If you’re reading this, chances are you’re feeling overwhelmed and confused—stuck in a fog where everything feels like too much, but you’re not sure why or what to do next. I want you to know you’re not alone. This feeling is becoming all too common in our fast-paced, choice-heavy world.
But overwhelm isn’t just an inconvenient emotion or a sign of weakness. It’s your body’s way of protecting you — a signal that something isn’t quite right. And confusion? Often, it’s a subtle mask your mind puts on to shield you from feeling helpless when overwhelm takes hold.
I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re drowning — your heart racing, your body frozen, while your mind spins stories trying to make sense of it all. For me, confusion has always been a shield, a way to avoid facing painful feelings and tough decisions. It took time and effort to learn how to move through those feelings instead of running from them.
In this post, I want to help you understand why overwhelm and confusion happen, how they’re connected, and most importantly, how you can start moving through them — instead of hiding or getting stuck.
What Does It Mean to Feel Overwhelmed and Confused?
Let’s start by naming what’s really going on here. Feeling overwhelmed isn’t just about being busy or stressed. It’s that heavy, foggy sensation when your brain feels flooded with too many thoughts, emotions, or choices all at once. Your nervous system is basically screaming, “This is too much!” and you feel stuck under that weight.
Confusion often shows up alongside overwhelm. When things get too intense, your brain shifts into confusion mode because it feels safer to say, “I don’t know,” than to face the raw intensity of feeling out of control. Confusion hides overwhelm attempting to protect you from making “wrong” choices or feeling helpless.
Because when you don’t choose, you can’t mess up. And that feels like safety. But in reality, this “safety” keeps you frozen, unable to move forward.
When you stay confused, you get to avoid:
- Making wrong choices
- Taking responsibility
- Facing disappointment
- Dealing with consequences
Your brain thinks it’s winning by avoiding pain. But the truth is, you get trapped in a loop of indecision that only deepens overwhelm.
Signs You Might Be Overwhelmed
You might notice things like:
- Racing or scattered thoughts
- Feeling stuck, frozen, or unable to move forward
- Physical symptoms like tightness in your chest, headaches, or fatigue
- Avoidance or dissociation — escaping through things like binge eating, drinking, nonstop work, or endless scrolling
- Emotional outbursts or numbness
- Difficulty focusing or making decisions
If you recognize these, it’s your nervous system signaling overwhelm — and that’s okay. Understanding these signs is the first step to moving through them.
The Protective Mask of Overwhelm and Confusion
Think of overwhelm as your body’s alarm system trying to tell you something’s off. But when the alarm gets too loud, and because your brain hasn’t evolved to handle this much information, it switches into confusion to protect you from feeling helpless.
You might find yourself turning to distractions — binge-watching, scrolling, busywork — anything to avoid facing the overwhelm or falling apart emotionally.
The reality is, you often already have enough information to make a choice. The confusion is just a shield protecting you from fear — fear of failure, losing control, or the unknown.
This cycle usually looks like this:
- You face a choice or challenge
- Overwhelm floods in
- Your brain switches to confusion
- You avoid action
- Things pile up
- Overwhelm grows
Breaking this cycle means recognizing confusion as a choice — not a trap — and sitting with discomfort while still moving forward. Ask yourself: *What would I do if I wasn’t confused?* The answer might surprise you.
Why You’re Overwhelmed and Confused (And Why It’s Not Your Fault)
We often start telling ourselves stories about the world to avoid feeling overwhelmed and helpless. For me, a big part of that was taking on responsibility in the face of overwhelm. I felt like it was up to me to fix everyone and everything around me, trying to manage it all just to avoid collapsing — which was overwhelming in itself. Yet, holding onto the belief that I was responsible for everything, even if painful, gave me a sense of control. It was less scary than feeling like I had no control at all.
Today’s world is genuinely more overwhelming than ever. You face thousands of tiny decisions every day — what to eat, wear, watch, buy, read, scroll through. Your great-grandmother probably made about 20 decisions a day; you make tens of thousands. That’s a huge load for any brain.
Your brain evolved over thousands of years to keep you safe from clear, immediate threats — like predators or environmental dangers. It’s wired to detect threat and respond quickly with fight, flight, or freeze. But it wasn’t designed for the constant flood of information, choices, and emotional complexity we face now.
So when your nervous system senses “too much,” even if there’s no real danger, it can flip into protective mode anyway. It sends your brain the signal: “This isn’t safe.” That’s overwhelm.
How Trauma and Early Experiences Affect Your Nervous System
Adding to this, unresolved trauma or early life experiences can leave your nervous system stuck in a heightened state of alert or dysregulation. Without a sense of safety or an empathic witness to help process these experiences, your body holds onto that energy, causing your nervous system to believe the threat is still present or could return at any moment. This ongoing state of hypervigilance can leave you feeling anxious, depressed, or hopeless — all because your system is trying to protect you from danger, even if that danger no longer exists.
It’s important to remember that everything your body does makes sense. It’s not broken or faulty. Your nervous system operates based on the information it has — some recent, some from decades ago — and it’s doing its best to keep you safe with the tools available, protecting you from what feels like too much.
You might think this doesn’t apply to you because you haven’t experienced what you’d consider trauma. But even if your parents worked long hours or struggled emotionally, these unseen wounds can still shape how your nervous system reacts today. So, whether or not you recognize significant trauma, this information is still relevant and touches all of us.
Moreover, unresolved trauma from the past continues to influence your present. But rather than something to fear, it can serve as a guide, pointing you toward areas in your life that need healing and attention. Recognizing this can help you begin to heal and build the inner strength we talked about at the start.
Breaking the Cycle When You’re Overwhelmed and Confused
Now that we understand how overwhelm and confusion work as protective responses, it’s important to recognize why breaking this cycle matters. Holding onto overwhelm without addressing it can create more symptoms and problems over time. Unresolved overwhelm can impact your physical, mental, behavioral, social, and even spiritual well-being, sometimes acutely, sometimes chronically.
The key to breaking free lies in first recognizing overwhelm, then choosing to move through it instead of avoiding it. When you make strong, truthful decisions even while feeling scattered, you build the resilience needed to face life’s challenges with more ease.
Bringing Awareness and Naming What You Feel
The first step is awareness. You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge. So stop and ask yourself:
- What exactly am I feeling?
- Is it racing thoughts, a tight chest, or the urge to hide?
- Where do I feel it in my body?
Say it out loud: “I’m overwhelmed.” Or “I’m confused and scared.” Naming your feelings activates your prefrontal cortex and weakens overwhelm’s grip.
Here’s a quick practice I use when I feel stuck:
- Stop what you’re doing.
- Take three deep breaths.
- Name the feeling without judgment.
- Notice where it lives in your body.
- Feel the emotion fully for 90 seconds — emotions peak and pass if you don’t fight them.
- Move your body — walk, stretch, or shake it out. Overwhelm often gets trapped physically.
- Focus on one tiny action — not three steps, just one.
Most people skip this because it feels too simple. Don’t be most people. The moment you shine a light on overwhelm, it loses some of its power over you.
Moving Through Overwhelm Instead of Avoiding It
Start by recognizing you’re in overwhelm, then take intentional steps to retrain your brain.
Overwhelm isn’t something that just happens to you — you create it through your thoughts and reactions. When you catch yourself saying, “I’m too busy,” “It’s too much,” or “I can’t handle this,” separate the facts from your drama.
Overwhelm happens when we lack clarity and words. When we don’t define something, it’s an elusive, heavy ball of stress. But when we give it words, we have somewhere to go with it. Specifics matter.
So instead of falling into self-pity — “I have way too much to do,” “I’ll never figure this out,” — get specific. Write out exactly what you have to do. What is it you can’t figure out or can’t handle? Why? Be really clear.
Your instinct might be to avoid, distract, or numb yourself — scrolling social media, binge-watching Netflix, or diving into busywork. These tactics might work for an hour, but overwhelm always comes back stronger. So instead, go into it. Face it and feel it.
Each time you do this, you’re rewiring your brain to handle overwhelm better.
The goal isn’t to eliminate overwhelm forever. It’s to build your capacity to stay present when it shows up.
Each time you choose to move through instead of around, you’re literally rewiring your brain. You’re proving to yourself that you can handle hard things.
How Too Many Timelines Keep You Overwhelmed and Confused
As you work on breaking the cycle of overwhelm and confusion, it’s helpful to understand one powerful concept that often keeps us stuck: timelines.
Every choice you face opens up a timeline — a possible future based on that decision. When you have too many options, your brain is juggling dozens of timelines at once. Each one pulls your energy, your focus, your peace.
Imagine you have five choices about a big decision. Your brain is running all five timelines simultaneously, wondering what could happen in each. That’s exhausting. It’s like trying to watch five movies at once.
This is why making a decision — and closing the other timelines — is so important. When you commit to one path, you shut down the energy spent on the others, freeing your nervous system to relax.
But many of us keep all timelines open, going back and forth, second-guessing, and staying stuck in overwhelm. This is why even though you’ve taken action and are moving forward, you might still feel overwhelmed — your system is overloaded with these open timelines.
We need to energetically shut them down. Train your brain to make conscious decisions and close out other options.
Practical Tips for Making Decisions When You’re Overwhelmed and Confused
- Limit your options. Fewer choices mean less overwhelm.
- Set deadlines. No endless back-and-forth.
- Accept that failure is okay. Wrong decisions teach you what’s right.
- Stop seeking everyone’s approval. Too many opinions create confusion.
- Practice saying no to things that don’t feel right.
Remember: making a decision doesn’t mean it’s forever. You can always course-correct. But not deciding keeps you stuck.
Consistently doing the mental work and making decisions is what breaks the cycle of overwhelm. Trust that you don’t need perfect certainty to act. Taking action reveals what’s effective and what isn’t, and that experience builds your confidence and understanding.
Building Self-Trust: Your Best Tool Against Overwhelm
Your ability to make clear decisions directly impacts how overwhelmed you feel, and building self-trust is the foundation that makes decisive action possible. When you trust yourself to handle whatever comes next, decision-making becomes less scary and more manageable.
Self-trust is a muscle. You build it by practicing small decisions and keeping promises to yourself.
With so much information coming at us from all directions, it’s tempting to look outside for answers. But when you learn to trust yourself, you don’t need to search externally for the truth — you already have access to it inside you.
When you make decisions aligned with your inner truth, you avoid creating more overwhelm and misalignment that comes from going against yourself.
For years, I struggled to trust my own feelings and decisions. I was often gaslit — not intentionally by others, but the subtle messages I received taught me my needs didn’t matter. Over time, my body responded by shutting down that internal trust, along with other symptoms caused by this overwhelm and confusion. I wasn’t broken — I was adapting to survive.
Rebuilding self-trust changed everything. When I learned to lean into my own truth — even when it was uncomfortable — I stopped seeking validation outside myself. I started making decisions that felt right for me, and with greater ease, confidence, and less second-guessing.
Start small. Keep your word to yourself. Celebrate your wins. When you mess up, ask, “What did I learn?” instead of beating yourself up.
When you’re overwhelmed and confused about choices, remember: your higher self already knows what feels right. Trust that inner voice.
Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience
Your brain is designed to evolve and create new neural pathways. You can train it to handle overwhelm and confusion better. It just takes practice and gentle reminders of this truth.
Here’s what helps:
- Challenge catastrophic thinking. Ask, “Is this likely? Have I survived difficult things before?”
- Practice the “good enough” mindset. Not every decision needs to be perfect.
- Create simple decision rituals. Take three deep breaths before choosing, or ask, “What would my wisest self do?”
- Build tolerance for discomfort. Sit with uncertainty without rushing to fix it.
- Remember confusion often masks fear. When you feel confused, ask, “What am I really afraid of?”
Overwhelm isn’t caused by what’s happening — it’s caused by your nervous system’s reaction to it and your thoughts about it. You can learn to manage that reaction.
How Reiki Can Help When Feeling Overwhelmed and Confused
If you’re attuned to Reiki, you already have a powerful tool to calm overwhelm. Reiki works with your energy field to activate your body’s natural relaxation response, releasing trapped emotions and tension without needing to think your way out.
For me, Reiki initially brought up confusion and emotional distance — a protective dissociation so I could handle buried overwhelm without breaking. Confusion often signals deeper stuff trying to stay hidden.
Reiki helps by:
- Calming anxiety and racing thoughts
- Improving sleep quality
- Increasing emotional stability
- Clearing your decision-making ability
- Helping you stay present instead of spiraling into future worries
- Creating space between you and overwhelming feelings
Many people notice they can handle stress better after regular Reiki. Your capacity to hold difficult emotions grows stronger over time.
Quick Self-Reiki Tips
- Connect to Reiki and set an intention
- Place hands on your heart for 5-10 minutes
- Send Reiki to your solar plexus to ease anxiety
- Use the harmony symbol on your forehead before decisions
- Practice daily, even just 15 minutes can make a big difference
You can also send Reiki to situations that overwhelm you or use distance symbol to work with future events or past experiences that still trigger you.
Scheduling a Reiki Session
If you’re not attuned, a session with a Reiki practitioner can help. I offer one-on-one distance sessions you can receive from the comfort of your own home! Many feel deep relaxation, emotional release, or sudden clarity.
Book sessions when you're going through particularly stressful periods. Regular monthly sessions help maintain emotional balance and prevent overwhelm from building up.
Interested in learning Reiki? Check out my resource page for classes.
You can also join my FREE 7-day Reiki challenge to receive distance Reiki focused on moving through overwhelm (or support through any other challenge you’re currently facing!). Sign up here!
Final Thoughts: You’re Not Broken—You’re Learning
Feeling overwhelmed and confused doesn’t mean you’re weak or broken. It means your nervous system is trying to keep you safe in a world that demands more than your brain was built to handle.
But here’s the good news: you can build your capacity to hold it all. Like a muscle, your brain can grow stronger. With awareness, small steps, decision practice, inner child work, and tools like Reiki, you can move through overwhelm instead of hiding from it.
You’re not stuck. You’re learning. And you’re absolutely capable of handling whatever life throws your way.
If you want to start right now, just pause, breathe, and say, “I’m overwhelmed — and that’s okay. I’m going to move through this, one step at a time.” Decide that whenever overwhelm arises, you won’t let it consume you. It’s just an information sorting issue, and you are capable of figuring it out.
Choose to stay solution-oriented. It’s a decision you make.
Next Steps: Support Your Healing and Growth
Understanding overwhelm, confusion, and how your nervous system responds is a powerful first step. But healing and moving forward also means learning how to soothe and regulate your nervous system — to build resilience and reclaim your inner strength.
If you’re ready to explore practical tools and somatic practices that can help you do just that, I invite you to check out these posts next:
- How to Feel Your Feelings: A Starting Point for Positive Change — Learn how to connect with and truly feel your emotions in your body, a vital step toward healing and self-awareness.
- Looking For Positive Change? Compassion is Key — Take your healing deeper by turning inward and offering compassion to the parts of yourself that need it most.
- Inner Child Work: Healing with Reiki & Chakras — Explore how Reiki and chakra healing can support deep nervous system repair and emotional balance.
Taking even small steps with these practices can create real shifts over time. Remember, you’re not alone on this journey — and you have the strength within you to move through overwhelm and confusion toward clarity and peace.
