When life feels overwhelming, our minds do something very unhelpful.

They zoom out.

Suddenly you’re not facing one task — you’re facing your entire life at once.

The messy kitchen becomes a symbol of failure.

The unread emails feel like proof you’re falling behind.

The hard conversation turns into a verdict about who you are.

At that scale, even simple tasks feel impossible.

The Trap of Totalizing

Overwhelm rarely comes from the task itself.

It comes from trying to hold everything in our heads at the same time.

The nervous system is built to respond to concrete threats, not abstract life audits. When we try to solve the whole story at once, the brain shifts into shutdown or frantic overdrive.

Shrinking the Moment

There is a quieter way through.

Not by fixing your life…but by washing one dish at a time. Not the entire sink, not the entire kitchen, not the entire house.

One dish.

When you choose a single, doable action, you bring the nervous system back into a range where it can function. You move from paralysis to participation. You move away from generalizing, personalizing, and otherwise over-interpreting your surroundings as proof of why you should feel inadequate, less than perfect, or otherwise down on yourself.

Wherever You Are, Be There

When we slow down enough to meet one small task with full attention, with mindfulness, something subtle happens.

Your body arrives to warmth of the water, the clink of the plate, and the movement of your hands.

This is not just productivity — it’s presence. It pulls you out of rumination and into direct contact with life as it is.

You stop trying to escape the moment and start mindfully inhabiting it.

Control the Controllables

When everything feels out of control, it helps to remember:

You don’t control outcomes.

You don’t control timelines.

You don’t control other people.

But you can control what you chose to do in the next minute.

You can control the direction of your attention.

You can control the values you bring to this moment.

You can embody your beliefs through deliberate action.

Ask yourself:

What matters to me right now, in this small window of time?

Then act from there, not from panic or discouragement, but from intention.

Deliberate Beats Desperate

Overwhelm creates urgency and feelings of overwhelm as our thoughts take off on lightening bolt of emotion.

Deliberate steps and mindfulness of the moment in front of us interrupts this loop.

One email. One paragraph. One breath. One dish at a time.

Each small action becomes evidence that you are not powerless and you are participating in your own life again.

Dr. Thomas Lindquist, Psy.D.

Licensed Psychologist

Contact: t.lindquist.psyd@gmail.com