Overwhelm: Definition, Feelings, & Symptoms

By Justine Saavedra, M.S.
Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

Learn about what it means to be overwhelmed. Discover exercises to relieve the stress of feeling overwhelmed.

Overwhelm: Definition, Feelings, & Symptoms

*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products.

Sometimes, intense feelings can catch you by surprise which can lead to feeling overwhelmed. This emotional state of being can be enjoyable if you are overwhelmed with feelings of happiness or gratitude. Unfortunately feeling overwhelmed is mostly associated with being stressed. Learning more about the causes, symptoms, and solutions to feeling overwhelmed can help you better manage this difficult emotion in your everyday life.

Before reading on, if you're a therapist, coach, or wellness entrepreneur, be sure to grab our free Wellness Business Growth eBook to get expert tips and free resources that will help you grow your business exponentially.

Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?

Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

✓ Save hundreds of hours of time ✓ Earn more $ faster
✓ Boost your credibility ✓ Deliver high-impact content

What Is Overwhelm? (A Definition)

Have you ever had an experience that caused you such intense feelings you could hardly contain yourself–like you were overflowing with emotions? That is the feeling of being overwhelmed. This happens when something causes an intense reaction in you, either emotionally or physically. You may react with happiness, tears, anger or a combination of all three depending on the situation.

Overwhelm can also be a feeling that builds over time, with one small event being the “straw that breaks the camel’s back”. This can happen when you ignore small things that bother you which eventually end up turning into a mountain of resentment. You might become overwhelmed when all the things you ignored come crashing down on you all at once.

Is Overwhelm An Emotion?

Overwhelm is an emotion because it is something we feel as humans. When you read the word, you can imagine how it feels to you when you are overwhelmed. There can also be other emotions within the feelings of overwhelm. You can be overcome with joy, anger, gratitude, wonder, or any other intense emotion you can think of. Overwhelm is an umbrella emotional term under which many other emotions can fall.

All-Access Pass - Wellness PLR Content Collection

Opposite of Overwhelm

When you feel overwhelmed, you may feel out of control and question your ability to handle things. The opposite of this is feeling confident and in control of your life, no matter what it throws at you. Resilience is the ability to rebound quickly from adversity and is a skill that can help relieve feeling overwhelmed. People who are more resilient achieve better emotional and physical regulation, with one study showing “accelerated cardiovascular recovery from negative emotional arousal” (Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). If you find yourself constantly overwhelmed, consider trying to build resilience to relieve this.

Overwhelmed Symptoms

Negative overwhelm can also be defined as psychological stress which is “when an individual perceives that environmental demands tax or exceed his or her adaptive capacity” (Cohen et al., 2007). When talking about the negative experience of being stressed, psychological and even physical symptoms may emerge (Kalliath et al., 2004).

Psychological stress symptoms:

Unable to feel reasonably happy
Lose sleep over worry
Constantly under strain
Feeling unhappy and depressed
Unable to concentrate
Unable to enjoy normal activities
Losing confidence in own self
Unable to overcome difficulties
Unable to face up to problems
Not capable of making decisions
Unable to play a useful part in things
Thinking of own self as worthless

Causes of Overwhelm

Almost anything may cause a person to become overwhelmed–it really depends on the individual. There are common themes of situations or experiences that can cause someone to feel overwhelmed. These are usually things that cause emotional discomfort and extra stress, especially once issues start piling up. However, the opposite can be true as well. If positive experiences start building up, you can be overwhelmed by happiness and gratitude.

Causes of overwhelm:

Finances
Health
Parenting
Marriage
Career

Overwhelmed by Life

The world is constantly changing and growing and so are the demands on our time and abilities. It can be overwhelming to keep track of everything required to be a functioning human in society today including dentist and doctor appointments, social obligations, increasing demands at work, and everything in between. Feeling overwhelmed by all of these things is a normal response. Consider watching the following video to learn about some other tools to deal with feeling overwhelmed.

Video: Overwhelmed by Stress? Think Like a Scuba Diver

Overwhelmed With Gratitude

While overwhelm is commonly thought of as a negative emotion, it can have very positive connotations as well. Feeling overwhelmed with gratitude can happen when you are experiencing intense feelings of appreciation. These feelings may be directed toward a person, experience, animal, opportunity, or anything that sparks feelings of thankfulness. Consider the following examples of being overwhelmed with gratitude.

Feeling overwhelmed with gratitude looks like…

Matt is an Army veteran who has been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of completing two tours of duty in Iraq. He has struggled since getting home but applied for a service dog as he grew up with dogs and finds great comfort in them. Matt finds out two months later that he has been matched with a yellow lab puppy and is overwhelmed with gratitude for his new companion.
Akira is a single mother who has been struggling financially. She hears about a job opportunity with good pay and benefits from a friend. She interviews for the job and gets it. Akira is filled with immense gratitude toward her friend for giving her the opportunity for this new chapter.

Can you think of any moments in your life when you have been overwhelmed with gratitude?

Well-Being PLR Courses - Grow Your Business Fast

Overwhelmed With Joy

Joy is another positive emotion that can overwhelm you. You may experience this when something fills you with deep happiness. Someone may be overwhelmed with joy when they receive an offer from their dream job or get into their first-choice college. Seeing your child’s first steps or the first look of your bride on your wedding day may also cause intense happiness. Is there an event in your life that you can remember that caused you to be overwhelmed with joy?

When you feel overwhelmed with joy you might jump up and down and scream. Or maybe you react with tears. Either one is totally appropriate and might even take you by surprise. Allow yourself to feel whatever bubbles up. I recently attended a close friend’s wedding and her husband cried when he saw her in her dress for the first time. It was obvious how filled with joy he was to marry her and now it’s a beautiful moment they can share forever.

Overwhelmed With Work

Some people may experience feeling overwhelmed at their job with increasing demands on their time and abilities. Maybe your company is understaffed and you are expected to pick up the extra work, on top of your own. Maybe you have been given duties without the proper training and don’t feel prepared. Over time, these increasing demands can have negative consequences for employees (Inegbedion et al., 2020).

Negative consequences of employees feeling overwhelmed:

Job burnout
Job dissatisfaction
Ill feelings toward the employer
May cause an employee to quit a job if other opportunities are available

Feeling overwhelmed at work is a negative experience for both the employer and the employee. The employee may feel underappreciated which can cause them to quit. This, in turn, negatively affects two of the biggest performance indicators for businesses–employee turnover and productivity (Inegbedion et al., 2020).

Workload management may be an important tool for managers to use to ensure their employees remain satisfied with their job. This framework aims to minimize the discrepancy between employee workload and capacity. Open communication with your supervisor–or employees–can help balance workloads and minimize the chances of feeling overwhelmed.

Overwhelmed with Parenting

Raising children can be an extremely stressful process, even though it comes with many rewards and benefits as well. Parents may put their own needs on the back burner in order to give full attention to their children. Parents can benefit by remembering that they are simply humans and can take care of their own needs as well. Going out for a coffee with a friend or spending an hour working out are ways to recharge your own battery. If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed or frustrated with your kids, taking three deep breaths may help ease that feeling and allow you to react in a mindful manner instead of out of stress.

Getting Overwhelmed Easily

People experience the world through different lenses of experience and identity. This means that each individual person will likely react to the same situation in different ways. Some people have a low emotional threshold and may react intensely to something compared to another person who is not bothered by it at all. People who get overwhelmed easily may find it harder to navigate the constant demands and curveballs of life. Trying to develop resilience–the ability to rebound quickly from adversity–may help alleviate the tendency to feel overwhelmed easily.

Overcoming Overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed can happen to anyone. However, this feeling can harm our well-being when it is constant. It may cause you to feel out of control of your own life. If this sounds like something you are familiar with, try the following steps to recognize where you are feeling overwhelmed and begin to alleviate some of that stress.

Evaluate the areas of your life where you feel overwhelmed. There may be many areas of your life contributing to feelings of stress. Drilling down and figuring out what specific dimensions of your life are causing you the most stress is the first step in modifying those areas to give you some relief. Some examples may include career, parenting, marriage, finances, friendships, family relationships, etc.
Identify the cause of overwhelm you can most easily modify. It might not be easy to change your job right away, but you might be able to make changes to other areas of your life more immediately. Tackling overwhelming household responsibilities or spending habits are two examples of areas where you have the control to start making changes to relieve feelings of stress.
Make a plan to modify your behavior. If you are feeling overwhelmed with household responsibilities, creating a weekly “tidy-up” schedule can help you complete a little work each day to keep it from piling up. If you are feeling overwhelmed by finances, developing–and sticking to–a budget can help alleviate some financial stress.
Stick to your plan. While it might seem like more work at first, structuring the areas of your life where you feel most overwhelmed can help you gain a better sense of control. Try to create a weekly plan, follow through with the plan, and also allow yourself grace if you aren’t perfect right away.

The following videos also have helpful tools and information on how to overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Video: How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed Right Now

Video: Overcoming Overwhelm

Quotes on Overwhelm

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret to getting started is breaking your overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” — Mark Twain
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” — Desmond Tutu
“I never felt like I was in over my head, but rather that the overwhelming possibilities were there for me to create.” — Maya Angelou
“Overwhelm is, most often, a mindset. If you think about all the things you have to do, you'll be face down on the floor. It really helps to break it down into smaller pieces.” — Jen Sincero
“In this dangerous world that we live in, where hatred and violence and natural disasters sometimes collide to almost overwhelm us, we each can help in some way.” — Marsha Blackburn
“I don't think that you can let the storms of life overwhelm you. When you do that, you are no better than the craziness that caused you to be under attack.” — T. D. Jakes

Well-Being PLR Article Packages - Grow Your Business Fast

Articles Related to Overwhelm

Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Overwhelm

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed happens when you are overcome with intense emotions. These can be negative, such as stress and anger, or positive, such as joy and gratitude. Constantly feeling overwhelmed can have negative consequences like feeling unhappy, losing confidence in yourself, and having difficulty making decisions. In the moment of feeling overwhelmed, stopping to take three deep breaths can help alleviate immediate feelings of panic. Building resilience within yourself may be helpful to combat feeling overwhelmed.

Don't Forget to Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to
Grow Your Wellness Business Exponentially!

References

Cohen, S., Janicki-Deverts, D., & Miller, G. (2007, October 10). Psychological stress and disease. JAMA. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
Inegbedion, H., Inegbedion, E., Peter, A., & Harry, L. (2020). Perception of workload balance and employee job satisfaction in work organisations. Heliyon, 6(1).
Kalliath, T. J., O'Driscoll, M. P., & Brough, P. (2004). A confirmatory factor analysis of the general health questionnaire-12. Stress and Health, 20(1), 11–20.
Tugade, M. M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(2), 320–333.

Are You a Therapist, Coach, or Wellness Entrepreneur?

Grab Our Free eBook to Learn How to Grow Your Wellness Business Fast!

Key Articles:

Content Packages: