How to Overcome Overwhelm and Exhaustion
If you knew me in the real-life spaces of home life and daily rhythms, you’d know that I’m more awake at 5am than after 9pm. When I try to register my daughter for camp at the end of the day, I can’t figure out which year she’ll graduate from high school. You’d also know sleeping in is complicated because I’m usually awake before my alarm.
You can probably gather that I need to overcome overwhelm and exhaustion just like you. Thought you should know I’m with you—in the extra long exhales as you think about what you’ve still got to get done, the my-brain-won’t-cooperate days, the pressure you feel to push through anyways.
For those of us teetering close to burnout, here’s what I’m learning to put first.
3 Tools To Combat the Overwhelm
#1 – Compassion (for ourselves)
Let’s start with the practical. We need healthy essentials like fresh air, exercise, rest, but beneath them is compassion. Conversely, in the absence of self-compassion we push mercilessly and chide our inability to excel under the conditions. We fail to set appropriate boundaries around our work.
In order to define kind self-expectations of pace, product, and performance, we must extend ourselves the sort of grace we give others. See how Jesus esteems us apart from anything we can earn or do.
It’s an ongoing battle, isn’t it? Learning to let go of what we can do and simply receive the abundant, undeserved love of Jesus? Maybe I play songs like Upper Room’s “There is No Striving” on repeat because I’m a slow learner and need to sit long at Jesus feet and be still. Early morning time on my knees repostures my heart and dispels my striving, proving, perfecting.
I’m also learning I don’t have time to NOT walk. Being in nature awakens something in my soul in much the same way as raw worship music does. Combine both with good ole exercise, and it clears out the cloudy places in my mind. I catch Jesus’s whispers more easily, and often I write down what I hear as I walk, but it feels effortless and restorative.
Question to take to Jesus: Where are you lacking in self-compassion?
Invite God to meet you here.
#2 – Connection (with others)
When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I tend to sacrifice rest first. It quickly spills into my interactions with the people around me, though, because I shift into task mode. I can get a lot done here, but the consequence is that I stop listening well. Stop making time and space to be present and invite and connect. I see I’m getting out of balance when I start making tasks more important than people.
“Hurry wounds the bonds of connection,” as Jennifer Dukes Lee cautions in Growing Slow. It’s true. I become irritable instead of available. Rush my answers. Return to work in every little crack of time.
Alli Worthington offers a practical tip for those overwhelmed and also lonely: “Bundling friend time with my everyday activities helps me stay in touch with my friends” (Remaining You While Raising Them). It coincides with countless nuggets I’ve learned over the years from Caesar Kalinowski, host of the Everyday Disciple podcast. Missional living isn’t about stretching yourself thin but interweaving relationships into the ordinary of our lives. Not compartmentalizing but leaning into life together. It’s here where we share burdens and joys, hope and prayers and kids and carpools and eggs and tools.
See where your life overlaps with those nearest you. Where can you ease a burden? Accept the help? Share where God’s meeting you in the long days and trying seasons?
#3 – Communion (with Jesus)
I left this one for last, not because it’s least important, but because I want you to remember it most. Without the Source of all that’s bountiful and beautiful, we’re a parched-dry well. Jesus beckons to all of us feeling behind and weary,
Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Matthew 11:28-30, MSG
Keep company with Me, Jesus says. Commune with Me. I see you bending beneath a burden I already paid for. Will you trust Me? With your lists and worries and fear you’ll let someone down. With the pressure to make it perfect or finish faster.
Truth is that getting more done will never revive us in the way that getting near to Jesus will. Our efficiency and efforts can only BandAid what Jesus longs to heal. But we’ve got to let go of handling it on our own. Trust that Jesus has abundantly more than enough—for every ache and fissure, every disappointment and self-criticism, every broken dream, marriage, body. More than enough to override our overwhelm, console our grief, renew our minds.
The more stretched we feel, the more we need time with Jesus. Make it a non-negotiable. He will redeem the time you carve into your morning or afternoon or evening to rest and receive from Him. Fill you teeming full so you overflow.
Let’s pray.
Jesus, we come to You weary, knowing You’re worthy. Trusting You to free and redeem. Thanking You for compassion, connection, and communion. You know our deepest soul needs. And You go before us and behind us and in between everything that squeezes us.
Just a friend over here in your corner,
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