Feeling overwhelmed looks very different for each of us. How it impacts us depends very much on what we have going on in life, and also on our earlier life experiences. For example, if we have had a lot of trauma in our life, this may greatly affect how we respond to our sense of overwhelm. Interestingly, some people with a history of traumatic

You most likely know a lot about either setting your standards and goals too high; or buying into the story that you are not able for very much at all. Many of us flit from one end of this spectrum to the other.

Identify your comfort zone In your small steps diary, write down three actions you take to keep yourself in your comfort zone. They could be things like drinking wine every evening, staying in rather than going out, or avoiding a particular task that you know needs to be done yet you can’t seem to get around to. Only you will know what you do to

Lack of awareness in the present moment

Emily is overwhelmed by the demands that her frail and elderly mother puts on her every day.

The premise behind ACT is that you are most likely to struggle and suffer when you are being psychologically inflexible.

Left unchecked, overwhelm can lead to us to acting in ways that erode our health and wellbeing, our relationships with ourselves and others, and our sense of fun and general positive engagement with life.

When our sense of being overwhelmed is such that we are unable to do anything to change it, our task is not to completely eradicate it but to find a way to transform it into something manageable.

Three states of mind that lead to psychological inflexibility