When Overwhelm Makes Everything Feel Impossible

September is here. Back to school. Parents exhale. Teachers brace.

The summer respite for exhausted teachers and the summer chaos for parents juggling work, childcare and holiday packing has ended in a flurry of new pencil cases and backing paper. And it’s got me thinking about capacity.

Not time. Not being busy. Capacity.

There is quite a lot in my diary at the moment. Visitors. Networking. Business commitments. Renovation work. Life admin. The usual domestic stuff that somehow breeds overnight. (I’m sure I just did six loads of washing, so how come there suddenly seem to be eight more waiting sulkily, staring at me accusingly like I’ve deliberately excluded them from my inner circle?)

I’ve always been self-critical when I don’t get through everything on my to-do list. But this week I realised something that I haven’t always been very good at accounting for: the thing itself is rarely the whole thing.

A weekend away is not just the weekend away. There is the packing, the organising, the getting there, the being “on”, the coming home, the washing, the resetting and the recovering. Having someone to stay is not just the time they are physically in my house. There’s the preparation, the change in catering routines, the spring cleaning, the shopping and the organising of things to do.

The thing itself is joyous and fun, but there is an energetic footprint around everything that we can forget to accommodate when we say yes to the thing. And when we don’t allow for this, we can over-extend ourselves. Cue overwhelm and burnout.

Then another thought landed. Could this be true of decision-making too? Can we over-extend our mental and emotional capacity by simply having too much to think about and too many decisions to make?

We all have the same 24 hours in a day to actively spend, but are some of us over-extended in terms of our mental capacity to juggle everything we need to think about? 

There’s a particular kind of pressure that comes from having to do more than you have the physical and mental capacity for, particularly if you associate self-worth with achievement. Regardless of the fact that what might be on your plate is more than enough to feed an entire village, you can still find yourself feeling like a failure if you are unable to fininsh everything. And, if you are a perfectionist, unable to fininsh everything perfectly. You know deep down that something has to change, but you find yourself facing decision fatigue. Your brain declares a creative thought embargo and shuts down to possibility. Survival and anxiety start to run the show.

This was me before I made the decision to leave teaching.

I kept circling the same questions. Do I stay? Do I leave? Am I just tired? Am I being ungrateful? What if I make the wrong decision? What if I leave and regret it? What if I stay and nothing changes? What if people think I'm a failure? I’m a capable, responsible woman and I’m used to finding solutions and making things work. I assumed I should be able to find the answer if I just thought hard enough.

The problem wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about it enough. I simply didn’t have enough space to think clearly.

When you are constantly responding, anticipating, firefighting, planning, fixing, supporting and carrying responsibility for other people, your brain is not exactly operating in ideal conditions for making a major life decision. You might have time in the diary — although, for a teacher in term time, unlikely! — but that doesn’t mean you have capacity. And I think this distinction matters.

Because we often look at ourselves and think, “Why can’t I just make a decision?” But a decision about your career, your future, your identity or the shape of your life is very different from deciding what to have for dinner.

You need enough distance from the noise to work out what is actually true. What do I want? What am I afraid of? Am I moving towards something, or am I simply desperate to get away from where I am? Is the problem the job itself, or the way I am currently experiencing it? What would I choose if I wasn’t trying to keep everyone else happy?

These are not questions that respond particularly well to being squeezed into the final ten minutes of an exhausted evening. Or worse still, they keep you awake at night so that, even if you manage to get some sleep, you wake up more exhausted than the day before.

This feels especially relevant at this time of year for anyone working in education. You may only just have come back from a long summer break and already feel overwhelmed, which can bring its own layer of guilt.

“Why am I already struggling? I’ve only just had six weeks off.”

But a break does not automatically resolve the thing that was draining you in the first place. And September has a particular way of throwing you straight back into it. New term. New expectations. New priorities. New people to support. New problems to solve. And before you know it, you’re back inside the machinery, trying to make a major decision while standing in the middle of the very environment you are trying to evaluate.

I know that feeling.

Leaving a 35-year career in education was not one neat, courageous decision. There was a lot that came before it: questioning, fear, grief, identity, practical concerns and a lot of inner work.

What changed for me was not that I suddenly became certain about everything. It was that I created enough space to hear my own thinking more clearly. I knew I couldn’t do it in an echo chamber and wanted an objective person to help guide me through the thought process. Someone who understood what I was experiencing but was sufficiently emotionally removed not to feel the need to rescue me or tell me what to do. With that space and challenge came enough self-trust to make a decision that had once felt impossible.

Everything I’ve written about here applies far beyond education. But this week I have something specifically for those working in the profession.

I’m running an upcoming webinar for people considering leaving teaching. It isn’t about persuading people to leave or giving them career options. It’s about helping them think more clearly about where they are, what is really going on beneath the surface, and what their next step might need to be.

Because sometimes the first decision is not whether to stay or go. Sometimes the first decision is to create enough space to find out what you actually want.

Making It Intentional

This week, notice where you’re trying to force a decision from a place of mental overload. Instead of thinking harder, create some space.

Take ten quiet minutes and write down the decision you’re wrestling with. Then answer these three questions without overthinking them:

• What do I already know?
• What am I afraid of?
• What would I choose if I trusted myself?

You’re not looking for a final answer. You’re creating enough space to hear your own thinking more clearly.

Your Next Step

If you are a teacher and have been quietly asking yourself, “Can I really keep doing this?” then this webinar is for you. It's free and sign up is a simple. 

I can't wait to see you there.