Why High Achievers Stay Stuck in Overwhelm and What Actually Helps
What If Overwhelm Was Never the Problem?
It’s easy to think that overwhelm is something we need to fix. It certainly looked that way to me for many years. I thought if I could just get everything on my list done, the overwhelm would disappear. But here’s what I’ve come to see: overwhelm isn’t the problem. It’s our relationship with it.
Overwhelm is simply a signal. A wise and intelligent one. It lets us know we’re caught in overthinking. That we’ve gone too far into our heads and too far away from ourselves. But it is not a flaw or a failure. It is not proof that you are not coping. It is not proof that you need to do more.
It is your body speaking. It is your inner knowing tapping you gently on the shoulder saying, slow down.
The Productivity Trap I Fell Into
When I first noticed how stuck I felt, what I really noticed was procrastination. At that time, I was sure the solution was more productivity. I devoured every book I could get my hands on: Atomic Habits, Tiny Habits, Mini Habits and more. I tried the 5 Second Rule. I filled notebooks and tried all the task managers like Asana, Trello, Notion, Google Tasks, Eisenhower matrices. I made it all look very organised.
But the more I tried to fix the overwhelm with these tools, the louder the noise became in my head. My mind was full of systems and hacks and urgency. None of them worked the way I wanted them to. Because I didn’t understand the real cause of the overwhelm.
The truth is that all of these things were ways to try to outrun a feeling. And the irony, of course, is that all that doing made me less productive, not more.
Overwhelm Isn’t a Task List Issue
We often think overwhelm is about how many things we have to do. But it isn’t. I’ve been self-employed for years, and even though I have a great deal of control over my schedule, I’ve still felt deeply overwhelmed at times.
Overwhelm isn’t about the number of tasks. It’s about the way we’re relating to them.
In the past, I would wake up and immediately start mentally scrolling through the day’s to-do list. Sometimes I would even open my task manager before getting out of bed. It created this loop: thinking about the list made me overwhelmed, and being overwhelmed made me avoid the list, and then the list grew, and the cycle began again.
What Changed Everything
I began to notice something important. The tightness in my chest was not a sign I was failing. It was a sign that I was overthinking. And when I paused and breathed, I mean really breathed, deep into my body, the urgency softened. The pressure lifted.
I saw that the problem wasn’t the tasks. It was how I was thinking about the tasks.
Overwhelm now had a new meaning. I began to see it as a signal from my body. A helpful one. A wise one. It wasn’t telling me to do more. It was telling me to come home to myself.
The Inner Critic and the Spiral of Urgency
For most high achievers, the inner critic is loud. It says you should be doing more. It tells you that not getting everything done is a failure. It makes you believe that something is wrong with you if you feel overwhelmed.
But what if that wasn’t true?
What if overwhelm was a sign of wisdom, not weakness?
What if it was your inner knowing calling you inward? Asking you to pause, to breathe, to stop treating yourself like a machine and come back to the human part of you?
Pause Instead of Panic
Over time, I began to experiment with pausing. Just five breaths. Just a moment of stillness before diving in. I noticed that I reached for my phone far less. I found I was less reactive, more present.
And when I let go of needing to fix the overwhelm, when I stopped trying to outwork the feeling, I became more productive than ever before. I started creating with clarity. I took action from a grounded place.
Overwhelm stopped being something I had to solve. It became something I could listen to. And that changed everything.
How You Can Start
This isn’t a strategy. It’s a shift in relationship. And here’s what it might look like:
Noticing when that tightness or heaviness in your chest arrives
Pausing instead of reacting
Breathing deeply and fully, down into your belly
Feeling what’s there without rushing to fix it
Listening for what emerges once you slow down
You don’t need to do more to feel better. You don’t need to get through the list. You just need to come home to yourself and let that wise system of yours guide the way.
You Are Not Broken
Overwhelm doesn’t mean you are broken. It means you are being called back to clarity. And the beautiful irony is that when we stop trying to fix the overwhelm, we finally see clearly again.
That inner knowing is always there. Beneath the pressure and the panic. Beneath the noise of the inner critic. And when we stop fighting ourselves, we start hearing it.
Take a breath. Pause right here. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to slow down.
You are allowed to trust that everything you need to know will become clear when you stop rushing and start listening.
