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What do you do in those moments when you feel like your life is caving in? Your mind is on overdrive, youโre trapped in an unsustainable state of emotional turmoil.
When youโre in the midst of a distressing situation, simply stepping back and composing yourself is not an easy task. Thatโs why itโs important to learn some coping skills to help you restore emotional equanimity when youโre feeling overwhelmed.
Let’s look for the calm in the chaos and explore some things you can do to find that balance.
Why Emotional Equanimity Is Important
If youโre going through something where your life has been shaken up, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed. During these situations, it’s easy to burn out, make bad decisions, or prolong your suffering if you don’t learn how to find a place of peace inside.
On the other hand, if youโre not necessarily presented with any outstanding circumstances, but you find that youโre not coping with daily life, then it comes down to how you manage your emotions and the stressors of everyday life. If itโs the latter, I find that the inability to cope usually comes down to two core ingredients:
- You are not adapting to new situations in your life
- Youโre trying to control the situation
The inability to adapt can put a lot of pressure on you. The need for control can also create a lot of pressure. When youโre trying to control a situation that is out of your control, needless to say, youโre setting yourself up for a bad time.
Emotional equanimity is the ability to remain balanced and composed regardless of what’s going on in your life. It doesnโt mean suppressing emotions or becoming indifferent, but rather cultivating a steady inner state where emotions flow without overwhelming you.
When life brings joy, you embrace it without clinging. When hardships arise, you experience them without being consumed. This state of centeredness allows you to respond to life with clarity rather than react impulsively from a place of distress.
When youโre overwhelmed, itโs easy to let emotions dictate your actions, leading to rash decisions, unnecessary conflicts, and sometimes self-sabotage. With that said, cultivating emotional equanimity helps you create space between your emotions and your response and find a sense of stability in yourself.
When You Need to Find Emotional Equanimity
There are moments in life when everything feels like too much. Your mind races, your emotions are heightened, and no matter how hard you try, you canโt seem to find your footing. Stress, uncertainty, and emotional turbulence can throw you off balance, making it difficult to think clearly or respond to challenges with composure.
When this happens, finding emotional equanimity is essential. Recognizing the signs of emotional overwhelm is the first step toward regaining stability and inner peace. Here are some common indicators that you may be struggling to stay grounded:
- You have difficulty managing your thoughts
- You find it hard to concentrate
- You feel flustered or as if you arenโt functioning optimally
- You feel irritable or on edge
- Youโre constantly on high alter
- You may experience insomnia or struggle to relax
- There is a build-up of tension in your body
- Your emotional state is unstable
- You are having panic attacks or meltdowns
- Youโre overreactive or easily triggered
Ineffective Coping Mechanisms
When youโre feeling overwhelmed, your first instinct might be to indulge.
After all, you want the relief, so you tend to engage in activities that give you a dopamine boost. Even though getting those dopamine boosts here and there is okay to get you through, you donโt want to become reliant on them.
The reason why you donโt want to become reliant on compulsive activities is because theyโre anย act of escapism.
When youโre feeling overwhelmed, you need to engage in activities that help you regulate your emotional state and get to the roots of your emotional pain. Avoiding what youโre feeling is not resolving anything.
You should be using these painful feelings as a trampoline for personal growth, and personal growth should be your avenue to manage and heal the underlying reasons why youโre feeling this way.
If youโre simply escaping the feelings by distracting yourself, not only are you just covering up the pain, but youโre making the situation worse.
โ Drown Out Your Sorrows
The last thing you want to do is cope by using alcohol, marijuana, or drugs (including pharmaceuticals). Taking something to relieve you might seem like the easy option as it temporarily makes you feel like youโre winning, but itโs a slippery slope.
Taking something to deal with your problems obviously isnโt a good way to cope as theyโre just a Band-Aid fix.
- If your issue is problem-based, then taking something is just going to make you unproductive and avoid the issue.
- If your issue is emotion-based, youโre just temporarily covering up the deeper wounds which wonโt actually heal the root cause.
My rule of thumb: Only take alcohol or drugs to celebrate, never to cope. Psychedelics are a different story, but thatโs a whole other discussion for another time.
โ Binge TV and Video Games
Excessively watching movies or playing video games is just going to degrade your mental state. To cope with distressful situations, you need to be present with them. You need to feel the emotions and learn from them. If youโre distracting yourself by watching something, youโre just avoiding doing the inner work that is required.
Because youโre avoiding the inner work, youโre not actually healing the root cause or doing anything to solve the problem. Likewise, youโre not going to learn from it or grow as a person.
Thatโs why you shouldย focus on being mindfulย during difficult times in your life, because not only will that lead to a resolution, but youโll grow a lot through it.
โ Fill Your Stomach
Food is often a go-to when youโre feeling overwhelmed. Even if you have no appetite, you may find yourself eating and consuming because itโs a way to occupy yourself from the issue.
Eating also gives you a dopamine boost which you might desperately want when youโre feeling distressed, but itโs just a cover. As soon as you finish eating, youโre going to want to consume something else, and itโs usually an unconscious process.
Therefore, refrain from excessive eating or consuming, and try to keep your diet healthy. The temporary relief of eating junk is not worth perpetuating the distress. You want to be present with your feelings, not eat them away.
โ Ruminate Over What Might Happen
Avoid constantly playing it over in your head, or jumping to the worst-case scenario. Itโs easy to get caught in needless loops when youโre drumming up the issue to be worse than it is, but not really feeling into it either or accepting the situation.
For example, repeatedly saying โIโm going to fail, Iโm going to failโ isnโt going to help you regain emotional equanimity. Youโre just going to exacerbate the issue and torment yourself. Because youโre so focused on failing, youโre going to make failure an increasingly viable option.
So get a grip and be productive. Itโs not the time to beat yourself with a stick.
The Best Ways of Finding Emotional Equanimity
Learning how to cope with an overwhelming situation healthily allows you to manage your emotions and restore emotional equanimity.
Itโs always best toย ground yourselfย and bring yourself back to reality, then deal with the situation at hand that is causing you distress.ย While youโre in a panicked, anxious state, itโs going to be counterproductive to get anywhere, and this can create a vicious cycle.
Here are some of my best practices to cope with difficult situations, and restore emotional equanimity.
โ Find a Flow With Your Breath
When you feel overwhelmed, you go into overdrive. Your mind starts racing, which makes you feel like you need to do something. But doing something right here, right now, might not be a productive approach. You first need to regulate yourself, and your breath is the best avenue to do this.
Focus on your breathing and spend at least 5 minutes solely concentrating on your breath until you find a flow with it.
If your mind is racing, just keep bringing it back to your breathing until it starts to stabilize. Hereโs what you should do:
- Slow down your breathing
- Take deep inhales, hold, and extend exhales
- Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth
- Visualize white energy coming in, and dark anxious energy leaving
- Continue this process until you calm down and find a natural flow with your breathing
โ Put Your Body in Motion
Those feelings of being overwhelmed are very active energies that you want to release from your body. As tension starts to build up in your body, you need to let it go, otherwise, youโre going to become an unstable nuclear reactor.
Motion is the best way to do this. You can shake it out, stretch, and move around until you get most of the tension out of your body and feel calmer.
Here are some things you can do when you feel this angst and restlessness building up.
- Shake out your arms and legs
- Stretch your body
- Shake your tongue, move your mouth, and make sounds
- Jump up and down
- Breath heavily with long out exhales through the mouth
- Do yoga or some sort of physical activity
โ Resolve Whatโs in Your Control
If youโve done the above two exercises, you should be feeling a little calmer. Now, you can start doing the productive stuff.
Start by putting what you can control regarding the situation and what you canโt control into different baskets. If it helps, draw a T and write them down. This is a necessary step to gain more clarity on what you can do and what you need to accept.
Now that youโve broken down what you have control over and what you donโt have control over, the aim is to accept what you canโt control and act on what you can control.
โ Accept the Worst-Case Scenario
A big part of the distress comes from trying to avoid an undesirable situation or consequence. So, we put all of our energy into preventing ourselves from thinking about it, but this can cause more stress in itself.
A tactic to cope with stress that has served me well is to do the following:
- Think about the worst-case scenario, and allow your mind to wander
- Visualize the worst-case outcome as if it is inevitable
- Sit with the emotions and feelings that come up. Process them
- Once you feel those emotions, they will start to fade as you reach a point of acceptance
- Put it into perspective and realize that your situation isnโt the end of the world
The worst-case scenario is probably not very likely to happen at all, but it could have some pretty big consequences in your life. Whether itโs losing someone close to you, ruining your career, or going to prison, if you feel into this mental scenario like it has happened, itโs going to hurt.
But then as you start to feel acceptance, that sting will go away.
Afterwards, you might feel much better about the situation at hand, because in comparison, it doesnโt seem that bad now.
By picturing things going wrong and where that potentially leads, you might realize that youโll get through it. You take the pressure off yourself by coming to terms with what could (but probably wonโt) happen.
โ Follow the Emotional Discomfort to the Roots
Follow the string of pain back to the root cause. If thereโs something Iโve learned throughout my life, itโs that there is always another layer. Whatever youโre feeling is probably not the bottom of the pit.
When you think of a reason why youโre worried, ask yourself why that matters, and go deeper into it.
Letโs look at an example:
- I feel extremely stressed because if feel so ill-prepared for this test I need to complete
- If I fail the test, I might lose my job
- If I lose my job, Iโm going to go through hardships and feel ashamed
- Iโve always felt insufficient, and failing will bring up the image I have been trying to get away from
If youโre feeling overwhelmed, donโt just aim to cope with the situation, dig into it to find out why youโre feeling this way, and how you can take steps to heal it. Usually, thereโs a deeper reason why you feel so distressed, so try to find out what it is.
โ Pray or Find an Outlet
You might not be religious, or have any spiritual beliefs at all. Honestly, it doesnโt matter. Praying is actually such a powerful tool when youโre feeling overwhelmed or distressed, and youโre not sure what to do.
Maybe you wonโt hear a voice talking back to you (actually, Iโm almost certain you wonโt), but the act of praying releases energy. In a way, youโre handing over your burden to a higher power, which allows you to release it, at least somewhat.
Prayer takes the pressure off your shoulders, and you might get moments of clarity and insight while youโre doing it too. So if youโre ever in a tough position, pray to a higher power, and feel how freeing it is.
โ Have a Conversation With Yourself
When Iโm in a difficult situation, I find that it really helps to have a conversationโฆ with myself. This is a great way to practice self-compassion and mitigate some of the stress.
As if I was talking with a therapist or someone I trust, I open up to myself and rant. Whatโs more important is that I actually listen to myself, and respondโฆ like verbally respond to myself.
So, talking to myself starts to take a two-way conversation. One side is the afraid, overwhelmed child who doesnโt know what to do, and then I respond to that side from a more mature, authoritative position. A conversation with myself might go something like this:
- I have no idea what to do! I feel abandoned, nobody understands, I feel alone. I just canโt believe this keeps happening, why does nobody help?
- Itโs okay, itโs okay. You have been in this situation many times before, you know how itโs going to play out
- No, I donโt! This time itโs different. I donโt know if I will get through this, why is it always me!?
- Itโs you because you can handle it. Itโs happening for a reason, and youโre going to grow as a person through this, you just need to trust the process. You are cared for, you are guided. Weโre going to get through this together, just take one step at a time, and letโs get the ball rolling. What can you do right now?
- I guess I could stop pacing around for a moment and calm myself down. Itโs not that urgent.
Naturally, one of the sides talking starts to reassure the other side. It comes out naturally in response to my rant and expressing myself. This is actually a really powerful coping mechanism, because as my higher self kicks into action, I feel very reassured, even though itโs from myself.
โ Take Care of Yourself
When stress levels rise and youโre struggling to cope, self-care tends to go out the window. And because youโre not looking after yourself, you tend to feel worse.
Therefore, make sure youโre looking after your body and mind. Take some extra time to care for yourself, and see how this translates into your situation.
Here are some things you should look out for:
- How is your diet? Are you eating well, or has it gone out the window?
- Are you biting your nails, pulling your hair, or partaking in some sort of self-destructive behavior?
- Are you exercising and getting enough sun?
- How is your hygiene? Are you still doing regular hygiene practices such as showering and brushing your teeth?
- Are you allowing yourself space to rest and recharge?
โ Get Out in Nature, Often
Regularly getting out in nature has been a game-changer for my mental health during difficult times in my life. Thereโs something special about being out in nature. Nature has a very grounding effect to it which melts the stress right off from your shoulders.
A walk in the park is better than nothing, but I suggest getting out in a reserve, or the wilderness if you can. If itโs within your means, go somewhere where thereโs no urban development and not too many people.
Just be in the elements for a while, and youโll feel the tangible effects of it.
Go for a nice long walk in nature without listening to music or playing on your phone. You might not notice it immediately, but after returning home you will feel much fresher, like your cup is full again.
I suggest you make a habit of getting out in nature at least a couple of times a week. Do it daily if you can and report the difference after a week or two.
Finding Your Center Amid the Chaos
Emotional equanimity isnโt about suppressing your feelings or pretending everything is fine. Itโs about cultivating the inner stability to weather lifeโs storms.
When stress, overwhelm, or uncertainty start pulling you in different directions, remember that balance isnโt a destination but a practice. Recognize when you’re feeling overwhelmed and take intentional steps to ground yourself.
