S9E20: "Overwhelmed" management.

Have you been feeling overwhelmed lately? Are you having a hard time managing it? Well, you're not going to want to miss today's episode. Welcome to stroke surviving the odds, guys. I'm Karina, the host and creator of this Top 2 podcast. Here I show how to reclaim your life and move past the events of the stroke. I'm not minimizing it, but I'm showing you that there's so much more life to live after a stroke. 27 years ago, I survived the brain assembly section that led me to Coma Interlockton Syndrome.

Here in the show, I make sure I share all my tricks, hacks, and how to's. How I got to survive this world as a stroke survivor myself. Grab a pen and paper because the faintest of ink is better than the best memory. Come and join me here as we are recording today's episode on managing overwhelmness. I'm going to be doing a little bit of clean house. Before we commence the show, I want to remind you to like and follow on all in any platform that you are currently listening to the show.

I am on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Pod, Chaser, Google Podcast, you name it, baby, I am there. And without you, my listeners, there will not be any stroke surviving the odds. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being there. I also want to remind you that you can share the podcast, share with Sugar Bear. Yes, share with anybody that needs a little boost or you think that this might be helpful to them. Go right ahead.

Also, at the beginning, I asked you to grab a pen and paper, but if you download the episode, which I recommend, you can then listen to it a second time and participate in the episode, as in taking notes and maybe answering some of the rhetorical questions that I ask you at the end. In my description, I will be posting all the different ways you guys can get in touch with me.

So that being said, let's get today's show on the road. Before I started recording, I was actually thinking back of how overwhelmed it was for me as well back then. For those of you who don't know, my daughter was 16 months. Yep, I was a new mom, guys. And my daughter, this is the only way her mom, she knows her mom.

I'm a stroke survivor. I have physical limitations. I sound funny in the morning when I wake up, my body is stiff like a popsicle. Sick first thing in the morning, Absolutely, and lasting at night. But she's gotten used to it. But it was very overwhelming for me because I wanted to, like you, maybe overcompensate, and because I knew I was lacking in some areas.

I wanted to make sure that I was overproductive in others. And that feeling inside was very overwhelming. Sorry about that, guys. That was my little Einstein. He's my Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire, Yorkshire and oh goodness, what is he mixed with? OK, Stroke brain right now, Schnauzer Yes. And as you can see, he's a little bit vocal. And when I talk to you guys in the show, he feels like I'm neglecting him and he wants to make sure I know he's there. But I like to think that he just wants to say hi to you guys. So let's go on.

So I'm not going to give you all the insurance and out of my story because I'm not here to give you a story. I am here to be proactive and help you make the best of your life and live your very best life. Now after stroke. So feeling overwhelmed, guys, totally, totally normal after stroke. We want to overcompensate. We want to do everything ourselves. We can't do it.

We're frustrated. And because we are frustrated, we get our caregivers frustrated. So I fully understand what I want to do is showing you that even though you're wearing different hats and even though you're dealing with a lot of emotional and physical and mental health issues after stroke, it's not a reason to just go ahead and live life the way it is and think that's the only way life is. So when you add, right now, it's almost September. So when you add your stroke survivor with these issues, then there's going back to school.

Some of you have young children at home that you have to get ready. It's also wedding season because it's fall. And if you're like me and you're in your menopause or you're younger and you don't like to have heat, fall is the season to get married. Then we have the September, October rush, all the different holidays that are coming in here in Canada.

We have next Monday off because it's my goodness, I forget, but it has something to do with the workers. Workers Day off. Then we have back to school, Then we have Apple picking on the weekends. Then we have Thanksgiving. We got to think about and after Thanksgiving, shit, it's Christmas. That's a lot, guys. I can't mean just telling you this. I'm like, wow, it's a lot.

So I fully get it, but here I'm going to be giving you guys some strategies that are going to be easy and they're going to help you manage that overwhelming feeling. Sounds good. All right. You have to know and you have to remember that being overwhelmed is a feeling, is a symptom of something else.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, is it because you're disorganized? Is it because you maybe are always at the last minute and you don't plan your appointments according to how you feeling, how you are. If you're a stroke survivor last minute and you take your time eating breakfast and, and you don't anticipate traffic in the street and you don't anticipate you're going to have a hard time tying your shoes or putting your coat on.

These are all things that are overwhelming and you are adding to your boatload. Are you a stroke survivor? Perhaps that procrastinates because you're a little down on yourself and down on life and you're downright pissed and angry. So you say, I'll deal with this later. That's procrastinating. So being overwhelmed is a symptom that if you don't deal with the issue at the root, you're always going to feel overwhelmed. The good news is that overwhelmed this can be managed. It just takes some time, some planning, some patience. Yep, the two PS2 PS in a pod.

There you go. But I can share with you some strategies all I want. I can turn blue in the face. But what uses information without transformation? That's kind of why I'm telling you grab a pen and paper. If you can't pen and paper, you can pause the podcast and you can voice record your voice with your voice notes.

So if you go, maybe someone can show you how to go into the notepad of your phone and you can record some notes and they're going to be typed as you say them. Yep, that's a feature of our phones. Now, isn't that great? All right, so the first thing I found and I want to share with you is to stop the overwhelmness, stop the disorganizing, stop the procrastination, stop all that overwhelmness before it starts.

Let me explain. Let's say your doctor, you go there and I go. I have pain in my knee. I am starting to have rheumatoid arthritis in my knee and the doctor says example take two Tylenols every four hours. Take two arthritis Tylenol every four hours. My question to you is do you only take those Tylenols when you already have the pain or do you take it to prevent the pain?

The if the doctor says to take it every four hours, he means pain or no pain. You take it every four hours because you want to prevent, because if the pain is there, you get cranky. I get cranky. My knee hurts. I slows me down. It ticks me off. It takes time out of whatever I'm doing at the time. But if I prevent the pain from coming back, then I'm actually saving time.

You get it. So don't wait until you're stressed and your level of stress is so high that you have all the side effects. Your neck hurts, your head hurts, you're cranky, you start stumbling on your feet, you fall. If I'm saying this, it's because I've done it, guys. Just last week, I didn't listen to myself and I fell on the sidewalk, bang.

Just like that. Was I embarrassed? Heck yeah. Did I care? No way. Because. Yeah. But I could have prevented it by listening to what the doctor said. So these are techniques that we can put into practice, you can put into practice. Now let's avoid the overwhelm and stress feeling right from the get go.

All right, you got your pen and paper out because we are starting strategy number one. It's called box breathing. You inhale 4, you hold 2 seconds and you exhale in four counts and you hold it 2 counts 4242. That's the box. Now if you're super stressed and you can't have the luxury of stopping in the middle of everything, actually, please go take a bathroom break. Go to the bathroom, walk.

We'll get carried if you have to, but go there and do your box breathing. I would like for you to do it if you're, if you're, if you're like a cartoon character where the theme is coming out of your ears right now, you need to do your breathing. The second strategy that I found work is brain dumping. Yeah, isn't it funny?

Box breathing, brain dump, brain dump. We get overwhelmed. I could tell you, Oh my God, I got a million things to do today. The fact is, do I really have a million things to do? No. If I write things down, I don't have a million. By writing it down, you're decluttering your brain. You're removing that overwhelmness that's inside of you.

OK. The third one is prioritize. Once you have done Step 2, when you're done dumping and you wrote everything down that you need to do out of that, what means you can ask yourself what needs my undivided attention right now? And I find that using that question and using the method of is it urgent or important?

If it's urgent, it needs to be done right now. If your child needs to a diaper change, is it urgent or important? Pretty urgent, right? But you just received a text from your boss asking you if you filed the paper that you were supposed to. It's very important, but it is not urgent. Please go change the diaper of the child before calling your boss back. You see what I mean?

That's how you can judge. I know that there is cognitive problems with stroke survivors. I know that our brain is a little slower than it used to be. It doesn't mean that it stops. You see, that's the problem I find with many stroke survivors. Because you're slower, because you can't do things the way you used to, You stop.

No guys, no way. You adapt, you make it work to the way you are now. The second way is breaking it down. Once you have your number 2, you've figured out your #3 which is your priority #4 breaking it down. If your priority is too big or your list is too big, break it down into parts. If the the the thing you need to do is going to take a lot of time, break it into little manageable parts.

That way you're not going to drain your energy #5 is limit your focus if you return to driving after stroke. I loved the independence it gave me, but it also created a lot of not stress for say, but a lot. I needed to focus. I needed to concentrate. I couldn't have the music too loud in the car because I got to think everybody around me driving. Then I got to put my flasher to change my lane. Then there's people that are on their bikes, then there's people that are walking.

There's an old lady crossing the street taking forever. I got to be putting my focus on that. And if I'm thinking of all the things that are overwhelming me and what am I going to stuff the Thanksgiving Turkey with, I'm limiting the focus of the task at hand. Your focus can be disrupted by your phone, could be disrupted by TV and radio, could be disrupted by notifications.

So you need to limit your focus. Once you find your priority and you break it down, if it can be done in one shot or in five shots, make sure your focus is on that priority. And then on the rest of the list, and my favorite number six, say no. Learn how to say no. It's OK to say no. Not now. I can't. I'm busy.

I promise I'll do it afterwards. I'll be more than happy helping you out after, but I need to finish this. That last sentence, I just said I need to finish this prioritizes your priority. Isn't it great? Again, saying no is actually protecting your energy. In our stroke survivors, we don't have a lot of energy, but we want to spend it. So think of your energy as a little bag. I just handed you a little bag of tokens to go at the arcade, and you really want to play that game, but it takes 3 tokens, but I only handed you 10.

So 3 tokens in one game, 4 tokens in the other, that's seven and two tokens in the other. You see where I'm going? The more tokens it takes, the more energy it takes, the least you can do. So if I gave you 10 tokens, one game IS31, game is 41, game is 3. That means you've only played three games when the other guy next to you had the same amount of tokens, but played games that are only costing 1 token.

The guy played 10 games, you played three. Do you? Do I make sense? So spare your energy, guys. And I have a few episodes on setting boundaries. And when I started setting boundaries, I actually found clarity and found my purpose. So if many of you are out there wondering what the heck is my purpose now that I'm a stroke survivor, now that I'm physically limited, now that I may be in a wheelchair, now that I can no longer type, I can't be a writer or a medical secretary the way I was, what can I do? Do I make sense?

I know that I talk a lot and I give a lot of weird examples, but it's the way my brain works. Don't forget, I'm a stroke survivor too. My brain works the way it works. So listen, the episode today was a tad longer because I think it was extremely important, especially at this time of year. But I'm going to leave you with that.

But I do have a gift to offer you guys. I have APDF to send you free with 20 different ways you can say no without offending and ruffling feathers on people. If it's something that you would like my help and sending you that PDF, that document, make sure that you reached reach me on one of my platforms and you send me your e-mail.

That way, I will gladly send you my list of 20 different ways you can say no without offending. That being said, remember that I love you immensely and be safe because this season is hectic, but be safe and enjoy every minute of it. I love you immensely. Bye, guys.

S9E20: "Overwhelmed" management.

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