Ep #173: Empowering Yourself: Managing Overwhelm and Regaining Control After Divorce | Becoming You Again Podcast

Struggling to regain your footing after a divorce? In this greatest hits episode, you'll discover powerful strategies to manage the overwhelming emotions and life situations that often follow such a life-changing event. You'll learn how to recognize what you can control and make conscious choices to prioritize your well-being. You'll learn about common patterns like procrastination and feeling buried under responsibilities, and how to tackle them head-on to restore balance and control in your life.

We'll take a deep dive into the power of ownership and choice. Listen as we break down the empowering concept that you have a choice in everything; and by accepting responsibility for your decisions, you can liberate yourself from the feeling of HAVING to do it all. This episode is packed with actionable tips to help you manage your responsibilities effectively and make choices that align with your values, ultimately reducing stress and increasing your sense of agency.

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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.

Featured on this episode:

1. Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.

2. Are you lost and confused about who you are after divorce? Don't worry. I've got 51 Ways to Get to Know Yourself Again. Click here to download.

3. Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.

4. Haven't left a review yet? No problem. Click here to leave one.

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to Becoming you Again, episode number 173, and I am your host, karin Nelson. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life, so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast.

My lovely ladies, I am so happy that you're here. So we are kind of in the middle of the summer. I hope you're having an amazing summer. I hope you are getting to know yourself. I hope you are making time for yourself. I hope you are getting to know yourself. I hope you are making time for yourself and, on that note, I am also making a little time for myself, having a little bit of a summer vacation. I am in Alaska, I am with my sister, we are hanging out and having so much fun, laughing and seeing things, going places, enjoying our time together, and it's been incredible.

And instead of taking two weeks off for my podcast, the next two episodes this week and the one coming out next week are going to be greatest hit episodes. Episodes will be replaying for you as they are the most popular and perhaps some of the most useful and helpful episodes that you can listen to. So maybe it will be a repeat for you and, if it is great, see if you can get some more great information and useful tips out of them. If this is the first time you're listening to it, I guarantee there will be something in each podcast episode that is going to make your life better or easier as you go through your divorce. So this week's episode, I am talking about the overwhelm of divorce and how to handle that, and the best way to handle overwhelm is to recognize what you are in control of and where you have a choice to say yes or no, and that is what this episode is going to help you do Handle the overwhelm that you are feeling as you go through your divorce. I hope you enjoy.

How is everyone doing today? All right, so let's jump into today's topic, and it's one that I see a lot of when it comes to divorced women, like probably most of my topics, right? So we deal with so much as divorced women, and that's one that I see a lot of when it comes to divorced women, like probably most of my topics, right? So we deal with so much as divorced women and that's why I'm just really excited to be able to give this podcast to you all, because I know that there's so much that you're going through that I can help with, because I've been there and I've worked through it and I'm working with my clients to be able to get through this, and I have tools and techniques that maybe some of you don't have access to, and so I am really just so grateful that I'm able to offer you all of this information through this podcast. So, first of all, thank you for listening and, second of all, it's just amazing. I'm just so excited that this is even a thing All right.

Almost every one of my clients has been coached on this topic, and I really wanted to talk about it on today's podcast because I think so many of us women deal with this regularly, whether we're divorced or not, right? And that is overwhelm. I bet that if we were all sitting in a room together and I asked everyone in the room to raise their hand if they had ever felt overwhelmed since their divorce or even just anytime in their life. Really, everyone in the room would raise their hand because this topic is so prevalent and if we let it go unchecked, it can often become debilitating, to the point where we think we have all of these things on our to-do list and yet the overwhelm has taken over and we actually end up getting nothing done, which continues to perpetuate the feeling of we have too much to do and we can't get it done. Or it's like we're on a hamster wheel and we're running around in circles but not actually getting anywhere, because we aren't getting the important things done, the things that we really want to be doing in our lives. We feel like we're stuck just doing the daily, monotonous, everyday things that we have to do, just doing the daily, monotonous, everyday things that we have to do, and it's so frustrating and exhausting, right, so let's talk about it.

Overwhelm is felt when we believe that we have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Or I've also had clients who think that, truly, the world is on their shoulders now that they're divorced and they have to do it all and there is no one to lean on for support or for help. But it's kind of the same type of thought right, there's too much to do and how am I possibly going to get all of this done? Which then creates this feeling of overwhelm when we're thinking those things right. And then how does it show up in their life when they're thinking this? And I think there are two main ways that this shows up in our lives as divorced women.

So the first way is we procrastinate doing things on our list because we're constantly reminding ourselves that we don't have enough time and there's too much to do, and so we don't even start doing anything right. We're just like it's not even. We're not even going to have time to get it done, so why even start? So, for example, saying things like I know I have to look for a job and start making more money, but it's too hard, I'm just not smart enough for that job. Or I know they're not going to hire me because I don't have the schedule that I need, and so maybe I'll look for something else next week, but right now it's just too much for my brain and I really just need to check out. It's just too hard, it's too heavy, and so we put off the really important things because we're feeling overwhelmed and it can also look like we're trying to do all of it.

We're trying to do all of the things and we think that we have to get it done. We have to feed the kids, we have to make the lunches, we have to get them off to school and go to work and clean the house and run the errands and exercise and help the kids with their homework, and then cook dinner and then communicate with the ex and then take the kids to sports and all of their other activities. And we have to make the decisions about the divorce and we have to make the decisions about co-parenting and we have to show up as the co-parent who is being in control and being reasonable because the other one is being so unreasonable. And we have to pay the bills and we have to make the money and save and try to parent effectively as a single parent and try to control the kids from feeling unhappy or disappointed or sad after the divorce. And then we're trying to pretend that we're not feeling sad or unhappy or disappointed because we don't want to make our kids feel that way. We don't want them to know that we're struggling and then by the end of the day we just feel completely exhausted. We've given no attention to ourselves and what we truly want and need. We've been emotionally checking out and pushing down how we're actually feeling instead of processing through our emotions, which is very energetically draining, and we've been so involved in taking care of everyone else and everything else in our lives that we are just physically, emotionally and mentally spent.

The overwhelm is real, right, and so these actions may look different, but they are actually coming from the basic, same thought and they are definitely both creating a feeling of overwhelm. So if you're new to the podcast, then I'm going to quickly remind all of you newbies, and maybe some of you who have been listening but maybe have forgotten that anytime you're feeling something, it's coming from what you're thinking. Your feelings are never coming from anything outside of you. So the overwhelm isn't coming from your to-do list and all the things that you think you need to get done during the day. It's not coming from the divorce and the pressure of the divorce and needing to co-parent effectively, and it's not coming from being the parent and having to make all the decisions, and it's not even coming from trying to find the new job and needing to make more money. It's not coming from any of those things outside of you. The overwhelm is always coming from what you're thinking.

In the moments when you are feeling completely overwhelmed, when you're feeling the pressure, it's coming from what's happening in your head. When you're feeling overwhelmed, you're most likely having some kind of thought like I have to do this, or I have so much to do and I don't have the time to do it, or this is so hard, I never have time for myself. Something like that, right, it's coming from some underlying story that you are obligated to do these things and if you don't, everything will fall apart your life, your kids' lives, your family, the world, even sometimes right. We feel that pressure. All of it will fall apart, and so we have to do it because no one else will. There's no one else.

But here's the best news that I'm going to share with you this is a lie. There is no truth whatsoever to this story. When you tell yourself this story, that you have to do these things, you are giving away all of the control in your life. To time, you're giving away control of your life to outside circumstances, to society, to your kids, to your ex, to everything else. What you're doing is giving away your control rather than realizing that you are now, and always have been, in complete control of what you do and don't do.

So how do you take back control of your life and stop feeling overwhelmed? How do you stop telling yourself this story? Well, there are several steps that you can take to step off this hamster wheel of overwhelm. Right, sometimes we feel like we're running on that hamster wheel. I'm going to teach you these concepts. So, when you're wanting to stop feeling overwhelmed, the first thing that you can do is and I say this a lot, but it's true and it works with almost everything take responsibility for the choices you have made in your life that have gotten you to where you are right now. What your life is right now is a byproduct of the choices that you've made in the past. Yes, I'm telling you, you played a part in what's happening in your life right now. Now, do not hear me wrong at this point. I am not saying that the challenges that you're having right now in your life are your fault. There is a difference between blaming yourself and owning your choices, and that's what I'm talking about here you owning your choices.

I just finished reading a book called Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo. We are reading it in my Becoming you Again book club and if you're not in the book club you can totally join. You can click in the description. It will take you to a link that you can get to join the book club. We read about every month or two another self-help book, and this last one that we did was Marie Forleo's book Everything is Figureoutable, and she has a chapter that is almost dedicated specifically to this whole idea of really taking ownership and responsibility for your own choices. Not blaming yourself, not saying that it's your fault, where you know the things that have happened to you. There's a lot of choices in our lives that when we take ownership over it, we will gain control over where we want to go next, how we want to show up in our lives because of those choices.

And so, for example, I was coaching a woman who was going through a divorce and, according to her, her soon-to-be ex is a narcissist who was constantly messing with her and doing his best to make her look bad in front of the kids, because she'll tell them dad's going to come get you. And we're best to make her look bad in front of the kids because she'll tell them dad's going to come get you and we're going to go meet him and he's going to take you for a couple of days and then he'll cancel at the last minute and she'll be the one left to pick up the pieces. And then, on top of that, she just felt like she was making all the decisions she had to sell the house and move and have the kids full-time and work and dealing with her emotions and making sure her kids didn't get disappointed about their dad and and really hoping that they didn't see her as the mean mom or just really trying to like intervene with all of the things in life that we try and do as moms. Right, and the part where she gets to take responsibility in this story is by understanding that she's decided to take the kids full time. She has chosen to follow through with a divorce from this man, whether or not she initiated it right, and she may or may not have wanted the divorce or even asked for it, but the responsibility comes in her accepting that she's making the choice to follow through with the divorce and raids her kids 100% of the time. She's making that choice and so allowing herself to take responsibility for that puts her back in the driver's seat rather than feeling like life is just carrying her around. She's sitting in the back seat, being driven every which way and she has no choice over the matter. So when you can accept that responsibility of your own choices, that's when you get to reclaim your power and decide now, where do I want to go from here? So where do you go? After you accept responsibility for your choices, the next thing you get to do is you get to recognize that you don't have to do any of it.

Like I said before, overwhelm comes from a story that we're telling ourselves that we have to do it all. We have to carry the weight on our shoulders, we have to get it done. If we don't do it, no one will. But none of that is true. You don't have to do any of it, really, truly none of it. It's all a choice. You don't have to sell the house. You don't have to go to work. You don't have to get the kids off to school or help with their homework, or make dinner or pay bills or get ready in the morning or even be their mom anymore. You don't.

One of my mentors tells this story of when she realized this in her own life that it was all a choice. She was feeling really overwhelmed by motherhood and parenting in general, and she was at the park one day with her boys and they were playing and she was sitting on a bench and she had this thought I could just leave right now and stop being their mom. I don't have to continue being their mom if I don't want to. And she said that that realization for her changed everything. It changed how she looked at everything in her life from then on, and it gave her her power back. It allowed her to stop feeling overwhelmed instantly, because she finally realized that she didn't have to do any of it Moving forward, she was going to intentionally be choosing what she would and wouldn't do. And this is where you'll find your power, too, in choosing. Now, I get it.

You're probably yelling at me as you're driving in your car listening to this podcast, saying Karen, you don't get it. I really do have to go to work, because if I don't go to work, then I'll lose my house and then I'll lose my insurance, which means I'll probably eventually lose my kids. And yes, you're right, those might be some consequences to choosing not to go to work and not to make money, but it would ultimately be your choice, and that's where the power lies, in knowing that you have the choice Always. You decide what's really important to you and what you'll include in your day and where you'll spend your time, and everything else will either not be a problem or not get done, and it will still be okay. When I'm working with my clients and we get to this realization, what we do is we make a list of all of the things they think they have to do, everything, literally every little thing that they think that they must get done in their day, their week, their life, their year, right, or if they don't, everything will fall apart. And then we go through it literally one by one and decide if they are intentionally going to continue to choose to keep it on their list and get it done, or work on it next week, or maybe take a look at it in a month. But whatever it is, there is intentionality and choice, and once that happens, it's like the overwhelm magically disappears. It's so amazing.

So for me, I used to feel very overwhelmed about making sure dinner was made every night and that the house was picked up before bed. This was something that I really felt like I needed to do while I was married and I tried to keep this up after the divorce. But as I became more involved with growing my business my coaching business and I was still working full time and being a single mom, and I was dating and trying to fit in time for work and business and kids and boyfriend and all of my own needs on top of all of that right. And then I was still trying to make dinner every night and keep the house as clean as possible I realized that thinking that I needed to have the house cleaned and thinking that I needed to have dinner on the table every single night was making me feel overwhelmed. Those thoughts were like I have to get this done and I didn't like feeling overwhelmed. I don't like feeling overwhelmed. And so I did an assessment and I decided what I was willing to keep doing and what I wasn't.

And making dinner every single night and cleaning the house constantly did not make my list of things that I was going to keep doing. It doesn't mean that I gave up completely on both of them, of course. I still make dinner a few nights a week, and then some nights we order out and some nights we literally go to the grocery store and everybody picks what they want to make for themselves, and other nights it's like fend for yourself whatever you can find in the fridge or cupboard. That's what you get, because I'm not making dinner and as far as cleaning goes, I get to it about once every week or two. The kids help much more than they used to, and when the house is messy, I don't walk around and make it mean that I'm a terrible person or that I've done something wrong, or that I'm not good enough or worthy because my house is messy. All it means is that I've chosen to prioritize other things in my life and I am choosing to not create overwhelm for myself by thinking that I need to get this done, that it has to be done. So what in your life are you telling yourself you have to do? Take responsibility for it and then decide if it's something that you want to intentionally choose to continue doing or if it's time to let go.

All right, that's it for today. I will be back next week. Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real-life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoaching dot com. That's W-W-W dot K-A-R-I-N-N-E-L-S-O-N coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.