When Overwhelm Begins to Take Over

In this soul-stirring episode of Coffee and Tea with CarrieVee, Carrie gets honest about something so many of us silently carry: the weight of overwhelm.
She pulls back the curtain on her own recent struggle—where sleepless nights, jaw-clenching tension, and simmering resentment became quiet signals that something deeper was off. If you’ve ever found yourself snapping over small things or feeling paralyzed by your to-do list, this one’s for you.

Carrie unpacks the subtle signs of emotional overload and how it sneaks into our lives disguised as “just being busy.” Through raw storytelling and hard-earned insight, she shares what helped her step out of survival mode and into intention, including:

• Recognizing physical stress cues before they explode
• Creating boundaries without guilt
• Making peace with saying “no”
• Asking for help—without shame
• Writing task-specific lists that actually work

This episode is your permission slip to pause, breathe, and start choosing yourself again. Because you don’t have to carry it all. And you were never meant to.

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Transcript

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Welcome back to coffee and tea with Carrie V. I'm Carrie V, your biggest fan, the person who will believe in you even when you don't yet believe in yourself. Coffee and Tea with Carrie V is all things confidence, clarity, leadership, communication, it's all things life. And we're talking today about overwhelm. There are a lot of ways that we can tell if we're feeling overwhelmed, even without realizing that we're feeling overwhelmed. One of the symptoms of overwhelm is aches and pains when we don't normally have them. It can be a racing heart, almost feeling like you're having a heart attack. Is can sometimes be a panic attack, and that comes from being so overwhelmed that your body literally physically begins to shut down. And there's so much physiology behind that, and so much psychology and the way our mind and our body works together. But I want to focus today on two specific signs of being overwhelmed. One is that you can't focus on the task at hand, and the other is that you begin to feel resentment at all of the responsibilities that you have. And I have found over the last few weeks, as I've been going through my days and getting things done, that this is where I find myself, especially in the not being able to focus. I realized this a couple of weeks ago when I picked up a book to read, and I couldn't focus on eating reading even one page of it, and I couldn't figure out why. I couldn't bring my brain around to read the words on the page. And when I really thought about it, it was because there was so much going through my head of everything I needed to get done, and I immediately started to feel completely overwhelmed. Then I started thinking about things. I said yes to that. I was actually angry at myself for saying yes to because I knew I didn't have time for them when I actually said yes to them in the first place. Those are both major signs of overwhelm. Your whole personality begins to change. You are on edge. You are you snap at people that you wouldn't. You're not even like that normally, but when you are overwhelmed, it's like this whole this whole alien being takes over and starts to determine what you say and how you think. It may be that you wake up in the middle of the night with your thoughts racing. These are all signs of overwhelm. If you can't focus on a task. Check in with yourself. Are you feeling overwhelmed? Is there so much going on in your life right now that focusing on one task feels impossible, and are you feeling angry at responsibilities that you have in your life? So what do we do with that? If we So, you're thinking right now, okay, Carrie, I'm overwhelmed. What do I do now? Well, that was my question. Okay, what do I do now? I am I am tapped into supplements like ashwagandha and and things that really help bring focus around. But if your body is literally sitting in overwhelm, you are stressed, you are tense. You can sometimes feel it in your jaw when you feel like, like you have, like you have a vice in your jaw. Now I often feel that way because of the braces on my teeth, but I have found this. I blamed it on my braces. I've had them just since January, January 6, actually, and I have mentioned many times I feel like there's a vice on my teeth, but this is what I found when I started to tap into this feeling of overwhelm, and started to really start to relax myself and work on relaxing myself. I didn't feel that Vice anymore. I was I was holding my jaw so tight because it was my response to stress and to the overwhelm in my life. And so I really started taking a hard look at this. And so one of the things that I did, in addition to making sure that I was having time for a workout every day, taking the dogs for a walk, having time with my family, having time with my husband, sitting and having coffee with him in the morning, all of these things, I decided to really create a priority around them, having time every single morning to sit and have my devotions, and sometimes maybe sleeping in a little bit so that I'm making sure I get my sleep. This is a huge one. How many of you are sleeping enough? We like to convince ourselves that we can get away with less sleep. We like to convince ourselves of that. I'll just watch one more episode. I will just do one more hour of work. That's mine. I'll just get one more hour done. I just have five more minutes. And an hour and a half later, my husband's looking at me saying, you said five minutes an hour and a half ago, but I'm still forcing myself, pushing myself to get up in the morning when I want to get up even though I haven't had the right amount of sleep or the proper amount of sleep for my body. I know I need between seven and eight hours. That's a given. I can force myself. I can push myself. I can, I can. I can will myself to get out of bed with five hours of sleep, but I don't feel good. I don't feel focused, and then the overwhelm comes in, and I feel less focused, and the spiral begins. And that can go on day after day after day after day. I have a smart ring that tracks my sleep, and I get a decent amount of deep sleep, but a decent amount of deep sleep in a night that I only give myself five hours to sleep is not enough. There is no Netflix series or movie or Hulu series or movie or Amazon Prime or pick your poison. There is nothing that you watch on that big screen TV that is worth you losing your sleep. I used to watch health documentaries until midnight, one o'clock that doesn't make sense. Every one of them was telling me I needed to get enough sleep, and I wasn't turning it off. To get enough sleep. If you really want to watch that, put it into your schedule, find time that it that it works, so that you can get your sleep. When you are getting a proper amount of sleep, you will feel less stress. You will feel less overwhelmed, because you will be far more productive when you get enough sleep. I'm not a doctor. I can't give you I can't give you advice on how to get sleep if you're having trouble sleeping, but I would tell you to dive in to books and podcasts and see a doctor and ask them, How can you help me sleep? Not, not by taking a sleep aid, but how can I really naturally get more sleep? And then it all circles back around to this overwhelm thing. Because if you're totally overwhelmed and angry that you're taking on too many responsibilities, you are not going to sleep great. Even if you are in bed, this is all interconnected. Your Body Keeps the Score. If you are saying yes to everything, you are constantly then saying complete no to yourself, and you will constantly feel stress and overwhelm. I Excuse me, I'm going to sneeze. You will constantly feel that stress and that overwhelm, which leads into you not being able to focus, and then you are the whole cycle starts all over again. Excuse me, it is allergy season. Take control of your life. If you want to feel less overwhelmed, it means you must start taking control. Start saying no, start delegating, start asking people for help. Most people want to help you, and asking for help is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. It's a sign of actually recognizing, hey, I need some help here. Ask for it. It's a strength that your superpower. Stop believing people who tell you that you should be able to do everything yourself. It's not true. It is not true. Stop accepting that as truth, because it's a flat out lie. You don't have to be overwhelmed. I don't have to be overwhelmed. I have started to write lists, not lists like random all over my desk, but targeted lists of exactly what I need to get done, how much time I think it will take, and where it can fit into my schedule. Am I working on my on getting stuff for my taxes every day? Am I working on my business? Am I working on contacting people? What? What are the things that I need to get done? Instead of keeping them in my head so that I'm working on something and going, oh shoot, I needed to do that. Oh man, I need to do this. And I'm running from from project to project to project. Write it all down and decide when you're working on what and when. That will relieve your brain from the overwhelm, and you will get so much more done. You will be so much more productive, and then you will feel less overwhelmed. And please, please, please, turn the TV off and go to bed. Put your phone down and go to bed. Put your devices down and go to sleep. Overwhelm comes from saying yes to too many projects. Overwhelm comes from having too much on your plate. Overwhelm comes when you don't make yourself and your self care a priority. It has taken me years to be able to sleep at night, and for me, it was tapping into bioidentical hormones with a doctor who helped me on this journey. Game changer for me. That is the path I took. It feels amazing to sleep. My biggest challenge now is giving myself enough hours to sleep, because somewhere along the line, I convinced myself that if I got decent, deep sleep, then I could get away with five hours. It's not true. And if I'm tired, I'm not focused, and if I'm not focused, I am completely overwhelmed. This is my story. I want you to dive into yours. That is your journal prompt today. Where am I feeling overwhelmed, and how can I address it? Where am I feeling overwhelmed, and how can I address it? Can you take something off your plate? Can you delegate it? Can you write out a schedule, make a list of everything you need to do so that you are relieving your brain of that. Can you identify the areas where you are sensing overwhelm and then research how to deal with it? Is it going to take. A meeting with a psychologist or a counselor, or is it? Does it mean getting a mentor or a coach to help you through that? Time management is a huge thing for me, so I am tapped into a mentor now to help me with time management, because I know that that causes a lot of overwhelm in my life, because I don't I am the kind of person I am, the kind of personality who thinks, if I have five minutes, I can clean the whole house and still be on time. And I am working my way out of that and really focusing on the things that are truly, truly long term impactful. And those are the things on which I am trying to focus, which is helping my overwhelm, which means I can read again, which means I am turning off my devices, which means I am not working till 10 o'clock at night, which means a total shift, and as that shift comes, the overwhelm reduces, breathing techniques, yoga, exercising, taking a walk, getting outside, talking to a friend, taking time for an afternoon break. These are all ways to help deal with overwhelm. What are the ways that you will deal with overwhelm? I love you. I am your biggest fan, and I would love to hear or have a comment below this if you're watching or if you're listening. How are you dealing with the overwhelming your life? And do you need some help? Reach out. I would love to mentor and coach you through this, especially since I am on my own journey as well. I love you, and I will talk to you soon. You.