Surviving Overwhelm:

Context, Impositions, Self-Care and Genetic Flaws

I am almost always overwhelmed and the ‘Big O’ is now my middle name. I have begun to accept the suchness of my particular modus-operandi.

To give some clarity, let me confess that my personal biggie is that I do not identify as any one type of professional. Writer, journalist, editor, entrepreneur, event manager, content creator and podcast host: I have done many things and been unfaithful to all for different reasons. Yet, none of them has really become an ‘ex’ so I still play along with these avatars. I also have no figs to give for restrictive social media driven typecasting of roles. Here is what helps me in managing overwhelm.

1. Killing the multi-tasking monkey mind for about 4 hours a day (personally, I cannot do more) and only doing one thing at a time. When even that is a challenge I use the Pomodoro Technique to do two lots of the same activity in an hour and take a break every hour for ten minutes to breathe, stretch and re-orient myself. The Pomodoro Technique involves doing a single activity for 25 minutes at a stretch. In the eighties, it was discovered that for 25 minutes at a time, the brain can focus in an optimum manner on the subject at hand.

Catching oneself zoning out is vital to stay present. Equally important is paying attention to one’s breath and keeping an eye on how one is processing one’s emotions in the body. Particularly when one is dealing with a heavy subject or a very boring one, there is a decided difference in the chemicals our bio-chemistry is generating in the body. I have discovered this personally since I have a range of clients whose work ranges from the very nerdy and text book to the very intense drama variant. Years of working in the personal growth and self-help domain taught me the mind-body-emotion connection well.

2. Socio-Cultural Context is another element that varies for each individual. Particularly as a writer, where you stand in the space-time-social drama conundrum is something that adds solid nuance to your writing, differentiating it from another’s word medley.

Living in India, as an educated, upper middle class midlife woman, my context, impositions and  assertions would be significantly different from someone both economically  and socially ‘above’ and ‘below ‘ me.

While I may have had the education and exposure that my contemporary males have had, the expectations from them and me are entirely divergent. This would not be a significant challenge if I did not personally buy into some of this BS internally. In my 50 years, I am more than halfway reconciled about the fact that some of this hypocrisy is hardwired into me no matter how much I may say otherwise. I have therefore evolved into a creature who will have bouts of disappearing from my duties for three or four days at a time when I am travelling on work or pleasure.

I have to switch off my domestic brain and analyser so that the neural pathway to the embittered judgy matriarch within who is constantly finding flaws is cut off, and the idealistic dreamy child is allowed to emerge and smell the roses temporarily. The odd friend has even suggested I have an affair to entertain myself. My firm response on that one is: “The only affair worth having is with myself!”

When I’m back on my turf however, I am back to ensuring the perfect status quo: the elderly parents (who live with us), the  forever errant husband, the young adult children and dogs are subjected to a clear sense of a seamlessly functioning household and routine dictated by me. The lapses and ensuing drama that often emerges is created by everyone else but me. I’m too busy observing, analysing and controlling to lapse or even collapse. The fun thing is that the breaks from routine (necessarily random) give me the space I need to let my hair down.

What enables that for you no matter what the compulsions around you may be? That is an important one to go figure.

3. The To-Do Lists and Self-Care: What one feels about oneself and the person in the mirror matters much more when you are a writer. I have, over the years, developed cinematic clarity on what my needs in the moment are, simply by being my own best friend and conducting conversations in the mirror. I write often on LinkedIn about my personal tug of war between the To-Do Lists and my own sanity. Living and surviving between two generations, with two dogs for comic relief, often leads one down rabbit holes of frustration.

Professional, mother, wife, daughter-in-law, aunt, daughter, niece, friend and go-to person – just how many roles does one flit between in one’s menopausal years? Given the internalized societal expectations that loom large, the hoarse whispers of my exhausted inner child rasp constantly in my ear.

Over the years I’ve learned to see the wisdom of the mani-pedi-massage, dessert buffets and long lunches with a few close friends. The spring cleaning of the closet and the occasional treat of retail therapy adds nuance to “what no longer serves me” and “I’m so worth it.” It is only two years ago that I finally decided to stop wearing presents that others gave me just because they would be offended. I realized only then that it was about time to stop offending myself!

4. Flawed Genetic Imprints: If one is reasonably reflective and sufficiently social, one has seen by this time the flawed patterns of one’s ancestral genetic imprints we tend to perpetuate automatically with minimum effort and maximum impact. I’m rather complicated in that regard since my imprints are all mixed up. While my parents come from different regions within India, I have a British maternal grandmother who was a globally known scholar, a Gandhian theologist who taught comparative religion. She married a Bengali government servant with an excellent understanding of management studies. Both valued education, wrote many books, were extremely frugal and had scant resources. In fact they had a very socialist disdain for accumulation of anything that provided worldly comfort. On my paternal side, both parties belonged to feudal landed estates where they had a plethora of servants to do their bidding; the exploitation of the weak, vulnerable and women was taken very seriously. Women were raised to be seen not heard, and to serve the various purposes of men.

How my poor parents met at University and fell in love is a disaster story for another time, but they produced in me someone who has spent her life reconciling contraries. If that excitement wasn’t enough, I went on to marry my high-school sweetheart who (no surprises here) had a princely background, but no disposition or regard for money.

Mine is just a sample story of all of us who are “old enough” but perhaps still think they can be eventually wise. Something tells me that is not how it works. We move from one state of messiness into another, either created or perpetuated, and negotiate with whatever or whoever shows up.

Writers by nature tend to be messy in their heads and their hearts but often are too nervous about looking at their internal messes. The nature of nurture and evolution is cyclical so there is no point in getting one’s knickers in a twist.

All survival mechanisms and tools must be explored with compassion and dollops of good humour.