When Everything Feels Too Much: One Small Change Still Matters

There's a particular moment many of us know well — when everything feels like too much. Not dramatically, but quietly, heavily, relentlessly. You're still functioning, still showing up, but inside, something is fraying. And the most painful part? The story you tell yourself about it: I should be able to handle this.

In this episode, we explore why overwhelm isn't a personal failure — it's a predictable outcome when multiple vulnerabilities align. Using insights from the Swiss Cheese Model and Paul Gilbert's three emotional systems, we unpack why your nervous system can't "just cope" when recovery is structurally unavailable.

This isn't about becoming stronger. It's about understanding why one small change can still matter — even when everything feels impossible.

We'll explore:

• Why overwhelm is rarely about one thing — it's an accumulation of pressures that align
• How the Swiss Cheese Model explains why burnout happens when recovery becomes impossible
• The three emotional systems (Threat, Drive, and Soothing) and why modern life keeps two constantly activated
• Why your nervous system needs recovery cycles, not just more willpower
• How one small change can close one vulnerability — and why that matters
• Why resistance to small changes is often a sign of how depleted you are

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Chapters

• 0:00 Overwhelm Named And Normalized
• 1:20 The Scenic Route Philosophy
• 2:06 Too Much Is Rarely One Thing
• 3:29 The Swiss Cheese Model Of Distress
• 6:24 When Vulnerabilities Align
• 6:49 Three Emotion Systems Explained
• 9:03 Why Soothing Gets Squeezed Out
• 10:35 Small Changes Close Big Holes
• 13:09 Resilience As Recovery, Not Endurance

Transcript

Jennifer Walter: 0:00

There's this particular moment many of us know all too well. It's that moment when everything feels too much. Not in a dramatic or explosive kind of way, but in a quiet, heavy, relentless kind of way. Heavy and quiet similar to snow. And you're still functioning, of course. You're still showing up. But inside, something is fraying. And the most painful part, the story you tell ourselves about it, right? I should be able to handle this. I am too smart for this. This should not happen to me because XYZ. So let me start here. If everything feels too much, it doesn't mean you're weak. It simply means something is out of balance. And today I want to talk about why it happens too bit, why it's absolutely 100% not your fault, even if I don't know you. And why even then one small change can still or still matters. And this was a really, really crucial part in my journey because I always felt like this just like one teen tiny bit, that won't do much. But we're here to kind of like show this is bullshit. Buckle up. We're gonna go take the scenic route together. There's a different way to think about mental health. And it starts with slowing down. Sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. And that's exactly where we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route Podcast. Think of me as your sociologist's sister in arms and rebel with many causes. Together, we're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation. And yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together. So, first we really need to understand to have a common understanding that too much is rarely just one thing, right? Yes, of course, it can be just because of this one thing, but in my experience, my personal experience when I work with clients, it's rarely just the one thing. When we reach this point, we tend to often look for a single cause, right? Because if we can identify a single cause, we can fix one single cause. More sleep, less work, better boundaries, a holiday, a mindset shift. A shit said shift, excuse my French, like a silly business course, whatever it is, right? And of course, while all of those can't help, they don't often explain the weight of the experience. Because what most people are dealing with is not one problem, right? It's the accumulation of distress. We have pressure at work, emotional labor at home, mental load, constant availability. Maybe we face financial uncertainty, lack of rest, really like restoring rest. And of course, above above all, cultural narratives like just shut up and cope quietly. None of all, none of these things are necessarily catastrophic. I mean, if you're in good health, you can deal with a few months, weeks, months without sleeping very well. But together, they create a situation where recovery becomes really hard or almost impossible. And this is where I think a model from psychology is very helpful. And it's a bit of a it's not I have never seen it used in this way. Bear with me. I think it's just it just really made a little sense to me. Um so we have um the it's called the Swiss cheese model, and I'm of course partial this base A because I'm Swiss and B, I really like my cheese. So the Swiss cheese model was developed by James Reason in 1999, and it kind of was at the core of understanding why failures or errors happen in complex systems. Uh, I think he originally created an aviation, and later the model was applied to healthcare. Imagine like surgeries, right? Engineering, anywhere human errors kind of intersect with systemic vulnerability. And the key inside is quite simple. Serious breakdowns don't happen because of one big mistake. They happen when multiple small vulnerabilities light up at the same time. So, I mean, that's for also why, like, when you go into surgery, they ask you your name like a thousand times, and you're like, it's still my name. Thank you very much. But just, I don't know, if one person gets it wrong, the next person will catch the mistake. So kind of like imagine your all your defenses, right, that you bring with you as layers of Swiss cheese stacked behind each other, one slice after the other. And each slice is a protective layer, let's say sleep, social support, relationships, financial security, workload, recovery time, eating habits, whatever it is. Of course, each layer has holes, right? None of us has the perfect social support system, the perfect sleep, whatever. Like each layer has holes or like moments of vulnerability. Maybe your sleep is disrupted one week, maybe a relationship is strained, maybe your work colleagues are shit-faced, whatever, right? Normally those holes don't matter. Most of the holes don't even pop up on your radar, or you're like, that's annoying, but then you move on with your day. Because the other layers compensate for that hole. The hole in one slice is blocked by the solid cheese in the next. There you go. Fixed, right? But when the holes, the vulnerabilities, align, when sleep deprivation coincides with financial stress, relationship strains, overlap of work pressure, or sleep with perimenopause, that's when something gets true. And that's when the system fails. Now, if we apply this to our emotional life, to distress, overwhelm, burnout, I think we can demystify a lot of those terms. Because work stress alone might be manable manageable. So is lack of sleep, or you really not getting along with your mother. But when we have several of these present at once, there's hardly any space for recovery. So it's really quite a predictable outcome that you feel in distress. So if everything feels too much, may simply be that too many holes have aligned. With that, we come to this point of where, like, oh, I feel I can't cope. I feel we need to kind of like do a little detour here on um emotional regulation. What I think is very useful here is to talk about Paul Gilbert, who's a psychologist who developed um compassion-focused therapy. And he describes three interconnected systems that govern how we respond to the world. So we have the fret system. Like imagine kind of like a Venn diagram thingy, right? We have the fret system designed to detect and respond to danger, a very lizard brain thing, right? It's fast, reactive, vigilant. It activates fear, anger, anxiety, disgust. It has the core job to protect us, the fight, flight, freeze. We have the drive system, which is focused on achievement, pursuit, reward, goals. It activates excitement, motivation, wanting, right? Its job is to secure resources, reach goals, get job done, feel accomplished. And we have the soothing system designed to create safety and calm, kindness, connection. It activates contentment, affection, peaceful, restoring rest. Its core job is recovery, to help us feel safe enough to settle. And these three systems are meant to work in balance. Tread and drive activate us, soothing restores us. But here's the problem, right? Like, this is no surprise. We currently most of us are probably leaning too heavy on the thread and drive. We're constantly being switched on, deadlands, expectations, evaluations, responsibilities, uncertainties, and soothing is a bit of well, comes a bit short. A system that allows us to feel safe enough to rest. I don't know. I mean, there's certainly two more times when I was like, nah, that's kind of like optional, or it feels indulgence. Whatever, right? Takes one to know one. You're welcome. It's like you cannot will your way out of that. Your your body, your nervous system evolved to handle stress in cycles. Activation followed by recovery. When recovery is structurally unavailable, when soothing is blocked or dismissed. System, you you stay in you stay stuck and try to drive. So when your mind tells you, oh you should be coping better, bitch, what's often happening is you're being asked to regulate in a system that removes the conditions regulation depends on. And again, not really personal failure, right? Like you're doing your your best that you can at this Polaroid snapshot of time. So and that brings me to like the core, the core point that I struggle with for a long time is to accept that a small change still matters. So I just people I often have like clients push back or I have my own brain pushing back, like, yeah, why does it matter that I do this thing now? Stupid. Because when everything feels too much, the idea of starting small, I don't know, it feels kind of insulting to me. Because my my ego goes in like one small change won't fix this, bitch. What are you thinking? You're right. Okay, it won't fix the system, but like it won't resolve structural pressure. Like sleeping better will not like lessen your over your workload. But but it's not really what it's for, right? Like in Swiss cheese terms, I never thought I could say that in Swiss cheese terms. I love it. I have to find more ways of how to bring this into conversations. One smaller change doesn't rebuild the system, it closes a hole, it shuts down a vulnerability. It adds one layer of protection where previously there was none. So one moment of restoring rest, one boundary that slightly reduces exposure, one conversation where you don't perform competence, one relationship that offers co-regulation instead of demand. It all kind of like closes a vulnerability gap. Or in Gilbert's terms, it's one small activation on the suiting system, one protected moment where your nervous system, your body can shift out of fret and drive and into something resembling or actually being safety. So when everything feels too much, even one protected point can actually indeed prevent total collapse. And that that that was a big one for me. And yes, not permanently, maybe not in the grandest ways, most efficient, perfect ways possible, but it's just good fucking enough. And there's something else I think it really is important to call out here. Often the moment when a small change would help is exactly when your mind is insisting this is pointless and bullshit. And that voice, I don't know. It's not your it's not your wisdom. It's probably your exhaustion slash ego. It's some core belief of we need we need we we believe in endurance and we run on endurance and this is how it's supposed to be, because I don't know, you might not even deserve a better way. So if you notice yourself thinking this won't make a difference anyway, that's not a reason to stop. It just signals how depleted you really are and how you're running on empty. So even if if if you think this is all crap, just think of it if you plug that one hole, and yes, this could also be a porn movie title, but if you plug that one hole, you have a you will fix one layer. So if there's one thing I want you to take from this, when everything feels it feels too much, the task I think is really not to become stronger, more endurant. We need to reduce exposure, increase protection, and restore our own access to safety. And yes, even in increasingly silly, seeming imperfect ways. And resilience is not about enduring more, because we can endure a lot of shit, you and I, but that's not the point. We're looking into having enough support to recover. And if your life currently doesn't allow for that, your distress is not evidence of failure, it's information. And it's really go back to looking at, okay, what is asking too much? What is blocking? Why where are the holes in my Swiss cheese layers of protection? And to really flip it around and see it as that, that one small change won't solve every goddamn fucking problem in the world. But a lot of the times it's the difference between holding on and falling true. So this is the scenegraph for this week. No shortcut, but a path that made sense to me and hopefully also make sense to you. If this has resonated with you, like let me know uh in the comments here. Drop me an email, say come say hi on socials, like let's talk Swiss cheeses, like what any kind. And of course, if as always, I extend the offer if you want to look into this more closely, what this means for you, what what how your personal Swiss cheese looks like. I have a few personal coaching spots open for 2026. 2026. What is going on with numbers today for next year, for bloody next year? So reach out if this costs to you. I'm looking forward to working with you. Take care. Love us. And just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the Scenic Groot Podcast. Thank you for spending time with us. Curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode? Visit us at scenegrootpodcast.com for everything you need. And if you're ready to embrace your scenic root, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my scenic root affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic root affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead? I certainly am. Remember, the scenic route is not just about a destination, but the experiences, learnings, and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here, and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.