus years … I became a first responder at a very young age. I was what they called a black cloud as a rookie and I got to experience some pretty crazy things pretty early on, and over the years I’ve seen some horrible things up close and personal, all with minimum tools and Manpower … which first triggered depression in this usually happy go-lucky boy in front of you. Lately I’ve been attending way too many lines of duty and active member funerals which has also taken a toll on me …
I’ve always been good at helping other people. I’m much better at giving versus receiving. Unfortunately, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I’d like to think of it as an internal trash can. I’ve been filling it up and smashing it down and filling it up and smashing it down over and over and over. My trash can finally floweth over. I try not to let other people affect my mood. I would bite my tongue and keep my thoughts to myself. I try to block it out and move on. Recently I finally started opening up. I don’t know if it’s a midlife crisis or you know what it’s just tired of all the BS being finally starting to open up and getting some things off my chest and out of my mind. Not going to lie because that gets you nowhere. It felt pretty damn good. I was finally emptying my trash can before I let it break. I even aired out some beef I had with a few people all of which came with a tsunami of emotions that I wasn’t ready for. I’ve been emotionally numb for way too long because I’ve hidden my emotions as well. Long story short, luckily before I went down a rabbit hole which is a bottomless pit, my loved ones noticed a change in my mindset and behavior and they helped me help myself. For the last month I voluntarily checked myself into a wellness center for First Responders and for the first time in my life I was getting some help for me so that’s where I’ve been. completely cut off from the world.”
I hear stories like this pretty frequently in therapy, but I’m grateful to him for sharing his publicly.
OK, so Kurt had a couple of skills that worked for him for a while: he took care of others, he stuffed away his emotions, and he just kept busy.
This worked for a while, for years. Just endure, just try harder, drink the beer, eat the cake, stuff the emotions in the trash can. But he reached a point where he couldn’t cope. He was drowning.
Kurt had to try something different. His crisis brought him an opportunity, and he took it.
- He asked for help
- He checked into a wellness center
- He learned new skills
- He started talking about what he really thought and felt
- He stopped trying to do it all alone
I was happy to see this message he released in a video a few months later:
“I feel like I’ve been taking more steps forward versus steps back, so that’s good. I’ve been slowly mustering enough motivation to get myself up and out. It’s hard getting out of bed sometimes; I haven’t had a whole lot of success sleeping in my life. Uh, up and out, doing the things that make me happy… I do believe that now I’m at least moving in the right direction. Before, I wasn’t worried about what direction I was moving in, but I was just moving at full throttle.”
There was no magic fix, but at the very least, he wasn’t just doing the same thing and hoping that his depression would magically go away. He tried something different.
I emailed him last week and asked how he was doing, here’s what he said:
“I’ve been excellent. Thank you for checking in on me. It took a lot to get to this point. I’m so very thankful for the friends and family I have.
All the best,
Kurt”
What he’s done is through this crisis he built a more sustainable way to work through his emotion. It’s like building a boat instead of trying to tread water forever.
Sometimes with a crisis, you do just have to try harder, push through. But most of the time, a crisis presents an opportunity to level up, and I’m super happy that Kurt found a way to make that work for him.
How I’ve Come Out of Overwhelm
Last fall, last November, I found myself drowning under the stress of parenting, running a business, maintaining a marriage and my own physical health. Things were really stressful, and it felt like my family was breaking apart at the seams. One of my kids was really struggling and Ryan and I couldn’t seem to agree on what to do about it. I was worried, not sleeping well and completely exhausted. Something had to change. 20 years ago, I might have curled up in bed and felt sorry for myself. But I think I’m learning to trust myself through these challenges. I knew this was a chance for me to do something different, and to grow. That’s step 1.
So I got curious.
What have I tried over and over that isn’t working? (Doing it all myself)
What could we do to get on the same page?
What could we do to have more energy? To prevent drama or problems with our kids?
Ryan and I together made a big list of ideas.
- Have more hard conversations
- Be willing to talk with medical providers about medication options
- Truly question myself and what I’m doing to make the situation hard (taking over too many things, ADHD diagnosis, perimenopause, anxiety and too much caretaking and protecting of others)
- I had to learn to do less and ask for support and help.
- Took the time to learn new skills– allowing other people to be responsible for their stuff, not be so controlling?
- Being more assertive and setting better boundaries (saying no to podcast guests that I don’t really want)
- Cut my workload in half- we’re going to write half as many videos in 2026 as we did in the previous years. This is hard for me, but I’m willing to try something new.
- I’m giving meditation practice a serious effort. My goal is to meditate every day for a year and see how that treats me. I’m already 6 weeks in. And for the first time in my life, I’m actually enjoying meditation occasionally.
And guess what guys? Everything is magically better! Just kidding, there are still some real difficulties that we are working through. I’m still a work in progress, so is my husband, and my kids. But we are seeing some huge changes already. Ryan is more equipped to step up as a parent. I’ve decreased my workload. We’ve tried some new things that are helping, and some that didn’t work. That’s ok. I really think it’s better to be failing in new ways, than to keep making the same mistakes, because I know that I’m learning and growing as a human being. For me, my spirituality and belief in God’s plan for me and love for me helps me have courage to keep doing the work. What helps you get through the tough times?
Navigate Challenges without Feeling Overwhelmed
You’ll see a common theme in these examples: you get the chance to come at the crisis with a growth mindset, get curious, and then try something different. With each example we had to make some space in our mindset and life for growth, reach out for support, and treat ourselves with kindness and compassion. As you add to your skills and resources, it’s like you’re building a bigger and safer boat and your capacity to navigate bigger and rougher waters will keep growing.
I hope this helps you have a framework for dealing with your own crises with hope and compassion and growth. Thanks so much for being here and please take care.
