Overwhelmed Right Now?
Don't try to figure out what to do first. Do this instead:
- Tap the side of your hand while saying: "Even though I'm completely overwhelmed and can't think straight, I accept where I am right now."
- Keep Tapping: "All this pressure. All these demands. I can't do everything. And that's okay."
- Breathe. When your nervous system calms, clarity returns. Then you can see the first step.
Overwhelm is a pattern, not a fact. The tasks don't change—your capacity to handle them does.
Why Overwhelm Makes You Freeze
When you're overwhelmed, your brain isn't just busy—it's in a state of threat response. Your nervous system interprets the pile of demands as danger, triggering a freeze response. This is why you can stare at your to-do list for an hour without doing anything on it. Your survival brain has taken over, and it's not interested in productivity.
The cruel irony of overwhelm is that the more you need to get things done, the less capable you feel of doing them. That's because your prefrontal cortex—the part of your brain responsible for planning, prioritizing, and taking action—goes offline when you're in fight-flight-freeze mode.
How Tapping Breaks the Overwhelm Cycle
Tapping sends calming signals directly to your amygdala, telling your brain the threat isn't real. As your nervous system settles, something remarkable happens: your prefrontal cortex comes back online. Suddenly you can see clearly. You can identify a first step. You can separate "the pattern of feeling overwhelmed" from the actual tasks on your plate.
Real Results of Breaking Through
Tani
"This is amazing—it was perfect for me to release huge overwhelm from ten down to zero in an hour. I feel like your app is my lifeline and best therapist ever in my pocket. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for all you do!"
9 to a zero in less than 8 minutes of Tapping. POWERFUL. Thank you! Don't change a thing!
Maria
Natalie
"I had to pause the dialogue—felt SO overwhelmed and helpless. I tapped until I felt that shift. And it did. Struck with an idea, a place to begin. What a wonderful feeling: possibility."
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Laura Sue
"I am extremely exhausted and burned out at the moment, and as I was starting to do this meditation, before I even started, I had this feeling of: 'there is someone here for me' and that means so much right now. Everyone I would normally turn to for help is just so overwhelmed themselves, I hesitate to call my closest friends. But this is something I can do by myself whenever I need it."
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Magi
"Thank you! This one is so perfect! I totally get the separation between 'the pattern of feeling overwhelm' from the tasks that are on my plate. You make that so clear. Gratitude as always!"
Josephine
"I have been feeling overwhelm for the past two days and this has taken me from a 9 to 5. My pain also seems to have vanished—double win! I need to find space to tap before it all gets too much."
What Overwhelm Often Masks
When people tap on overwhelm, they often discover it's not really about the to-do list. Underneath the spinning mind, there's usually something deeper:
- Perfectionism: "If I can't do it perfectly, I can't start at all"
- Fear of failure: "What if I do all this and it still isn't enough?"
- People-pleasing: "I've said yes to too much because I couldn't say no"
- Old beliefs: "I'm not capable. I can't handle this. I'm not enough."
Ready to Break Through Overwhelm?
Try the Release Overwhelm session—used by over 148,000 people.