62. Feeling Overwhelmed? 7 Ways to Calm Your Mind and Stop Spiraling Fast

Feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or just stuck in a spiral of stress?
In this episode of The Nurses Break Room, host Jenny Lytle, RN, shares 7 practical and proven strategies to help you pause, reset, and reclaim your mental space—even on your busiest days.

Whether you're a nurse juggling long shifts or anyone navigating stress and responsibility, this episode will help you calm the chaos and return to center.

Takeaways & Action Steps:

✅ Use journaling or voice notes to brain-dump your stress
✅ Practice gratitude throughout your day to reframe your mindset
✅ Review and eliminate non-essential tasks from your schedule
✅ Get your body moving—even a quick walk or dance helps
✅ Use deep breathing to shift your nervous system from fight-or-flight to calm
✅ Incorporate short prayer or meditation moments into your routine
✅ Talk it out—connect with a trusted friend to gain clarity

You’ll learn:

• Why overwhelm can feel paralyzing
• What actually helps reset your nervous system
• How to identify and eliminate low-priority tasks
• The power of movement and breath in high-stress moments
• What to say to yourself when spiraling begins

Don’t miss this one—it’s a toolbox for your mental health.

🎧 Listen now and share with a friend who might need a reset too.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or like there’s never enough time, I’ve got something just for you! Head to https://selfcareisntselfish.com to grab your FREE copy of my book, Self-Care Isn’t Selfish: The Compassionate Nurse’s Step-by-Step Guide to Personalized Stress Relief. It’s packed with simple, effective strategies to help you prioritize your needs—without guilt—so you can feel energized, focused, and ready to take on the day. Go to https://selfcareisntselfish.com 

Feeling stressed? Grab my quick and easy Busy Nurses' Guide to Less Stress for practical stress relief that truly fits into your life! https://www.jennylytle.com/guide

Looking for connection with people who get the stress and self-care struggles of nurses and caregivers? Check out https://thenursesbreakroom.com

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylytlern/

More ways to connect here: https://linktr.ee/jennylytle

Chapters

• 0:58 Welcome & Today’s Focus
• 1:32 Brain Dump: Journal or Voice Notes
• 3:18 Gratitude as a Reset
• 3:53 Eliminate and Create Margin
• 4:52 Move Your Body, Shift Your State
• 5:27 Breathe to Calm Your Nervous System
• 6:08 Pray, Meditate, and Be Present
• 6:54 Talk with a Friend & Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:29

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Nurses Break Room with Jenny Lytle RN. Today we're going to focus on what to do when you just start spiraling, when things feel overwhelming, when you feel like you've got too much to do, when it just all feels like more than you can handle. Now, for some of us, we kind of live in a state like that. And I know I have in the past. But for the rest of us, it's just something that happens every now and then. And when it does, there are some things that you can do to get you out of that spiral, to get you focused and calm down a little bit and in a place where you can make better decisions and start being productive again. So here are some of my top tips for stopping the spiral when it starts. So something that we can do is to just simply stop. Stop and journal. And that can be just a brain dump, just a stream of consciousness type journaling, where you're letting everything that's swirling around in your head get out. And this works best if you do it with pen and paper. But if that's something that feels like too much right now, then you can type that. Another one of my favorite ways to do it is sometimes when you're in the shower or when you're driving, that's when everything just really starts going. And so I often use my notes app, my voice recorder app, to be able to really get some of those things out of my head. And I'll just start talking. And that captures everything that I'm wanting to get down, everything that I'm afraid that I might forget, or that's just all spinning around in there. And then I can listen back to that, or I can use that info to download the transcript and listen to that later. And sometimes it's just a matter of getting it out of your head. It's going through and saying all of those things or writing all of those things. Even if you don't do much with that information afterwards, it just helps to download it. So another one is being more specific about what you're writing or thinking about. And that's thinking of things that you're grateful for. I talk a lot about focusing on gratitude because it's so incredibly important when we are, when we're feeling like we're struggling with some things that are going on. When we think about the things that we're grateful for that we have that are going well, then that helps us to continue to look for those things. And it's something that you can do it of a morning, you can do it of a night, you can do it throughout your day. Just train yourself to look for the good in situations. Number three is eliminate. So look at your calendar and see if you've got a lot of things going on and you're feeling like, okay, I am stretched too thin. I don't feel like I have any downtime. Then look at your calendar and see, are there things that you can eliminate? And at first, maybe you think, I can't because everything feels important. Everything feels important when you look at it. That's why you have it scheduled to begin with. But really take a look at that and think, okay, what am I trading for this? Am I trading sleep? Am I trading time with my family? Am I trading just time to be and decompress a little bit and look at things in light of that? And if it's something where maybe you feel like it's too short of notice to cancel things in a day or two, look ahead for the next couple of weeks. Do you have some margin in that time? And if you don't, what can you do to have that in place? We all need downtime. We all need time to rest and recuperate. Number four is move. When we're feeling stuck or when we're feeling like things are going too quickly, walking or doing some sort of physical movement. And it doesn't have to be anything super high intensity. Going for a walk, particularly if it's in nature, is something that can be really beneficial. But even if we're not doing anything that much, just getting up and moving around a little bit, turning on a favorite song and having a quick dance party, that helps to get things flowing a little different and get it unstuck. Number five is breathe. And I talk a lot about breathing because we all breathe and it's really important, but the type of breathing we do is even more important. So when we're feeling that spiraling out of control kind of feeling, if we stop and take a slow deep breath in and let it out and do that for a minute or so. Just taking even a few deep breaths can help to settle our nervous system down and help us feel like we're safe, like we're not in that fight or flight mode. And then we can think more clearly. Number seven, nope, number six is pray or meditate. Now, if you're somebody that prays, then obviously that is something that's a good thing to do when you're feeling stressed out or out of control. And if that's something that doesn't feel comfortable for you, then just doing some meditation. And that doesn't have to be any very structured practice. It doesn't have to mean an hour long of sitting in silence and having no thoughts. It's just sitting quietly with your thoughts and letting them come, letting them go, just taking time to just be and realize what you're thinking and feel what you're thinking without judgment. And last but not least is talk with a friend. We can feel like we're the only ones going through things. And sometimes when we're feeling overwhelmed, it can feel like there's not any good solutions. But sometimes when you talk things over with somebody, then either they have ideas, or just as you're saying the things out loud, you're like, wait, I guess I could do XYZ. So reach out to a friend and catch up, and chances are you'll both walk away feeling better. So I'd love to know which one of these stood out to you, or are you someone who does something different? And if so, I'd love to hear about that too. So feel free to reply to me, or you can reach out and email me at jennyl at jennylytle.com. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, remember self care isn't selfish. It's essential if we want to continue to care for others and live our best lives. Have a great week.