Chapter 11

Emotional Overload

All that emotional drama that happens in middle school—yeah, it’s normal. But the sooner you learn to manage it, and your reactions, the easier life gets. Trust me. —Paige, age 17

Now that you know how and why you react to different things, it’s time to take a look at what happens when you are completely overwhelmed. Some of you may feel guilty or engage in excessive negative self-talk. Some of you may obsess over the event, replaying your response over and over again. And some of you may become upset enough to engage in self-harm or hurt others.

Whatever is true for you, it is important to learn how you deal with the overload and what you can do to combat the negative impact of extreme emotional reactions.

This next scenario deals with one example of the more harmful effects of being emotionally overwhelmed. As you figure out what you would do in the situation, imagine your response to a similar set of events.

What Would You Do?

You and your friends are having lunch when something suddenly catches your attention. An old acquaintance is freaking out. She’s screaming at a group of friends and throwing her backpack on the ground. She runs off, leaving a crowd of people in shock. As she passes you, you notice that her eyes are filled with tears, and she is hyperventilating. You know you should probably follow her; after all, she was a friend once.

What do you do? Follow her? Get help? Stay out of it since you haven’t spoken in months?

Take a moment and jot down how you would handle this emotionally charged situation.

Becoming Overwhelmed

It happens to all of us sooner or later—you get so overwhelmed by your emotions that you lose it. Maybe you scream and yell, maybe you throw things. Maybe you even hurt someone, even yourself.

At these moments, all of the techniques you’ve worked on and all of your strategies for managing your emotions fail. Your words fail. Your ability to circumvent the tide of emotions is compromised. And you simply explode.

Your brain is a funny thing. When you are angry (or sad or frustrated), the part of your brain that makes rational decisions slows or stops. You literally can’t think about calming down. Nor can you prevent the explosion from happening at this point. It’s too late. Your only choice is to ride out the reaction and try to pull yourself together as quickly as you can.

The key is trying to catch the explosion before it happens. Use the strategies from the previous chapter to recognize your warning signs and diffuse the situation while you still can.

There are lots of tricks people use to calm themselves. Taking deep breaths, picturing something relaxing, taking a break—all of these things can help diffuse your frustration, anger, or pain and allow your brain time to think. And that can prevent the explosion from happening in the first place.

Man, do I have an anger problem when I’m stressed. I just can’t help it … the more stressed I get, the more likely I am to yell for some reason. —Shayna, age 16

Take a moment to read over the next tool, Stress Busters, and then complete the Reducing My Overload worksheet to develop your own plan for combating stress and managing your emotions when you are overwhelmed.

Tool #7

Stress Busters

  Practice healthy living. Get plenty of sleep, eat well, and exercise.

  Make your room a calming place.

  Practice one of these ways to relax:

  Deep breathing: Take several slow, deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.

  Breathing colors: Take several deep breaths. On the inhalation, picture your favorite color. I use blue or pink. On the exhalation, imagine a dirty color. This is the color of the stress in your body. Continue slow steady breathing until the color you inhale matches the color you exhale.

  Learn strong communication skills and conflict resolution skills.

  Practice good boundaries (see Activity #4).

Learning From the Explosion

You’ve learned how to manage your emotions and diffuse the frustration before you get too overwhelmed—at least, most of the time. The rest of the time, despite your best efforts, you still let your emotions get the better of you. It’s important not to further complicate the situation by engaging in defeatist chatter or obsessing over your perceived mistakes over and over. Managing your emotions is not a foolproof endeavor. What’s important is using these moments as opportunities to learn and improve your skills.

The Girl Guide Worksheet #16

Reducing My Overload

Directions: Take a few minutes to answer the questions below and evaluate the effectiveness of the stress busters you’ve been using. Be sure to answer the questions at the end.

1.  How does your body feel? Do you have any tension anywhere?

2.  How does your mind feel? Are you focused? Tired?

3.  How are your emotions? Do you feel calm?

4.  Have you tried any strategies to relax? Did they work?

5.  What do you notice about how you feel right now?

6.  What technique did you use? Was it effective?

Once you are finished, reflect on your answers. Were the stress busters you utilized effective? Why or why not? Take a moment to write down your thoughts on the particular stress busters you utilized and whether or not you plan to use them again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best way to handle the post-explosion time is to reflect on what happened in a constructive way. That means not engaging in negative chatter, but using the reflection as a chance to learn a new way of responding or practicing the skill that you weren’t able to use previously.

Debriefing, or analyzing what lead up to the explosion and how you responded, is similar to all of the self-reflection exercises you’ve been doing throughout this book. In Activity #16, you will look at the event, figure out what happened, and decide how you can change things to result in a different outcome. Debriefing after every explosion will help you reinforce the reaction skills you are trying to develop. This technique will also help you learn how to bounce back from setbacks more confidently and change your perspective to see them for what they really are—opportunities to learn.

The Girl Guide Activity #16

My Thinking Sheet

Directions: Work through the steps that follow to help you develop a way to track your reactions to emotional situations.

1.  Using a plain piece of paper, list the following questions, leaving a space to answer them after you have an emotional explosion:

a.  What do I think happened?

b.  What was I feeling at the time?

c.  Did I feel like I was losing control? When?

d.  Did I try any strategies to calm down? What were they? What was the result?

e.  Things I noticed about my behavior:

f.  Things I noticed about my feelings:

g.  What I want to try next time:

2.  Make a few copies of the questions and use them anytime you need to reflect on your behavior. Or, add them to the Notes section of your phone so you have them easily available whenever an explosion occurs.

3.  Once you have completed each sheet, paste it into your journal or e-mail yourself the answers. After you have several completed sets of questions, look at them to see if you can discover any patterns to your behavior.

Take a moment to create your own debriefing worksheet. Use it anytime you need to reflect on your behavior and change your response.

Note to Self: Try New Things

Never be afraid to try something new.

One of the tricky things about being told you’re good at something is the way it can take over who you are and how you spend your time. Perhaps you’re a talented writer or a star soccer player. Perhaps you’ve been playing the violin since you were a toddler. Your peers admire you. Adults compliment you. It feels good. Comfortable.

I’m not suggesting that you abandon any of that. But I would encourage you to keep your mind open to other things you may want to try—even things at which you think you might not be as good.

Why? First, you may just surprise yourself and discover a new talent. Second, you may learn something that makes you better at the things you already do well. For me, the more important reason to try new things is that it gives you a special kind of courage that broadens your view of the world and the contribution you can make to it. —Stasia Ward Kehoe

In this chapter, you explored what it means to be completely overwhelmed and how you would respond. You also looked at a scenario asking what you would do when faced with someone who is emotionally unstable. Take a moment to reflect on your emotional status and the kinds of things that can push you over the edge. We’ll talk about achieving and maintaining emotional equilibrium in the next chapter.

My Voice

Keeping in mind your authentic perspective, answer the following:

  Think about a time when you made a mistake. What did you do?

  Think about a time when you were in trouble—big trouble. What happened and what did you do?

  What types of situations make you confused? Where do you go for help?

  Think about a time when you were emotionally overloaded. How did you act? How did you recover?

  Think about your most extreme emotions. What do they look like? How do you manage them? Do they scare you?