Finding Your Footing: A Practical Way to Understand Overwhelm When You’re Not Coping Like You Used To
There is an old woodland skill that belongs particularly well to November: making a thumb stick. Once the sap has retreated and the leaves have fallen, you look for a long, sturdy branch with a natural fork at the top, cut it a little above chest height, remove the side shoots and shape it into something that can accompany you across uneven ground. It isn't particularly sophisticated technology. It doesn't flatten the path, remove the mud or prevent the tree roots from appearing exactly where you don't want them. It simply gives you another point of contact with the ground.
Anyone who spends time outside through a British winter knows how useful that can be. A woodland path that barely required thought in July can be quite different by November. Fallen leaves conceal hollows and roots, rain turns slopes to mud, streams rise and the familiar route asks more of your body than it did a few months ago. You haven't suddenly forgotten how to walk. The conditions have changed.
I think about this often when somebody sits opposite me in therapy and tells me they don't understand why they aren't coping anymore.
Usually, there is evidence that they have coped extraordinarily well for a very long time. They have managed demanding jobs, families, relationships, difficult childhoods, caring responsibilities, grief, neurodivergence, financial worries, other people's crises and all the ordinary admin of being alive. Perhaps they were once the person everyone else relied upon. Then something shifts. Concentration disappears. Decisions become strangely difficult. Noise becomes unbearable. They forget things, procrastinate over tasks they would once have completed without thinking, become tearful or irritable, stop sleeping properly or reach the end of the working day with absolutely nothing left.
The question that follows is usually some version of What's wrong with me? I often think we need a different question.
What has changed in the terrain?
Sometimes the answer is obvious. A relationship has ended. Somebody has died. Work has become intolerable. There has been a diagnosis, illness, menopause, redundancy, estrangement or another recognisable disruption. Sometimes nothing dramatic has happened at all. There has simply been accumulation. One more responsibility added to a life that was already full. One more person needing something. Another month of poor sleep. Another difficult relationship to manage. Another deadline. Another period of putting yourself somewhere near the bottom of the list because everybody else's needs appear more urgent. Eventually the load and the terrain no longer match the resources available to navigate them. This is where trying harder can become particularly seductive.
For many capable people, trying harder has been an extremely successful strategy. If you're falling behind, you work later. If life feels chaotic, you organise it more tightly. If somebody is unhappy with you, you work harder to repair the relationship. If you feel anxious about something, you think about it until you're confident you've considered every possible outcome. These strategies aren't foolish. Quite often they have helped us enormously. The difficulty comes when we continue using them after they have stopped helping. The person approaching burnout responds to exhaustion by becoming more efficient. The anxious person responds to uncertainty by doing more thinking. The person who fears disappointing others responds to overwhelm by saying yes again. Someone who learned early that being useful kept relationships safe may respond to having too much to do by taking responsibility for one more thing. The strategy designed to keep us safe begins contributing to the problem.
This is one reason I don't particularly like giving people generic lists of coping skills. You probably already know that sleep, movement, breathing, journalling and spending time outside can be helpful. Knowing isn't always the problem. Sometimes we need to understand what happens to us when the ground becomes difficult. So this month's Tool for the Trail is a way of mapping your own terrain.
You don't need to complete it perfectly. You don't even need to do all of it at once. Take a notebook, use the notes app on your phone, talk it through with your therapist, or simply carry the questions with you on a walk. The purpose isn't to diagnose yourself or produce another self-improvement plan. It's to replace What's wrong with me? with curiosity about what you're actually navigating.
Start with the terrain
Begin with what has changed.
Think about the last six to twelve months rather than only the crisis immediately in front of you. What is different now from the period when you remember coping better?
Look beyond the obvious. Work may be the same job but require more from you. Your children may need you differently. A relationship may have become more emotionally demanding. Your body may have changed. Sleep may have deteriorated. You may have received an ADHD or autism diagnosis that has altered how you understand yourself, even if nothing externally appears different.
Ask yourself:
What am I navigating now that I wasn't navigating before?
Don't decide yet whether any of it should be difficult. Just notice what's there.
Then look at the load
Terrain is only part of the story. We also need to consider what we're carrying across it.
Some loads are visible: workload, finances, caring responsibilities, appointments, childcare, health problems and endless practical tasks. Others are much harder to see. Being the person who keeps the peace in a family is a load. Constantly anticipating somebody else's mood is a load. Masking through a working day is a load. Estrangement is a load even when the decision to step away was right. Grief is a load. Shame is a load. Trying to appear fine is a load. So is carrying responsibility that was never really yours.
Ask:
What am I carrying at the moment?
Then, perhaps more interestingly:
How much of it actually belongs to me?
That second question can take a little longer.
Notice what you do when the ground becomes difficult
This is where we begin to move towards patterns. When pressure increases, most of us have familiar ways of responding. We may push harder, become controlling, withdraw, procrastinate, please people, rescue, numb ourselves, overthink, become hyper-independent or seek reassurance.
In Schema Therapy we might understand some of these as coping responses: ways we learned to manage difficult emotions and unmet needs. You don't need to know the terminology to recognise your own version. Imagine you've had an exhausting week and somebody asks you for something you genuinely don't have capacity for. What happens next?
Do you say yes automatically and resent it later?
Do you panic that saying no will upset them?
Do you become angry because it feels as though everybody always wants something?
Do you ignore the message?
Do you agree, then work late to make everything fit?
Do you decide you should be able to cope and become frustrated with yourself?
There is useful information here.
Rather than asking whether your response is good or bad, ask:
When I'm overwhelmed, what do I reliably do?
Then:
What is that response trying to protect me from?
Perhaps saying yes protects you from guilt. Perfectionism protects you from criticism. Overthinking protects you from uncertainty. Withdrawal protects you from further demands. Doing everything yourself protects you from disappointment. Once we understand the purpose of a pattern, we have considerably more choice about whether we continue using it.
Check the supports you already have
When people are overwhelmed, they often become very aware of everything they aren't doing.
They should exercise more. Meditate. Meal prep. Journal. Drink more water. Spend less time on their phone. Develop a morning routine. Before adding anything else, look at what already helps. Think about the days when things feel slightly easier. Not wonderful. Just easier. What is different?
Perhaps you've slept properly. Perhaps you've been outside. Perhaps you haven't had to mask all day. Perhaps you've spoken to somebody who makes you feel more like yourself. Perhaps you've ridden, walked the dog, cooked, made something, listened to music or spent half an hour alone without anyone needing you.
Your nervous system often gives you information before your mind catches up. Pay attention to the people after whom you feel more settled and the people after whom you feel depleted. Notice environments where your body softens and those where you're constantly braced. Notice whether being alone restores you or whether, after a certain point, it becomes isolation.
Ask:
What genuinely steadies me?
Not what should.
What actually does.
Look at what you've been leaning on
Not everything that helps us cope is necessarily helping us live.
Alcohol may take the edge off anxiety. Working late may temporarily quiet the fear of falling behind. Avoiding a conversation may provide immediate relief. Scrolling may give an exhausted brain somewhere to disappear for an hour. Reassurance may settle uncertainty briefly.
There is no need for moral judgement here.
Coping strategies usually exist for a reason.
The more useful question is whether they still work.
Ask yourself:
What am I using to get through at the moment?
And then:
What does it give me in the short term, and what does it cost me afterwards?
That is often a much more revealing question than simply deciding something is a bad habit.
Finally, find the next foothold
When we're overwhelmed, we tend to look too far ahead.
How am I going to fix work?
What am I going to do about this relationship?
How will I ever get on top of everything?
When will I feel like myself again?
The scale of the problem becomes another source of overwhelm. A foothold is smaller. It isn't the solution to the whole landscape. It's the next place you can put your weight. Perhaps it is cancelling one thing.
Asking somebody for help.
Eating something.
Making the appointment you've been avoiding.
Going to bed.
Replying to one email rather than clearing the inbox.
Saying, I can't do that this week.
Telling your therapist what you've actually been doing rather than what you think you ought to tell them.
A useful foothold should reduce the amount of energy required for the next step, not become another project. So the final question is simply:
What would make the next few days slightly easier to navigate?
Not better forever.
Not fixed.
Just slightly easier.
That distinction matters.
Your terrain map
If you want to bring all of this together, draw six rough spaces on a page and write:
THE TERRAIN: What has changed around me?
THE LOAD: What am I carrying?
MY PATTERN: What do I tend to do when I'm overwhelmed?
THE PURPOSE: What is that response trying to protect me from?
MY SUPPORTS: What genuinely helps me feel steadier?
THE NEXT FOOTHOLD: What would make the next few days slightly easier?
You may find one section much easier than another. That's useful information too. This isn't a test, and there isn't a correct map. Your answers will change because your life will change. That's rather the point.
A thumb stick is useful because it gives us another point of contact with the ground, but it never tells us where to go. We still choose the route. We still decide whether the path ahead is manageable, whether we need to slow down, whether another way might be better or whether today simply isn't the day to attempt that particular hill.
I think good therapeutic tools should work in much the same way. They shouldn't tell you how to live. They should help you see where you are. Because sometimes the most important shift isn't learning to cope better with increasingly impossible conditions. It's recognising that your struggle makes sense in the landscape you're currently trying to cross. And from there, you can decide what you need for the next part of the trail.
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