Overwhelm

It’s all unfolding faster than my nervous system and psyche can manage.

-Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

I have been working my way through Brené Brown’s book Atlas of the Heart and decided the emotions described were all great prompts for posts. With that in mind, let’s move on to the first one I want to share with you all: Overwhelm.

There have been plenty of moments where I have claimed overwhelm, but there are a couple that stand out in situations where others were not able to handle my overwhelm and caused me to feel inept, stupid and as thought I was the worst possible person who could have been around at that moment. Each time came in moments where I was fatigued and while traveling to a new country, with those particular people for the first time…

Japan, 2016

It was 2016, and had not traveled leisurely before without my family. I had been to conferences in the US and have since, but this was going to be my first adventure out of North America and my first trip with a friend to just explore a new country. The friend in question had minored in Japanese in university and had also been to Japan before, so I figured it was the safest option I could have chosen since one of us knew the language and had a fairly immersive grasp of the country already.

Having spent very little time on a plane, and none of it on a flight over the ocean, a 10 hour flight seemed daunting. The statistics of how many plane crashes actually happen notwithstanding, this was after many airlines had allegedly mysteriously crashed and/or disappeared into the ocean with relative succession which increased my anxiety around the trip. Not wanting to make it worse, I opted to using a travel agent to book a direct flight, knowing that it would ease at least the ‘getting there’ and ‘getting home’ worries.

The last couple days before the trip, I was packing, triple checking I had the necessary documents, exchanging currency and making sure my friend was in order. We had planned our trip because there was so much to see and with our split desires, it was tough to accommodate all of them. So we arranged the basics and planned it out. We knew where our hostel was, I was to use roaming data so we could navigate the cities easier to keep schedule, and she would be able to read the signs to help us navigate as well.

Out of excitement and nerves, I was not sleeping well. Our flight was in the early afternoon so I did my best to sleep the night before, but it was choppy at best, leaving me with a less than fully functioning brain, but I figured I would be okay because I could at least sleep on the plane if I needed to. I didn’t. Not one blink. See, I knew that if I slept, I could have serious jetlag and the fact that we had a short trip made me want to minimize that as much as possible. So, I didn’t sleep on the 11 hour flight (it was longer than expected because of the limited landing strips open at Narita that day). After waiting for hours at the airport to get through customs, get luggage and more, I was exhausted, but we still had an hour train ride and a walk to where our hostel was located. We had left at early afternoon only to land in Toyko roughly 26 hours later in time.

I was alert while on the train, concerned about making the correct stop to find our hostel. I had no desire to problem-solve that so I was focused on how far we were from the train station. I figured it would be best to get google maps directions from the station once we got to the street, however I had saved the location of the hostel on my maps to be sure it was easy to access. My friend slept for the second time on the train, having slept for much of the flight.

As we neared our stop, the fatigue was setting in. I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours at that point and was ready to crash as soon as we could get to the hostel. We finally reached our stop, and began finding our way to the street. There were a few different streets to land on so we took time to figure out which was our ideal exit before making it out to what I can only express was an overload of the senses.

We were on one of the streets that embodied what many conjure when asked to think of Tokyo; bright lights that rendered the street lights all but useless with loud advertisements blaring from the huge signs on buildings and cargo vans, crowds of people rushing about and small cars driving around. It was too much for my brain to handle and I had no idea how to navigate without any visible signs indicating how we were to find our hostel.

In other words: On a scale of 1 to 10, I’m feeling my emotions at about 10, I’m paying attention to them at about 5, and I understand them at about 2.

-Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart

Any previous experience with overwhelm wasn’t even a flicker compared to this moment because, on top of it all, my friend was getting short with me. While I fumbled to process everything, she was irritated that I didn’t know where I was going, as if I could sense where to go without being able to even read a sign to know where we were. See, my phone had to calibrate itself to the new country’s provider and hadn’t connected, so while my phone map existed with the saved dot of the hostel, I was lost navigationally and couldn’t even begin to guess which way was north.

After a few minutes of fumbling, looking around and getting yelled at, I started to cry, right there on the street. Not loudly, but tears started streaming as the overwhelm overflowed into raw emotion and exhaustion. I just shut down for a minute as the lights blurred in my teary vision and until my wet cheeks dried, leaving a salty film over my reddened skin.

This release allowed me to think clear enough to notice that the dot was still appearing for the GPS on my phone, even though the data wasn’t connected properly meaning that as we walked, the dot would either move towards or away from the hostel. After a couple attempts, we found the direction we needed to go and made our way to the hostel, going to bed almost immediately after checking in and sleeping soundly until the next day.

Spain, 2019

Spain was a little less traumatizing when the overwhelm hit, because there was enough distance from the scenario that it was easier to remain more calm, but my partner at the time was making the overwhelm worse than the situation itself. It was the early morning before our flight to Barcelona from Dublin, Ireland when we received news that the Catalan protestors had taken over the airport that we were to fly into in a few hours. We froze, unsure what to do. Should we cancel our flights entirely? Should we trust that it will go well and just keep to plan? Should we reschedule our flights to later in the day? I was exhausted and overwhelmed, having never thought to experience this sort of problem while preparing for the trip. We had been aware of the increasing tension in Barcelona, but there had been no concern about it impacting our trip at all.

We lay in bed, trying to think of what to do, and my brain shut down. With so many questions like those above floating through my mind amidst the foggy, fatigue that was heavy in my brain, I could not come up with an answer for what to do – I needed time to process everything. My partner hurled insults at me making me feel worse by claiming that I was useless and more. He ended up ignoring me and messaging his friend at home to see if she could help him, having given up on me. I felt overwhelmed, small and on the brink of tears, but they did not fall this time.

After a few moments, what he said sunk in an I decided I had to do something to show I was not useless, so I started looking into options for rescheduling our flights, what our insurance covered, costs etc.

In the end, we pushed our flight to later in the day, and by the time we landed in Barcelona there was no evidence of anything happening at the airport. Looking back, we could have taken our original flight and the protest would have been gone by then, but its good we didn’t risk it because there was no way of knowing that would have been the case. We saw the occasional evidence of the violent, night protests while in Barcelona, but the marches we happened upon during the day never impacted us at all.

Conclusion

I don’t tell these stories to garner sympathy as a victim, because honestly, both situation involved two people who were likely equally overwhelmed and therefore could not support one another well. This is more of an acknowledgement to Brené Brown’s description of what overwhelm is, how I have experienced it and how being around other overwhelmed people compounds the issue, whereas her stories involved having someone to calmly remove the pressure from you in those moments where you cannot contribute.

Its been an interesting exercise to read these descriptions and discover what comes up for me. The emotions and whether these moments have caused a lasting impression. It seems they have certainly lost their potency over time, and also have provided a certain level of clarity. Perhaps I will have the mindfulness the next time to voice my need to take a step back and think, rather than to freeze so completely. Time will tell. In the meantime, maybe there are moments you have been through that reading this has brought up for you. If so, I would love to hear your stories in the comments if you are open to sharing!

Thanks for reading, as always, dear reader. Until next time…

🍀