E35: Why You Feel Overstimulated All the Time (And It’s Not Just Noise)

Overstimulated in midlife? Learn why and how to calm your overwhelmed mind.

Do you feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or stuck… even when nothing major is wrong?

You’re not lazy.
You’re overstimulated.

In this episode of Unmute Your Midlife, we go beyond noise and break down why so many women in midlife feel mentally overloaded, emotionally drained, and unable to focus.

Because overstimulation isn’t just about loud environments—it’s about everything your brain is trying to process at once.

You’ll learn:
 • What overstimulation actually looks like in midlife
 • Why it feels like fatigue, procrastination, or lack of motivation
 • The hidden sources of overload (decision fatigue, emotional load, digital input)
 • Why your nervous system hits capacity faster in this season
 • Simple ways to calm your mind and create space in real life

If you’ve been thinking, “Why can’t I just get it together?” this episode will give you a whole new perspective.

------------ Chapters ------------------
00:00 Could you be struggling with overstimulation?
01:05 Welcome to Unmute Your Midlife
01:29 Overstimulated doesn't look like what you think.
02:04 What you're calling laziness is actually overload.
02:36 Why midlife makes this worse.
03:04 The hidden sources of overstimulation.
05:07 Why you feel tired and wired at the same time.
05:39 It isn't random.

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Transcript

Could you be struggling with overstimulation?

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So a couple weeks ago we talked about acoustic overload and why noise makes you snap. But today we're gonna zoom out because it's not just noise. But here's what I mean. Have you ever felt like everything is just too much? Not one big thing, but just everything. The text, the decisions, the noise, the never-ending to-do lists. Instead of jumping into action, you freeze, you scroll, you sit, you stare, and then you have this thought. Why am I being so lazy? Well, let me stop you right there. You are not being lazy. You are probably overstimulated. And in midlife, your nervous system, it doesn't just push through anymore. It starts waving a white flag. What looks like procrastination and what feels like fatigue. A lot of times it's really your brain saying, I can't process one more thing. So stick around because today I'm gonna dive in on what overstimulation actually is, why it feels like exhaustion or lack of motivation, and how you can start creating some real calm, even if your life continues to be chaotic. Welcome to Unmute Your Midlife. I'm Joyce, a nurse-turned midlife strategist. This is where midlife gets explained and standards get raised. Think of every episode like your strategic briefing. You'll leave knowing exactly what to observe, what to adjust, and what to implement next. Midlife is not a decline. It's a leadership test. So let's begin. So overstimulated, it doesn't look like what you think. This doesn't just happen to people with ADHD. Most people, they hear the word overstimulated and they think loud environments, chaos all around you, too much noise. But in midlife, especially for women, it goes deeper than that. Overstimulation can look like too many decisions, too many open tabs in your brain, constant notifications, especially on this thing, emotional overload, never having a true off moment. It's not just what's happening around you, it's how much your brain is trying to process all at once. So what you're oftentimes calling laziness is actually overload. For instance, those moments when you sit down and you just can't get started. You're scrolling, doom, scrolling on your phone or your computer instead of doing the thing that you should be doing. You feel stuck or frozen or fogged out. That is what I mean. That's not laziness, that's your nervous system hitting full capacity. Your brain is saying, we got too much input, we need to shut something down. And so it does. And the easiest thing to shut down is action. So let this little tidbit land in your brain somewhere where you can make sense of this all. In midlife, your system is already juggling the hormone shifts, the sleep disruption, the higher stress load, mental fatigue, emotional responsibilities. So your threshold for input is lower, and your tolerance for chaos is lower. Your ability to just push through things, it's lower. That's not weakness, that's just biology. Now we already talked about noise overload, but let's go a little bit beyond noise because there's some other sneaky ones that are gonna try to uh overstimulate you. The first one is decision fatigue. What should I make for dinner? What should I wear? What should I do first? Too many choices equals brain overload. Then there's the emotional load, thinking about your kids, your partner, your work, these new responsibilities, your parents and their needs, the economy and what it's doing to your bank account all the time. How about this third one? Digital overload. We are constantly getting notifications. We are constantly getting on our phone to check something really quick, and then we start scrolling or we get distracted, we go down these rabbit holes, and the next thing we know, oh my gosh, an hour has passed. We have content consumption all the time. So our brain never gets quiet. Some friends and I were talking about how it seems like when we have things that we're praying about, we always seem to get the answer in the shower. Because the shower is that one place where there's no digital distractions. No one is trying to have a conversation with you. You're vulnerable because you're naked and the water is kind of just white noise in the background. But other than that, it's it's a quiet environment. So that's when you're finally still. That's when you're finally able to crowd out the world and hear God talking to you or hear your brain coming up with ideas. Like the shower is sometimes the place where I get some of the most creative breakthroughs, you know, just washing my hair, rinsing out the conditioner. I'm like, ah, that's what I need to do about that situation. Because what happened? I took away some overload there. I took away all the sources of stimulation. And now my nervous system can relax, my brain can fire away, and voila, answers to problems, creative ideas that can be solutions. There's a fourth thing I want to mention also mental to-do lists. It's not just what you're actually doing, it's all the things that you're thinking of or trying to remember because you know there's something floating in your head that you were supposed to do. It's all the things you haven't done yet. It's that running list that is exhausting. And a lot of women, they get a little confused about this because they're like, well, I'm feeling really tired, but I'm also feeling really wired. And it's not like I've done anything. I'm so exhausted and I'm not motivated to get any of this stuff done. I just feel so drained at the end of the day. But when I look at my list, I haven't accomplished anything. So you're kind of restless and anxious and you can't relax because you know that big list is out there. That's overstimulation. Your nervous system is overwhelmed, yes, but it's also activated. So you're stuck in between, I can't go, but I can't stop. The good news is I have some ideas for comfort in the chaos because I believe it is possible. You don't have to do a silent retreat in the mountains. You just need some moments of relief inside your life. So the first thing I would suggest is to turn something off. Turn off one of your notifications. You control the settings on your little devices. You can even go into your settings and can control which apps are allowed to notify you. Sometimes you can even control what time of day they can notify you. You can put yourself in do not disturb. You can set up different modes. I think on Apple it's called focus modes. You can set up different modes, you can give them times, and that's where only certain people can text you or call you, or no one can text you or call you. You have all these different options you can do in your settings. So you can reduce your input even just a little bit because less input equals more space. The second thing, do one thing at a time. This is gonna be hard for some of you to hear, but stop multitasking. I know. When we were younger, we were great at it. But now, in this phase of life, it is not our superpower anymore. So if you could just focus on one thing at a time, your brain will thank you. Third thing, create some micropauses during your day. You don't need a whole hour. Most of us can't even afford to take a whole hour. You could take two to five minutes and do some deep breathing exercises. You could do a quick walk or jog around the hallways at your office. If it's a nice day, go outside, walk to your car in the back, pretend you forgot something in the car and you gotta go get it. Any excuse to step outside and get a little sunshine. If you've been sitting working on a task, get up and walk around. If you've been on your feet for a long time, sit down and take a load off. And if you need to, set a timer on your watch or your phone so that you don't stay in your break mode too long. But a lot of times those little micro pauses through your day can help reset you. Fourth thing, name what's happening like accurately instead of saying, Oh, I'm so lazy, say, it feels like I might be overstimulated right now. You make this mental shift. You get out of blaming yourself or being derogatory towards yourself for having this event happen. And you just name it neutrally what it is. It's overstimulation. It's not good or bad, it's just something that needs to be dealt with. And because you listen to my podcast, you're getting all kinds of helpful instructions on how to deal with it. If you've been feeling scattered, tired, unmotivated, or just like you can't keep up, I want to encourage you that you're not falling behind. You're probably just overloaded. And the more you label that as laziness or incompetence or anything else that's negative or derogatory towards yourself, the more you're gonna push yourself in ways that are gonna make it worse. So instead, I want you to start noticing where are you overwhelmed? Where are you overcommitted? Where is your brain trying to hold on to too much? Because overstimulation isn't random. It follows patterns. Once you see the patterns, you can start changing them. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be intentional. Calm isn't something you wait for, it's something you create, even in the midst of chaos. Now, if this episode raised your standard, good. Go implement it. If you're ready for structured implementation, unmute your midlife is where we do this kind of work. You can schedule a free unmute session to identify the best plan for you. And while you're here, click on whichever link to video pops up for more awesomeness. But I'll be back with more new stuff next week. Thanks for listening.