How I Unintentionally Snapped Myself out of Overwhelm

(I didn't have a picture of a coach station through a window from inside of a room, so here's another picture of a window with so many stories from the outside of it.)

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It’s the year 2010.

I fly back to Lithuania to submit the module’s final assignments and to start a marathon of exams.

(Context: I studied for my Psychology degree in Lithuania whilst living and working in the UK, so I’d have to fly back every 3-4 weeks because ‘fully online’ wasn’t yet a thing then)

It’s Wednesday afternoon, and my Psychology Practicum assignment is due at 4pm on Friday.

I have zilch.

Having sacrificed sleep, declined social invitations, neglected the oh-so-loved crime novels and eaten takeaways for weeks, I still had zilch.

Ideas wouldn’t come.

And if any ever came, it was soon rejected because I couldn’t, JUST COULDN’T, develop it.

The sense of failure and impending doom wasn’t helping.

The body more and more rigid with tension and anxiety, with unfamiliar pains (I and my body were young then, hence unfamiliar with seemingly random pains) in the most random of places.

And while I was busy hyperventilating over this one of many assignments, everything else also stopped. I was neither doing the assignment nor any of the things I loved.

I was stuck.

Frozen by the ever-building overwhelm.

So it’s an early Wednesday afternoon, and I am at my friend’s place who gave my skint self a roof and a bed in her living room facing the capital’s international coach station.

She’s in a similar situation as I am; she, too, has a uni assignment due.

We’re both a little worse for wear as the pressure gets heavier every minute.

Greasy hair, rumbling tummies, sighs, tunnel vision in our glassy eyes.

Nothing’s happening.

For either of us.

So we quit. Resign.

The anxiety and tension became too much, and the resignation provided a much needed release and relief. For time being, anyway. As it was always going to come back and hit us harder than we were willing to acknowledge at the time.

For now, let whatever happens happen.

It’s about 3 pm.

We go to a corner shop and get some potatoes (not only because we’re students and broke; primarily because we’re Lithuanians), sour cream and the cheapest bottle of their sparkling wine (think, Lambrini).

Back at hers.

We fry potatoes, sprinkle paprika, whack a dollop of sour cream on, pour the wine and settle on the windowsill (she had this awesome, wide windowsill; perfect for comfortable perching) overlooking the station precinct.

Have you ever paid attention to the ‘station life’?

It’s the stuff of legends, really.

I know no other place where so many worlds and so many stories collide. It’s where the stuff is real and raw; not polished like they are in fancy restaurants with a dress code or an opera house hall. Or even a library.

As we eat our potatoes and frown at the sour taste of our sparkling wine, we watch.

We watch and create stories for some more interesting characters that enter our vision fields.

Create stories about where they come from and where they’re headed.

Bouncing the made-up story snippets about those strangers off each other.

By about 10pm, we’re bursting with stories and ideas. Ideas that swirl so fast and so much volume that we’re struggling to keep up with our own minds.

A stark contrast to just a few hours ago, when our heads were filled with foggy veil, letting no clarity in or out.

We retrieve to our respective corners of the sofa.

By 6am, we’d completed what we couldn’t complete for months.

My assignment was marked with an 8 (the marking system being 1-10, where 10 is the highest, and 5 is the pass mark).

I was chuffed.

About the mark.

But mostly about having found what worked for me when I’m stuck.

It was the first time I EXPERIENCED how to snap myself out of overwhelm. Without an instruction or complex remedies that would involve anything or anyone other than myself.

I relaxed into resignation, lifted my gaze and the thing happened.

There’s no surer way of knowing than through own experience.

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I’ve been practicing it intentionally ever since.

It has never not worked. For me, anyway.

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If you’re stuck, try lifting your gaze.

Test if it works for you, too.

I hear it does. I hear there’s also scientific evidence of underlying brain processes to attest to this, but I am too tired today to roam the internet for full references. But if you’re curious, I would say start by typing ‘Default Mode Network’ (often shortened to ‘DMN’), how it can keep us so absorbed in ourselves and ruminating and how to disrupt it. It’s a good starting point to a fascinating rabbit hole of the wonder that our brains are.

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I simply invite you to open yourself up to lifting your gaze when overwhelm becomes too heavy a tension on your shoulders and too sour an acid rising up your foodpipe.

Conduct your own scientific experiment. While the modern academic gatekeepers might not agree, I would argue that there is nothing unscientific about such an experiment.

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And now I feel bad for inviting you to experiment without giving anything to sustain motivation, so here’s a couple of references to maybe help your brain suspend scepticism and get onboard:

(NOTE. I appreciate that not everyone who is curious will have access to some of the articles in full as they may be behind a paywall, but some are open access while those that don’t, often allow us access to the ‘Abstract’ where the summary of the finding or the ideas can be found.)

1.        On default mode network (DMN) and the experience of AWE when DMN is disrupted.

Van Elk, M., Arciniegas Gomez, M. A., Van der Zwaag, W., Van Schie, H. T., & Sauter, D. (2019). The neural correlates of the awe experience: Reduced default mode network activity during feelings of awe. Human brain mapping, 40(12), 3561-3574.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hbm.24616

2.        On AWE and CREATIVITY

Chirico, A., Glaveanu, V. P., Cipresso, P., Riva, G., & Gaggioli, A. (2018). Awe enhances creative thinking: An experimental study. Creativity Research Journal, 30(2), 123-131.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419.2018.1446491

I’d argue that, on the whole, from the above we can deduct the following hypothesis to test ourselves:

DMN active > DMN disrupting experience > Experience of AWE > Increased creative thinking

I didn’t know any of what I know now; experiencing and making note of what I experienced taught me what was true to me. But yes, it definitely feels validating to learn that there’s a potential explanation of the mechanics behind the whole thing. And while I advocate for learning through experience, I wanted to share these if case you brain needs a little more than a stranger on the internet saying ‘trust me’ to loosen the scepticism enough to open up to experimenting. Because my brain often wants it, too, before it humours me.

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