If You’re Feeling Overwhelmed, You Need to Hear This

1. 0:00 – 2:26

   Welcome

   1. MRMel Robbins0:00

      There is a major difference between moments where you feel stressed versus when you feel overwhelmed, and our two medical experts are gonna explain this to you. Dr. K is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in modern mental health. Dr. Addidi is a Harvard-trained physician with an expertise in stress, burnout, and mental health.

   2. GCGuest (medical expert – short clips)0:20

      There actually isn't just one kind of stress, but two kinds of stress. There is good, healthy stress, and bad, unhealthy stress.

   3. MRMel Robbins0:28

      Stress is just pressure that you feel. Overwhelm is something different.

   4. KDr. K0:33

      You don't feel overwhelmed from dealing with too much. You get overwhelmed when many of the things that you're dealing with are out of your control.

   5. GCGuest (medical expert – short clips)0:41

      When you feel that sense of overwhelm, what's happening to you scientifically, we call it psychological flooding, when you are flooded with these big negative emotions.

   6. MRMel Robbins0:52

      You're not crazy. You're not lazy. Stress and overwhelm, these are biological responses.

   7. GCGuest (medical expert – short clips)1:00

      The human brain is expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. It's actually really good at that. The goal of life is not zero stress. It's actually biologically impossible to do that.

   8. KDr. K1:11

      So we have a really interesting technique that we use in psychiatry, and there's tons of research to support this.

   9. MRMel Robbins1:17

      You're gonna use these research-backed tools to be able to reset yourself. That's what we're gonna do. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. (upbeat music) Hey, it's Mel, and I cannot wait to dig into the game-changing difference between stress and moments of overwhelm and the four steps that you can take, and before we do, with world-renowned medical experts, I just gotta say, my team just showed me this. Do you know 54% of you that watch here on YouTube are not subscribers? Holy cow. Can we change that together? Could you hit subscribe? It's free. It is the fastest way for you to make sure you don't miss a thing that we're doing here on the Mel Robbins Podcast. It's also the best way for you to show support to our team 'cause we're always showing up here supporting you. I know you love these episodes. I know you love these world-renowned experts, and I would love for you to give the Mel Robbins Podcast team a little love. My goal is to get that to 50% and we're almost there. So thank you, thank you, thank you for hitting subscribe. All right. Let's jump in to this extraordinary episode.

2. 2:26 – 8:53

   What Causes the Feeling of Overwhelm?

   1. MRMel Robbins2:26

      Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am thrilled that you're here. I'm so excited for the topic today. It's always an honor to be together and to spend this time with you. If you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this episode with you, I just wanted to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. You've picked a life-changing episode to listen to. This is a really good one, because today, you and I are gonna go step by step through the four things you're gonna do to get out of overwhelm when life feels like it's just too much, and doesn't life feel like it's too much right now? I know, I know. That's why I wanted to talk about this. I wanted to talk about this topic because so many of you are writing in from around the world, and you're using the words, "I feel so overwhelmed," or you're saying, "I'm so stressed out." And so here's what I did. I reached out to two of your favorite and my favorite medical experts who have appeared on the Mel Robbins Podcast. They are also medical experts that I quoted extensively in the Let Them Theory book, and what I wanted to figure out was, what do we need to do in moments of stress and overwhelm? And that's when I learned the very first mistake I was making. I was using the words stressed and overwhelmed interchangeably, and medically speaking, they're very different states that your brain or body are in. And if you're gonna take control in moments where you're stressed or overwhelmed, first of all, you gotta know the difference. That's the first step. You gotta know the difference between when you're experiencing stress versus you getting to this moment where you're so flooded and beyond your capacity to deal with it that you're actually overwhelmed. Here's how I think about it now that I have spent hours and hours researching this topic so you and I could have this conversation today. Stress is just pressure that you feel, and stress sometimes can be a really good thing. You know what I mean? Like, 'cause when you feel stressed about a deadline, you tend to get the work done. So it's pressure that you feel. In fact, the days that we tape this podcast for you, they're very stressful, and, uh, I don't mean bad. It's just that the days are like, go, go, go, go. You know, we got an early call time and then the guests are showing up or I'm showing up and then we're getting the cameras ready and it's like, go, go, go, go. You have days like that, right? Those days where you gotta get outta work or you gotta get outta school by 3:00 PM because you gotta get the kids to their doctor's appointment, or you gotta make that soccer game, or you gotta pick up your mom and go do something. Those days are stressful because you feel pressure. It's sort of like you're stepping on the gas, right? And you're go, go, go. Overwhelm? Now that's different. Overwhelm is way bigger than a stressful day. Overwhelm is what happens when that stress that you're feeling, that pressure, that go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go is building and building and building and building, and all of a sudden you've had too many days or too many weeks, too many months, too many years in a row, and now you can't go. You've hit this threshold. You, you've hit your capacity to handle the pressure. You can't keep up. When you're in a state of overwhelm, you can't think. You can't prioritize. Overwhelm means you just can't handle it anymore.Like, that's kinda how I know the difference. Stress, I keep powering through. Overwhelm, I've hit the wall. And I wanna unpack this so that you really understand why this difference matters. Let's talk about a work example. Stress is you're answering one email and all of a sudden, you know, three more come in and the stupid notifications like ding, ding, ding. And as the ding, ding, ding happens, you start to feel the pressure rising. That's stress. Overwhelm is when you open your inbox and you see there are 342 unanswered emails and you don't know where to start, so you just sit there and you stare at the screen and now you can't even remember why you logged on in the first place. And, oh my God, I have a meeting in seven minutes. That's overwhelm. Another example, you walk into the kitchen after work and driving your mom to a doctor's appointment this afternoon, you have all these emails that you need to answer because you're out of the office while you were doing the medical appointment. You realize there's no plan for dinner. There is nothing in the fridge. The dog is staring at you because it needs food and you don't have food because you forgot to buy it on the way home. And you just sit down on the couch and you start crying. Or maybe you don't even cry because you've reached this capacity where you can't even cry. You're not even sure what you'd order for dinner at this point. That's overwhelm. Overwhelm, it's a threshold, a capacity issue. Your brain just isn't working. You have no focus. Your emo- oh my God, emo- You either feel numb, I either feel numb or I just feel, I don't know, I always feel run over when I'm overwhelmed. Like, stress has this energy to it. Overwhelm's something else. I think this is personally super helpful to understand the difference and it makes me realize I've been using these words incorrectly my entire adult life, which is 57 years, for crying out loud. And none of us really understand this unless you're a medical doctor that studies it because medically speaking, they're very different states, which means they need different tools. If you use the wrong tools, you're gonna stay stuck. I want you to just stop and consider right now. Are you feeling stressed in life because you feel pressure? Or are you feeling what I'm describing to you, which is this I've reached the capacity that I have? I bet if you're not feeling overwhelmed, you know somebody who is. And everything you're about to hear is gonna be so eye-opening.

3. 8:53 – 14:03

   Expert Insights: Dr. K on the Definition of Overwhelm

   1. MRMel Robbins8:53

      And the first person I want you to hear from is the extraordinary Dr. K. Now, Dr. K is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist who specializes in modern mental health. He's appeared on the Mel Robbins podcast twice, and every time everybody just goes bananas over Dr. K. You may also know him as The Healthy Gamer online. He has millions of people that follow him on his YouTube channel. And so I reached out to Dr. K, he just has a way with words, and I said, "Hey, Dr. K, could you describe the difference between stress and overwhelm?" And I want you to check out what Dr. K said.

   2. KDr. K9:28

      Hey, Mel, I'd love to help you make sense of overwhelm. Here's some stuff I'd love to share. When I deal with patients who are overwhelmed, they feel like life is coming at them way too fast. "I have to deal with this over here and then my boss wants this and my kid wants this and then this person is sick and I need to do some back to school shopping." So life is coming at you and you feel completely out of control. You don't feel overwhelmed from dealing with too much. You get overwhelmed when many of the things that you're dealing with are out of your control. Being overwhelmed isn't about being too weak or not strong enough. It's about carrying too many challenges that you didn't choose and too few that you did.

   3. MRMel Robbins10:08

      Okay. Dr. K, I wanna highlight something that he said. "You don't feel overwhelmed from dealing with too much. You get overwhelmed when many of the things that you're dealing with are out of your control." Just stop and think about that. Like, in moments where you're stressed, you're kinda, you got the pressure on, you're cruising through things. In moments of overwhelm, it does feel like life is coming at you. And the reason why we say it feels like life is coming at you and then all of a sudden you tap out is because the things that are coming at you probably feel like they're out of control. Whether that's the non-stop deadlines at work or the goalpost always moving in terms of what you th- are supposed to do in order to succeed, whether it's caring for somebody who's got a chronic illness and so that's largely out of your control, whether it's the headlines. Like, all these things that are coming at you, I think that's such an important thing to understand that a lot of the things that overwhelm you are things that you didn't choose or there's too few things that you did choose. Meaning you're not in control of some of the things that are important to you because everything else has started to become a priority. And the reason why you feel out of control is because whatever that load is that's coming at you exceeds your capacity, you've hit threshold. That's why the system shuts down. You just don't have room. It's not working anymore. In other words, overwhelm's like a total collapse. That's why the ways that you get out of a stressful moment are very different from how you recover from overwhelm, right?Stress requires a bit of problem solving based on the situation and the amount of pressure that you're feeling. And when you problem solve the right way, you always start to feel the pressure go down, right, and the stress alleviate. Overwhelm is completely different because you've hit this threshold, and you really need to do a reset. That's why the steps that we're gonna go through today really matter, because it's not about problem solving, it's really about resetting your capacity to handle what you're going through. And we're gonna do that at three levels. We're gonna reset your capacity biologically. We're also gonna reset your capacity mentally. And then we're gonna reset this balance between what's coming at you versus what you're choosing. Those are the three ways these tools work. So the first step to get out of overwhelm, when life just feels like too much, is just to label what you're actually feeling. Because there's a difference between saying, "I'm stressed out because I have to cook dinner. I'm stressed out because traffic is really annoying. I'm stressed out because, uh, uh, somebody's laying a guilt trip on me and now I feel bad." That's very different than, "Oh wait, I feel like life is coming at me. I feel like I've lost control. I feel like my brain is maxed out. I'm feeling overwhelmed." So step one, label it. Are you just feeling stress or are you actually in a state of overwhelm? And we're about to get into the next three things that Dr. Aditi and Dr. Kay tell you based on the research that they want you to do once you recognize, "Oh wait, this is beyond stress. I'm actually overwhelmed right now, medically speaking." But because I'm not a doctor, I want you to hear from them, and so I called my friend Dr. Aditi Nurikar to give you her point of view. And let me tell you about

4. 14:03 – 21:20

   Expert Insights: Dr. Aditi on the Biology of Overwhelm

   1. MRMel Robbins14:03

      Dr. Aditi. Dr. Aditi is a Harvard-trained physician with an expertise in stress, burnout, and mental health. She in fact ran the largest stress management clinic for the Harvard medical system. She's also the New York Times best-selling author of The Five Resets. She's appeared on this podcast three times, and she is the very first expert of 57 world-renowned experts that I cited in the Let Them Theory book where she talks all about how to use the Let Them Theory to lower your stress levels. You love Dr. Aditi. I love Dr. Aditi, and so I asked her, "Dr. Aditi, from a medical point of view, what is stress versus what is overwhelm, and what do you want us to know about how these different states impact your body?"

   2. ARDr. Aditi (Dr. Riddidi)15:00

      Mel, I'm so glad you asked. There's actually two kinds of stress. There is good, healthy stress, and bad, unhealthy stress, and all of the mental and physical health manifestations that you consider negative are actually due to the unhealthy kind of stress. So let's talk about the good s- kind of stress first, healthy stress. In science, this is called adaptive stress. This kind of good, healthy stress moves your life forward. It creates a sense of forward momentum. Everything good in your life was created because of a little bit of healthy stress. Examples of good stress in your life could be things like getting a promotion or a new job, falling in love, having a baby, graduating, planning a beach vacation, or rooting for your favorite sports team. The goal of life is not zero stress. It's actually biologically impossible to do that. The goal of life is healthy, manageable stress that can serve you rather than harm you. And so unhealthy stress in science is called maladaptive stress. This kind of stress is unproductive, dysfunctional, and gets in the way of our everyday functioning. When you say that you've had a stressful week or a stressful year, that's the kind of stress you're talking about. That unhealthy stress causes a lot of the mental and physical health manifestations that you're already familiar with, things like anxiety, insomnia, depression, frequent headaches, abdominal pain, back pain. The list of unhealthy stress symptoms is endless.

   3. MRMel Robbins16:26

      Okay, so I just wanna make sure that, that you and I are both tracking. Dr. Aditi so far is teaching us that medically speaking, there's two different types of stress. There's the healthy kind of stress, and we've talked a little bit about that. That's the pressure, the go, go, go that helps you get things done. It comes and it goes and it's useful. But there's a second kind, which is the unhealthy. This is the sustained stress that starts to build and build and build, the chronic stress, so to speak. And so now that you understand there's kinda good stress and healthy stress that you're gonna experience, I then asked Dr. Aditi a second question, and that question is, can you explain what's actually happening in our brains and in our bodies when we are experiencing stress, and how does this relate to the difference between healthy stress and what ultimately becomes overwhelm? And this is what Dr. Aditi said.

   4. ARDr. Aditi (Dr. Riddidi)17:25

      Under normal circumstances, your brain is led by the prefrontal cortex. So if you put your hand right on your forehead, it's the area right behind that forehead. This prefrontal cortex part of your brain governs things like memory, planning, organization, strategic thinking. It's what you are a master of in normal, everyday life. But under periods of stress, your brain is governed by another region called the amygdala. Your amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain, and the purpose of your amygdala is purely survival and self-preservation. It's cave person mode. You can function for short periods of time in cave person mode, but when it becomes chronic, that's when burnout can set in. When you feel that sense of overwhelm, what's happening to you scientifically, we call it psychological flooding, when you are flooded with these big negative emotions. And that feeling of being flooded or overwhelmed is powered by your stress response, that amygdala, that small, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain that drives this emotion. The human brain is expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. It's actually really good at that. But when that stress becomes ongoing and chronic and goes past a certain threshold, that's when that feeling of overwhelm can really set in.

   5. MRMel Robbins18:46

      Dr. Riddidi, I love that term, psychological flooding, because that's exactly what it feels like when you hit those moments of overwhelm. You are flooded in your body and brain, and you hit this threshold where you just can't do anymore. You can't think. What I'd love to have you explain to us is, what is happening in your brain and your body when you're facing kind of a moment of stress, that pressure that you feel that's kinda situational, versus what's happening when you hit that psychological flooding that's called overwhelm?

   6. ARDr. Aditi (Dr. Riddidi)19:26

      When you are living in a state of chronic stress, your brain is being governed by your amygdala. Your amygdala, by design, is focused on your immediate needs of survival and self-preservation. That is the sole purpose of your amygdala, and that is what it does. So planning for a future, strategic thinking, organizing, all of these things are not available to you, because those tasks are the job of your prefrontal cortex, which is offline when you're feeling a sense of chronic stress and overwhelm. So if you find it difficult to plan for your future, even in the most simple ways, like making dinner or meal prepping for the week, this is why. It's not a personal feeling. It's your biology.

   7. MRMel Robbins20:11

      Oh, my gosh. Did you catch what she just said? "This is why it's not a personal feeling. It's your biology." Dr. Riddidi, thank you, because once you embrace the truth that these moments of overwhelm, and even the stress that you feel, these are biological responses. This is important, because it changes everything. Why does it change everything? Well, because you can stop judging yourself for feeling behind or weak or not able to handle it all. You're not supposed to handle it all. Biologically speaking, your brain and body has a mechanism to go, "Eh, overloaded. We're not doing this anymore." I want to remind you, you're not crazy. You're not lazy. Stress and overwhelm, these are biological responses. You heard it from Dr. Riddidi. Your brain and body are reacting exactly the way they're wired to, because you and I, we're not robots. We're not powered by AI. We are human beings, and you are designed to be able to juggle a lot of balls in life. That's what stress is for, the pressure, the go, the getting you to be able to pay attention.

5. 21:20 – 38:09

   How to Feel Calm in Minutes When You’re Overwhelmed

   1. MRMel Robbins21:20

      Overwhelm is when life feels like you're juggling knives, and you're afraid to touch anything, and you freeze because you both don't want to drop anything and you don't want to cut yourself. After you've labeled what you're dealing with, you're gonna breathe. Now, don't roll your eyes at me, okay? Because we're gonna use the biology and the science and the physiology of your breath to alter your biological state of overwhelm and stress. How cool is this? But you don't have to take it from me. I want you to hear why breath is the second step from Dr. Riddidi. Check this out.

   2. ARDr. Aditi (Dr. Riddidi)21:52

      The reason your breath can be so helpful as a first step in managing those feelings of overwhelm and chronic stress is because your breath is the only physiological mechanism in your body that is under voluntary and involuntary control. Your brain waves don't do that. Your digestion doesn't do that. No other system in your body is under voluntary and involuntary control, which is why your breath is such a powerful gateway to resetting your stress response.

   3. MRMel Robbins22:24

      Since Dr. Riddidi just shared with us that breathing is a powerful way to not only reset your stress response, but also to help you get out of these moments of overwhelm, I'm sure you're thinking the same thing that I'm thinking, which is, "Okay. What am I supposed to do with the breathing? How am I breathing?" So there's a specific form of breathing that has a lot of different names, okay? Some people call it cyclic breathing. Other people call it a physiological sigh or physiological breathing. I was first told about this type of breathing by Dr. Russell Kennedy, who is an expert that has appeared on this podcast. He's also quoted in the Let Them Theory book. And in order to simplify it, 'cause I'm gonna teach it to you right now, 'cause I use it all the time in moments when I'm overwhelmed, I've given it a name I can remember, and here it is: when life's too much, just double in, then flush. Okay? (laughs) And let me explain the science behind this form of breathing. There's a lot of research coming out of Stanford that explains why this form of breathing is particularly effective in moments of overwhelm or even anxiety. If you love Huberman Lab and the work of Dr. Andrew Huberman, he talks a lot about this in terms of the physiological sigh. But the bottom line is, this has been around for a long time, and the clinical definition is cyclical breathing, and it was explained to me by Dr. Russell Kennedy. So when you're in a state of overwhelm, like your breathing can be really quick, right? And so are your thoughts, because you're at capacity. Or you can be so kinda overwhelmed that you're not even aware of your thoughts or aware of your breathing, and that's because, as Dr. Riddidi just explained to you, your body's fight or flight, on edge response is now activated. So Dr. Russ Kennedy, who calls himself the Anxiety MD online, taught you and me this technique when I interviewed him on this podcast. I love it. And here's how you do it. Remember, when life's too much, you're just gonna (inhales) double in and then (exhales) flush. That's it. Double inhale through the nose. (inhales) (exhales) Flush it out with one long exhale through the mouth. Now, if you repeat that cyclic breathing technique for a minute, you will feel different.If you do it for five minutes a day, the research out of Stanford shows it can reduce anxiety more than meditation. So remember, cyclic breathing is step two. You're gonna label stress or label that you're overwhelmed. Then you're gonna remember I gotta breathe because I'm in a biologically compromised state. When life is too much, double in, exhale, and flush that overwhelm out. Now, I'm gonna have Dr. Aditi come back on, and now explain why this breathing technique resets your biological response to stress and overwhelm. Because basically, you are manually resetting your nervous system's stress response when you do cyclic breathing. Let's hear from Dr. Aditi.

   4. ARDr. Aditi (Dr. Riddidi)25:41

      Just as there are two kinds of stress, there are two kinds of nervous systems in your body. One is called the sympathetic nervous system. This is where the fight or flight response lives, and that is what the amygdala powers. The second system in your body is called your parasympathetic system, or rest and digest. The fascinating thing about your brain and body is that these two systems are mutually exclusive. They can't be turned on at the same time. It's like a light switch. When the sympathetic system is on, your parasympathetic system is off and vice versa. Your breath can be the toggle between these two systems. When you are feeling a sense of anxiety, overwhelm, or chronic stress, most likely, you have rapid, shallow breathing in your chest, what we call in science thoracic breathing. And when you are mellow, relaxed, and really driven by the parasympathetic system, or the rest and digest system, you have deep belly breathing. In science, we call this diaphragmatic breathing. And the reason your breath can be such a powerful tool is because you can move from that fight or flight sympathetic nervous system back to rest and digest, or the parasympathetic system, simply by taking a few slow, deep breaths.

   5. MRMel Robbins27:02

      I wanna now try to explain this in just simple terms. I mean, clearly, I'm not a medical doctor, but I've used this technique now in my life ever since learning fra- about it from Dr. Russell Kennedy, and it works wonders. Have you ever had a moment where you've been so overwhelmed and crying and then all of a sudden, you're overwhelmed by your crying that you're like, ugh ugh, and you suck in twice? Huh. And then you let it out? You did that instinctually because you were getting too worked up and your body was resetting itself. To me, this is the same technique, only you're doing it on purpose. You're getting out of that, like, racing heart and that panicked state, and you're double in (inhales) and now long exhale (exhales) . It not only feels like you're breathing out the stress and overwhelm, you are manually, based on what Dr. Aditi just told you, resetting your nervous system back to the parasympathetic rest and digest response. Because when you double in (inhales) (exhales) and you flush it out, as you do the long exhale, you will notice that you drop back down into the belly breathing. This is a way for you to shortcut from that stressed out state and shift down back into the diaphragm where you're in your rest and digest state naturally. (inhales) (exhales) So not only in that long exhale are you flushing out the overwhelm and stress, you're also taking a beat in resetting. And I like to think on the long exhale about dropping back into the body. It is crazy how effective this is. Okay, so step one, we're gonna label I'm stressed out because or oh my gosh, I'm in a state of overwhelm. I've hit the threshold. I've hit the capacity. You now know step two is breathe because we've got to have a biological reset to the biological response of stress and overwhelm. And so when life's too much, we double in, and then we flush it out. (Inhales) (exhales) Now step three is kind of another biological thing that we're gonna do because one of the reasons you're probably feeling a state of overwhelm is because of all of this stuff that is coming at you, right? And so you've got this overload in your mind that I wanna help you empty. And so after you've labeled what state you're in, stressed or overwhelmed, have done a biological reset with your breath, I now want you to go to step three, and let's do a mental reset. What is that? I call this a brain dump. What is a brain dump? Oh my gosh, it's as simple as getting out a piece of paper and picking up a pen and dumping all of that crap you're carrying in your brain down on a piece of paper. Now I can almost hear you. (laughs) I can almost hear you say, "Mel, oh my gosh, give me a break. Overwhelm? I'm gonna breathe and do a brain dump? It can't be that easy." Well, let me ask you something. When you're overwhelmed, do you want a complicated solution to fight the overwhelm? I didn't think so. Life's already complicated enough. You need something simple to do that's backed by research. So if you really stop and think about what I'm asking you to do, I'm asking you to take everything on your mind that is weighing you down, that you're carrying around, that is contributing to the chronic stress, all of the things on your to-do list, all of the ways that you're making yourself wrong, all of the things that you didn't have a chance to get to, the reminders, the don't forget to call the mom to pick up the prescription, to email Sarah back about the budget, to text your friend whose birthday you forgot, to sign the field trip permission slip, and call the doctor and get a physical before the sports team stuff, to register for classes before the registration window stuffs, when did we say we were gonna go meet about that fundraiser or my friends whatever, all of it.All of it. But don't just stop at all the to-dos, get all the emotional stuff out. The awkward conversation that you are avoiding. The fact that you know that you are slowly, quietly quitting this relationship. The anxiety that your kids feel. The resentment that is building up with your partner 'cause they're not doing their fair share around the house, but you just don't wanna say anything. The weird things that you ruminate about at 2:00 AM, get it all out. Oh, there's a lot up there, isn't it? Like if you really think about the size of your head, it's kinda crazy how much you're carrying around. No wonder it's weighing you down. Get it all out, get it out of your brain. That's the goal. And here's how you can do it. I want you to set a timer for 10 minutes. Grab a notebook or open up a doc on your phone or your laptop, and then you're not allowed to edit, you're not allowed to organize it, nothing. It's just like barfing on paper or on the screen. Everything gets written down. Every task, every to-do, every fear, every worry, every should, every conversation, every idea, every, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that thing." Here's one that would go on my list right now. My sink has been backing up forever. Like it's been backing up for months and months and months. And every time I brush my teeth in the morning, I've got like four inches of water in the sink. This morning, do you know what I did? I had my curling iron turned on. I forgot to put the sink back up, and I literally set the plugged in curling iron into a sink full of water. Like I'm surprised I didn't electrocute myself. I have been thinking about this thing forever. I need to get it out of my brain 'cause it's weighing me down. I just need to unclog the sink. I think about it all the time, but it's not going anywhere. That's an example. You've got thousands of those things that you're carrying around. And by the way, whatever you dump out, it should be messy because this isn't a planning exercise. This is a purge. The technical term for a brain dump is cognitive offloading. Let me hit you with some research about why this works. There was a meta-analysis done in 2025, that means they've analyzed a bunch of different studies and then summarized it for you and me, that confirms that when you write things down, in other words you get it out of your head, you cognitively offload, you reduce your mental strain, you improve your brain's ability to perform. Your brain performs better when it knows it doesn't have to remember everything. Let me tell you why. Because your brain is not a storage unit, it's a processor. And when you use your brain to hold onto everything instead of directing it to help you handle everything, you are clogging up your brain, and it's creating spinning and forgetting and shutting down. I want you to think about it like you open up your computer and there's a thousand tabs open. You've got a thousand tabs open in your mental browser right now. Your brain isn't broken, it is at capacity. Its storage is used up. It can't save anything on the hard drive. Do you know that studies have shown that mental load, it is disproportionately carried by women? Mm-hmm. I don't need to tell you that study 'cause you know it's true 'cause you're the one carrying the birthdays, the school emails, the dog meds, the dentist appointments, the emotional state of the entire family, everybody's birthday, the holiday shopping, the cooking, the planning, the cleaning, the folding. I'm here to tell you that it's real and you deserve to redistribute that load. And the first place we're gonna put it, we're gonna cognitively dump it onto a piece of paper. That's why I call this a brain dump. That is the step you're gonna take because it gives you clarity. It gives you something to point to when you can say, "Look, I need help," or, "I gotta set this boundary. Look at all this stuff I'm carrying around." So set the timer to 10 minutes, dump it all off. And I know what you're asking, "Mel, when is the best time to do this?" Well, first of all, the best time to do this is anytime you've labeled the fact that you're stressed or overwhelmed, you've done the breath, and you've reset your response biologically, and now you're in a slightly different biological state, then you can do the brain dump. But I did check into this, and believe it or not, there's research on this. Baylor University did a study where one group of people journaled before bed about what they had already accomplished, okay? So this is like one of those, "So today I did all these things." The other group, check this out, you know what they wrote down? They wrote down everything they didn't do. So basically, what was on your to-do list that you didn't get to? And who do you think fell asleep faster, the people that journaled about what they got done or the people that brain dumped all the things that they didn't do on a piece of paper, basically sleeping next to a to-do list for the very next day? The people who wrote the unfinished tasks. Honest to God, that's the people who slept better. They fell asleep nine to 10 minutes faster than the group of people who wrote down what they got done. Now let's just unpack this for a second, okay? Why would writing down all of the things that you didn't get to on a piece of paper before you go to bed help you sleep, help you fall asleep nine to 10 minutes faster? By the way, that's the same effect as some prescription sleep aids in clinical trials. I'll tell you why. It has to do with something called the Zeigarnik effect. See, your brain hates open loops. Open loops are these like open tabs in your mind. It's all the things that you haven't done. It's the lingering ideas. It's the things on your list you didn't get to. These open tabs, these undone things, your brain's just gonna keep cycling through 'em.... because it's afraid you're gonna forget it. It's trying to help you. But see, when your brain sees that you and I just wrote, "Oh, yeah, I gotta buy Drano. I've gotta do the birthday text. I gotta make sure I do this," your brain sees it all dumped on a piece of paper, you just cognitively offloaded it, it's like, "Oh, check, check, check." So if you're lying in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about emails and errands and phone calls, the fix isn't lavender oil or white noise, it's a brain dump. The research proves if you offload the things you're thinking about onto a piece of paper, the Zeigarnik effect takes hold and your brain can literally let it go and drift into sleep. Oh, my gosh, isn't that incredible? So, now that you've put it all on the list, what

6. 38:09 – 45:00

   The Real Reason Why You’re Overwhelmed

   1. MRMel Robbins38:09

      comes next? This is the fourth thing, and it brings me back to Dr. K. Remember Dr. K at the very beginning of our conversation today? And he talked about the fact that overwhelm is when you feel like life is coming at you too fast, and now it's too much and you just feel out of control. And he also went on to explain what's happening when your brain gets overwhelmed. Turns out, when you're overwhelmed, it's because there's two different types of obligations that your brain is trying to process. Wow! And so Dr. K is back to teach you that when you're in a state of overwhelm, it has to do with the number of things that are out of your control that are coming at you versus the number of things that are on that to-do list that you actually want to do. I want you to listen closely because Dr. K is about to add yet a deeper layer to the medical state of being in overwhelm, and that's going to set up the fourth step of what you're going to do after you have taken a breath, after you've done a brain dump. Let's take a listen to Dr. K.

   2. KDr. K39:33

      When your brain is feeling overwhelmed, it's actually measuring two different kinds of things. One is something called a passive challenge. Passive challenges are things that happen to you without you ever choosing them. These are things like paying taxes, dealing with a spouse or child or parent who gets sick, or other things just out of your control. The other really interesting thing is there's another kind of challenge called an active challenge. These are challenges that you face in your life that are things that you actually choose to do. So when you wake up in a- on a morning and you say, "You know what? I'm gonna learn how to bake sourdough," this may require a lot of work, maybe a lot of effort, but it's something that you choose. Now, the really interesting thing is that whether your brain feels overwhelmed is not based on the number of things that you are dealing with. This is what a lot of people get wrong. It is based on the ratio of passive challenges to active challenges. When I deal with patients who are overwhelmed, they feel like life is coming at them way too fast. "I have to deal with this over here, and then my boss wants this, and my kid wants this, and then this person is sick, and I need to do some back to school shopping." So life is coming at you and you feel completely out of control. The really scary thing is that when life is coming at you at a really fast pace, what is the first thing that you give up? You give up the things that you want to do. You stop working on your book, you stop exercising, you stop learning how to make sourdough because you don't have the time, which fair enough. The problem is then the percentage of things that you have control over in life actually decreases.

   3. MRMel Robbins41:13

      Dr. K, that is fascinating because it's true, that in those moments where you're overwhelmed, you do stop doing the things that you care about, which means the only thing on your plate is the bills, and work, and, you know, caring for your aging parents, or the dog that's sick, or the fact that you gotta find a new... Like, all of these things that you didn't choose that are coming at you. So if you recognize that that's true, you're in this state where just so much of what you have to deal with every day feels like it's out of your control and also feels like something you don't want to have to deal with. And you didn't choose for your kid to have anxiety, you didn't choose for, you know, there to be a challenging job market and now you're overwhelmed looking for a new job, you didn't choose the divorce and now you're faced with all the things that you have to deal with. So what is the advice you give to your patients? Because we're already overwhelmed, life's already coming at us, what do we do, Dr. K?

   4. KDr. K42:15

      So we have a really interesting technique that we use in psychiatry, and there's tons of research to support this, that if someone is feeling out of control in their life, the solution isn't to cut back, because that's what all my patients want. They wish their boss would leave them alone, they wish they didn't have to pay taxes this year. The solution is not to cut back on what life is sending your way, although that would certainly make things easy. The real solution is to take on more active challenges, start to take control of a single thing in your life.

   5. MRMel Robbins42:46

      I'm sorry, Dr. K, that makes no sense. That makes no sense. I'm already overwhelmed and my brain isn't working, how is taking on something else when I've hit this threshold the answer? H- h- how does that work? Can you give me an example of what your patients add in? Like, how are you dealing with this in your clinical practice?

   6. KDr. K43:14

      When I work with patients who are in the throes of addiction, they're going through a divorce, they're on probation at work, they have legal problems and DUIs, almost all of them start by taking control of one thing in their life. In this case, it could be, "I'm not going to drink today." And as you start to take a little bit of control in your life, your brain feels less overwhelmed, and then you are better able to handle those passive challenges.

   7. MRMel Robbins43:42

      I actually understand what you're saying. Like if you take a step back, if you're in a state where life is coming at you, and so many of the challenges that you're facing are out of your control and you didn't choose them and you don't want to deal with them, of course we just wish they would go away, but that's not happening. What you're basically saying is that by adding something in that you care about, whether it's not drinking, or it's, "Every day I'm gonna look for a job, because I care about this," or whether it's picking up a book instead of picking up your phone tonight, what Dr. K is saying makes a lot of sense. That you've gotta signal to yourself that there are things that you care about that you still do, that are for you and your own sanity, that make you feel in control. I love this. It actually, like, eh, when he first said it, I was like, "Wait, I don't think that makes sense at all. I'm not doing anything right now. I'm overwhelmed." No, no, no, no. Stop letting go of the things that matter to you. Add one thing in. Wow, I love that advice, 'cause it's so counterintuitive. So, let me make sure you got this.

7. 45:00 – 48:51

   What to do When You Feel Overwhelmed

   1. MRMel Robbins45:00

      The four steps to any moment where life feels like too much and you wanna take control because you're overwhelmed, they're very, very simple. You now know the difference between stress, which is pressure, and hitting that psychological flooding, which is overwhelm. And so you're just gonna label it. Step two, we're going to use a biological reset to meet the biological stress and overwhelm response, and when life's too much, you know, it's the double inhale, and then you're gonna flush it out. (exhales sharply) Third thing you're gonna do is you are going to cognitively offload the mental load, right? And you're just gonna do a brain dump on a piece of paper, 10-minute timer, dump it all out. If you do it at night, we can leverage that amazing research from Baylor, and you're going to, based on the study, fall asleep faster, which, oh, we love that too. And finally, I love that kinda reframe from Dr. K, that if it's overwhelm, you have to find something to add in that's important to you, something that you're going to do right now that you can focus on. For Chris it's writing every morning, no matter what. For you it may be walking every day, no matter what. It might be cutting out the alcohol or cutting out the sugar. It might be closing your laptop at 7:00 when the alarm rings at night because you're practicing boundaries at work. It might be taking a lunch break today instead of standing around and eating your sandwich at your shift at the hospital or at school, and really separating yourself for a minute. Because when you add that in, Dr. K is right, you will feel this little moment of control, and that's gonna counterbalance all the things that are out of control that are coming at you. And based on what Dr. K said, those small moments of control help you be better equipped to handle all the other things. So, those are the tools, and that's the science, and I wanna give a huge shout-out to Dr. K and to Dr. Adidi and Dr. Russ Kennedy for unpacking this really important difference between stress and overwhelm and giving us this detailed, deep, simple four-step guide that you can use any time you need, the next time life feels like it's just too much. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you, as your friend, that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And understanding these key differences between moments of stress and the psychological flooding of overwhelm and practicing these four steps, holy cow, it's not only gonna make you feel better, it's gonna help you do what you need to do to make your life better. And I love that for you. All right, thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with people that you care about. I can't wait to see you in the very next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. And thank you for watching all the way to the end. Thank you for hitting subscribe. If that's lit up like a Christmas tree right now, could you hit subscribe, 'cause it means you are one of the 54% of people who watch this who are not subscribed? It's a great way to show our team support, and it also ensures that you are not going to miss a thing when we drop these extraordinary and life-changing free resources and episodes for you. Alrighty, speaking of amazing free resources, I know you're gonna love watching this episode next, and I'll be there to welcome you into it the moment you hit play. I'll see you there.

Episode duration: 48:51